JUDGE DREDD (IDW 2015) #9-12
JUDGE DREDD (IDW 2017) ANNUAL #1

NURSE HITOMI'S MONSTER INFIRMARY VOL. 5 TP

HEAVY METAL #285

ZAGOR VERSUS SUPERMIKE TP

RO-BUSTERS: THE COMPLETE NUTS & BOLTS VOL. 1 HC:
     - HAMMMER-STEIN'S WAR MEMOIRS
     - RO-JAWS' MEMOIRS

A.B.C. WARRIORS: THE MEK-FILES 01 HC:
     - THE MEK-NIFICENT SEVEN

A.B.C. WARRIORS: RETURN TO EARTH HC

RO-BUSTERS: THE COMPLETE NUTS & BOLTS VOL. 1 HC:
     - THE NORTH SEA TUNNEL
     - THE PREYING MANTIS
     - MIDPOINT
     - THE RITZ SPACE HOTEL
     - FARNBOROUGH DROID SHOW
     - MASSACRE ON THE MOON
     - THE TAX MAN COMETH!
     - untitled (Starlord Summer Special 1978)
     - DEATH ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

Quote from: stylishnotebook on April 01, 2017, 07:23:28 AMEven if they fight sometimes, Jughead and Veronica are friends who hang out together in a group, and they play in the same band. He goes to her parties. He should show concern for her if she's crying. If he decides to ignore her because of what you said about her treating Archie badly, he is wrong to do that, just as Veronica would be wrong to ignore him because of his misogyny, if their positions were reversed.

How Jughead relates to Veronica in a group dynamic when Archie and Betty are around is one thing. How he relates to her when the two of them are alone is another thing altogether. Jughead doesn't spend much time in Veronica's company apart from the group -- particularly in a situation he's not used to dealing with, which feels somehow out-of-character in terms of his expectations of Veronica's normal behavior. He expects to ask her about making dolls for the hospital with Betty, and his expectation would be that she should be in a good mood because of that experience (it was still the same day), only to find quite the opposite, which seems unaccountable in light of what Betty told him. His original evident intent here is to compliment her for her good work: "Hey, Veronica! I heard what a nice job you did on those -- ?!" Emphasis here is mine, but note how Jughead interrupts his thought mid-sentence when he reacts with surprise ("?!") to observing her uncharacteristic mood - nor does Veronica herself turn around, or acknowledge Jughead's shout in any way - she keeps on walking away (a good indicator that she may not feel like talking right now). Jughead isn't as relaxed just being himself around Veronica as he is with Betty.

Of course Jughead doesn't always relate to all members of the gang equally as friends. His one-on-one relation to both Veronica and Reggie is more frequently contentious than anything else. Furthermore, even the group dynamic is constantly in a state of flux, according to each specific story situation. Here are some of the group dynamics that we often see:

- Reggie vs. everybody ("Reggie the rat")
- Reggie vs. Archie & Jughead (hey, they're best friends, but Reggie is a frenemy at best)
- Reggie & Veronica vs. somebody else (it's a plot!)
- Reggie & Betty vs. Archie & Veronica  (divide & conquer)
- Betty & Veronica vs. Archie/Jughead/Reggie (girls vs. guys)
- Betty & Jughead vs. Veronica & Archie or Veronica & Reggie (Jughead has no illusions as to where his sympathies lie)
- Jughead vs. everybody else (in situations where Jughead just wants to hoard food, or they're trying to break him of his misogynistic tendencies)

It's easy to list the group dynamics that you DON'T see, though:
- Jughead & Veronica vs. everybody (or anybody)
- Jughead & Reggie vs. everybody (or anybody)

There are a few other possible combinations that we don't see too frequently, as well. There's one final role that Jughead sometimes plays in stories that is never assigned to any of the other four -- that of the detached observer with no vested interest in the outcome of events, taking no sides nor any deliberate action that would affect the course of events.

Stories like "Poor Little Rich Girl" where the general thrust isn't comedic, but tragic, are atypical and hard to predict or classify -- we're not even aware that it's an atypical story until we get to the end.

Quote from: stylishnotebook on April 01, 2017, 07:23:28 AMI don't think his response in the last panel seemed weak or undecided. Jughead isn't the kind to say something unless he means it. I doubt Veronica bursts into tears because of what Reggie says; she was already crying. They are across the street, so she probably can't hear them. But I agree with how you described Jughead's motives and thoughts when he talks to Betty.I don't think that what Jughead said to Betty earlier is bad; I just think that he was wrong to make fun of Veronica for crying and not ask her why.

Maybe. I see no tears (merely a "Sniff!") when she heads down the street away from Jughead, and Jughead describes her mood as "sad" -- you'd think that if he saw she was actually crying, he'd have made note of that, and mentioned it, rather than just pass it off as merely "sad". We DON'T see her crying in that panel where Jughead sees her, and we can assume that neither does he -- and judging from his relative distance from her in that one panel, it hardly seems likely that he was close enough to hear that "Sniff!". No, the first time we see her in tears is after Reggie has just passed by (on the same side of the street, just around the corner of the building on the same sidewalk the boys are on), after making his remark. Jughead's earlier observation to the guys was "Huh! I just saw Veronica and she looked kinda SAD!" He's not making fun of her, he's simply stating what he saw to Archie and Reggie, and if you look at the expression on his face as he says it, he's not laughing, he's puzzled -- it's "Huh!" a quizzical exclamation, not "Hah!", some kind of condemning judgment. Jughead doesn't make fun of her -- but the moment he announces that he saw her looking "kinda SAD", Reggie's immediate reaction to this information is a hearty "HA!".

And what about Veronica in that panel, at that very moment when Jughead sees her walking down the street, lost in her sadness? Was she crying at that moment? Maybe, maybe not. She wasn't crying when we saw her react to overhearing the nurses' comments about her and her family, so when exactly did she begin to cry? We can't say for sure, except that she's certainly crying in that final panel, where she's close enough to overhear Reggie's comments. Closer than she was to Jughead in the previous panel, when he shouted after her. Did she even hear him? Again - maybe, maybe not. Let's assume she did, and that she was already crying. Does she even want to see anybody at this point, or for anyone to see her like this? Her makeup must be a mess if she's been crying. Does it even make any sense that she wants to be comforted by Jughead, feeling the way she does at that moment, for him to see her so vulnerable? I doubt if she'd even want to see Archie at that point. Her ego has been badly bruised. Betty, and only Betty, would be the one she could open up to for comforting at that moment -- she's the only one that could understand, and who Veronica could explain herself to. Assuming she wasn't so lost in misery that she DID hear Jughead's shout, she probably just ignored him and hurried away. Even if she wasn't crying yet at that point, she's a mess. The great Veronica Lodge, famously perfect and imperturbable, always in control with her wealth and beauty, has been humbled, and made to feel lower than a centipede's belly. What's going through her mind as she walks down the street? No one can say for sure, but in my opinion it's probably something along the lines of "They all HATE me!"...

We can't hear Jughead's tone of voice when he responds to Reggie's assessment of Veronica's mood -- "Yeah, probably!" so we don't know if he sounds confident/definite or uncommittal/"whatever...". It's up to the reader to supply that context for Jughead out of his or her head. His use of the word "probably" here doesn't seem like 100% confidence to me -- particularly as contrasted with his earlier very smarmy, sarcastic judgments against Veronica's character, prior to Betty telling him about Veronica spending the afternoon with Betty making dolls for the hospital. To me, when I read that it feels like he's going along with Reggie only because he'd like to believe he was right about Veronica earlier... but now there's a seed of doubt that Betty planted, that uncomfortably won't go away. I also find it telling that earlier, he was more than happy to share his opinions about Veronica with Betty, when she obviously disagreed, but now that he's in the like-minded company of Reggie, he's got nothing further to add of his own opinions. Should that seed of doubt have caused Jughead to voice an objection to Reggie's simplistic explanation? Maybe. Maybe Jughead hasn't really thought about it enough, or it's easier to just accept Reggie's assessment that agreed with Jughead's earlier preconceptions of Veronica. Maybe he should talk to Betty again about it.

Reggie and Archie showing up in the last 2 panels of the story, just at the moment of Jughead's confused reaction to seeing Veronica, is a wild card element. (Archie has no dialogue, and so he could functionally have been left out of those two panels altogether.) Previously they had nothing to do with the proceedings. Up to that point, the story had been about Veronica, Betty & Jughead, along with a single page interlude with the 2 incidental characters of the unnamed nurses. If Reggie & Archie hadn't shown up just at that moment, maybe Jughead would have gone back into Pop's to tell Betty "Huh! I just saw Veronica and she looked kinda SAD!" (there's no point if he doesn't tell someone what he just saw), and of course Betty's reaction would have been completely different from Reggie's -- as would Jughead's response. Sometimes the ending to a story can turn on a dime.

Quote from: Hiram Lodge on April 02, 2017, 12:31:08 AM

I know the upcoming book doesn't include all 77 issues of the 1971 series. I was just showing where you could read them in color.

I have several Archie comics trade paperbacks that are more than 400 pages each. The pages are a little bit bigger than the digests, and the paper is higher quality. And they were about $15 each.

I would gladly pay $20 for the Sabrina book if it was in color.

And I would gladly pay $40-$50 for a hardcover volume of 250-300 pages on better paper in color (similar to THE BEST OF ARCHIE COMICS - DELUXE EDITION), but I doubt if either your wishes or mine are going to be realized in this case. There doesn't appear to be a large enough audience willing to support a color trade paperback collection composed entirely of nothing but Sabrina stories.

Cases in point:

- ACP solicited a similar TP collection (in color) composed of equal parts Sabrina, Josie, and Little Archie stories last year, under the title ARCHIE'S BIG BOOK: MAGIC, MUSIC, & MISCHIEF. The solicitation was later cancelled and the TP was never published (and we can presume that was due to low pre-orders).

- A couple of months ago ACP solicited SABRINA 80 PAGE GIANT COMIC #1. That too has since been cancelled and removed from the publishing schedule.

- This is at least the third (and maybe fourth) time this particular COMPLETE SABRINA collection has been solicited, going back to several years ago for the first time. To date it still hasn't been published, and I doubt that this solicitation will fare any better, to be frank -- in spite of the relatively cheap $10 asking price.


Your tastes and mine simply don't reflect those of the majority of consumers. My advice here would be to take what you can get, if by some miracle The Complete Sabrina TP actually does wind up being published this time. You can hold out for color, and maybe if you're willing to wait enough years, you never know what could change. Enough Marvel Comics consumers eventually demanded color trade paperback reprint collections of the stories formerly comprising the contents of their b&w ESSENTIALS trade collections that they wound up discontinuing that branding and format, replacing it with what are currently known as the Marvel EPIC COLLECTIONs. Those trade paperbacks retail for between $35 and $40 cover price, depending on page count and the popularity of the series reprinted. It's interesting to note that many of the stories which are common to being reprinted as both Essential and Epic Collections were reprinted even earlier as part of the hardcover Marvel Masterworks collections. Those HCs were initially priced at $30 per volume (for 10 consecutive issues of a given series), when that format began in the early 1990s. At the time the b&w Essentials collections were introduced in the mid-1990s, they represented a "bargain-priced" alternative edition of the same comics being reprinted in the HC Masterworks series -- twice the amount of content in page-count, but at half the cover price of the HC series. In fact the Masterworks HC series still continues today with occasional releases, but over the length of time that the Masterworks line has continued, the standard cover price has increased that so that currently, the same page-count volumes cost $75. The Marvel Epic Collection TPs published today retail for an even higher cover price than the Marvel Masterworks HC collections did when that program began decades ago. I mention all this by way of example of the economic realities of comic book publishing in 2017. Don't forget to take into account that ACP isn't Marvel by any stretch of the imagination, in terms of its consumer base.

I sent them a strongly worded email about this subject when I cancelled my subscription to ARCHIE 75th ANNIVERSARY JUMBO COMICS DIGEST. I had pre-subscribed before it even came out, only to discover when I received the first issue that all the stories in it were exactly the same ones (complete with the same text commentary) that had appeared years earlier in the BEST OF ARCHIE COMICS trade paperback collections.

That's one of the earliest stories featuring Frankie Valdez, isn't it?

Thanks for playing! You're a winner!
You have correctly identified "The thing about Archie Comics that drives (you/me/us) insane"!

[Shhhhh!! They still believe that nobody has noticed yet.]

Quote from: Fernando Ruiz on March 31, 2017, 09:37:25 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 31, 2017, 02:29:07 AM

Quote from: Fernando Ruiz on March 28, 2017, 08:33:52 PM
Wow! They STILL put out The Black Hood?!?

No lie -- that's exactly what passed through my mind when I first laid eyes on the solicitation!

I haven't followed The Black Hood's sales TOO closely, but from what I remember seeing each issue of this "Season Two" or whatever they're calling this latest batch of issues seem to sell around two thousand copies. On at least ONE of Diamond's list direct market sales figures, it was dead last. At 2K copies, this book is selling around where the pre-reboot Jughead title... previously Archie Comics' WORST selling book... was and this book is significantly more expensive to produce. It HAS to be losing money!


At a 3.99 cover price and selling two-thousand copies, this book is bringing in roughly 8000.00. Unless Archie Comics has negotiated a special deal, Diamond usually takes around half of that money leaving ACP with a paltry four grand! Consider printing costs and the creative team on this book and we're looking at a financial sinkhole! Just to give you an idea... I'm not sure how many actual story pages are in an issue of The Black Hood but let's say its the standard twenty pages of story and art. If they're paying the artist 100.00 per page to draw this thing... and for a book like this that would be pretty LOW... each issue of The Black Hood is costing two-thousand dollars just to get drawn! And we're not even considering the scripting, the lettering, or the colorist yet! In many circumstances that 2K wouldn't be a lot, but when the book is pulling in only 4K, you can see the problem.


The only hope and monkey wrench in all this is maybe this thing is selling phenomenally well digitally.

You never know what goes on behind the scenes. Well, not you personally, any more... but I meant that in the sense of general readers/observers of the comics industry. Something like that seems so counter-intuitive to business logic that it makes you wonder.

It reminds me of that brief period in 1954 when Martin Goodman decided (based, it would seem, on Superman having become a television series) to try reviving his superhero comics. For a scant few months, Captain America, the Human Torch, and the Sub-Mariner were published in their own titles again for the first time since 1949, with a couple of anthology titles tossed into the bargain. Then Captain America, the Human Torch, and the anthology titles all abruptly ceased again, and only the Sub-Mariner's revived comic book continued on for another year or so. Was Sub-Mariner really that much more popular than the other super-characters, that his title survived while the others did not? Turns out that it wasn't the case. Sub-Mariner was briefly optioned with the idea of basing a television series on the character (exactly, it seems, as Goodman had hoped in reviving the characters). Ultimately, it didn't happen, and the title quietly expired again.

Which makes me wonder if maybe someone didn't express interest in producing a Black Hood TV series -- certainly the type of thing, to my mind, much better suited to HBO or Showtime than to the comic book they're publishing. I'm far from convinced that what the comic book industry needs is television shows drawn in comic book form. Something like that is the only thing that would seem to account for the kooky logic of continuing to publish a comic book series that sells only 2000 copies per issue.

When it comes to Jughead in this story, there are several things that I take into consideration. One is that Jughead and Veronica have a traditional acrimonious sort of rivalry. Some of what Jughead says about Veronica amounts to fair criticism, but he feels like she can take it as well as dish it out. Another thing to take into account is the reason Jughead feels this way about Veronica has a lot to do with him being best friends with Archie, and he just has to stand there and watch when he sees how she treats him sometimes. He's also resentful towards her because of her Svengali-like hold over Archie, when it's clear to Jughead that Betty is more deserving of Archie's attention, and that rankles him. Earlier when Betty was defending Veronica's character it was in terms of generalities, amounting to "Oh, she's not as bad as all that", and Jughead resists the idea because he's probably thinking something like "Isn't that just like Betty, the eternal optimist, she always wants to believe the best about people and give them the benefit of the doubt -- a sweet kid, but too much of a softie". But the information that Betty relates to him about Veronica helping make dolls for the hospital is something different, a concrete example of Veronica's better character, and appears to have caused him to doubt his earlier convictions about Veronica, and he seems to want to get confirmation of what Betty told him directly from Veronica herself, but he doesn't know what to do when he sees her so upset. Because of their adversarial relationship, maybe he's not comfortable approaching her while she's in this mood, but he doesn't seem to understand how he can reconcile her emotional state with what Betty told him -- shouldn't Veronica feel good about herself for helping Betty make the dolls? Was he wrong about Veronica before, or not? He's confused, and he seems to accept Reggie's reasoning as the simplest explanation, but who knows what he's really thinking when he says "Yeah, probably!" in response. It feels like a weak acquiescence to the consensus opinion without any real conviction or resolution to the doubt that Betty placed in his mind, and Jughead doesn't realize as he's going along with this  that Veronica is overhearing Reggie's remarks and bursting into tears.

Quote from: Hiram Lodge on March 29, 2017, 08:48:20 PM
It says the Sabrina book is black and white. That's probably going to be a dealbreaker for me. It's a shame that they aren't printing it the way these comics were originally published.

The information contained in the solicitation is contradictory, but you are in error in believing that this book contains reprints of every story from the 77 issues of SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH published from 1971-1983. If that were true, this book would need to be close to 2000 pages.

QuoteComplete Sabrina The Teenage Witch 1962-1971 (TR)
It's back to the beginning with Sabrina in this first of a new series compiling the entire history of everyone's favorite Teenage Witch! This graphic novel chronologically collects all the stories starring Sabrina the Teenage Witch from 1962 to 1965.
Script: Various
Art: Various
Cover: Various
ISBN-13: 978-1-93697-594-5
$9.99 U.S./$10.99 CAN
TR
512 pp, black & white
Direct Market On-Sale Date: 6/7

The title of the book says "Complete ... 1962-1971", where the actual solicitation copy cites instead the years 1962-1965. The solicitation copy claims the book is 512 pages (and the cover image confirms that the book indeed contains "Over 500 Pages of Comics"). Since the years 1962-1965 would only account for Sabrina's earliest appearances within the pages of ARCHIE'S MADHOUSE, clearly that would not add up to over 500 pages of comics, so we can assume that solicitation copy to be the error, and the title's citation of the years 1962-1971 to be the accurate description of what the book actually contains. What that translates to is all of Sabrina's appearances in ARCHIE'S MADHOUSE and ARCHIE'S TV LAUGH-OUT (just the Sabrina stories from the first ten 52-page Giant-size issues, published from December 1969 through November 1971), plus the entire contents of the first four 52-page Giant-size issues of SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH, published from April through December 1971. It's difficult to say accurately whether the number of Sabrina story pages in the relevant issues (especially as the MADHOUSE appearances are scattered and irregular) add up to "over 500 pages of comics".

Comparatively speaking, even though this is in black and white, it's a good buy at $10 for over 500 pages of comics. For comparison purposes, consider that ACP charges $7 for a Jumbo Comics Digest issue that contains only 256 pages of comics. It's also fair to compare this format to one that was used recently by both Marvel (for it's ESSENTIAL trade collections) and DC (for it's SHOWCASE PRESENTS trade collections). Both of those companies published those formats with slightly over 500 pages of comics reprinted in black and white. DC's original price for a volume in this series was $17 beginning in 2005 (which later went up to $20 before the series ended at the end of 2015). Marvel charged $15 when their series of Essential trade collections began in 1996, also later increasing the price to $20 per volume before the format was discontinued in 2013 (although Marvel's Essentials also sometimes ran as high as over 580 pages, depending on the individual volume in question). In comparison to that, $10 for 512 pages doesn't seem overpriced.

The sad economic fact is that there just isn't enough consumer demand for these type of non-Riverdale-centric series reprints to justify reprinting the stories in paperback in full color at a higher cover price. I can't force anyone to buy it if the black and white format is so disgusting to them that they'd rather go without reading these stories, but just to be realistic, you should realize that passing on this format isn't going to result in ACP reprinting the stories in some other cheap color format containing a lot of pages. The only other viable economic alternative to this for non-Archie stories would be about half the page-count in a hardcover collection priced somewhere in the $40-$60 price range.

Yes, you can always download pirated scans of the issues from someone else's comic book collection -- which, I guess, is the only alternative we'll all be left with when ACP goes out of business.

Quote from: ASS-P on March 28, 2017, 04:08:18 AM
...A historical point - Archie certainly made the digest format their own , but two former comics companies , Gold Key/Whitman/Western and Fawcett , had decent success with digests around the turn of the Seventies , years before I bought both Archie Comics Digest #1 and Jughead With Archie...(etc.) #1 off of the stands (at Plaza Discount in Pleasantville , NY , IIRC) .

Both Marvel and DC Comics had a small line of digest titles in the 1980s. DC's longest-running digest title, THE BEST OF DC BLUE RIBBON DIGEST, ran for 71 issues from September 1979 through April 1986. Collectively speaking, the number of digest issues published by Marvel and DC outnumbered the better-remembered oversized Treasury Editions and Limited Collector's Editions.

Quote from: Fernando Ruiz on March 28, 2017, 08:33:52 PM
Wow! They STILL put out The Black Hood?!?

No lie -- that's exactly what passed through my mind when I first laid eyes on the solicitation!

I believe Mr. Lodge actually has a good reputation as a philanthropist in Riverdale. There are innumerable stories where he donates to local charities or community causes. There are even several stories that spring to mind where Mr. Lodge alienates some of his hard-hearted business partners by doing the right thing in opposition to exploiting the profit-making angle of a situation. I'd agree that Veronica's reputation is that of a spoiled and self-centered heiress, though. With the nurses in this story, there's no getting around the fact that they're judging Betty and Veronica by two completely different standards. To them, Betty spending her time making handmade dolls to donate to the hospital is a laudable thing, but when they discover Veronica did the same, they're critical of her for not doing enough because of her wealth. They're predisposed to like Betty because of her personal charisma and admiring the work that went into crafting the dolls, but with the same dolls coming from Veronica, they're predisposed to think of them as a cheap token of philanthropy because of her spoiled reputation -- regardless of the fact that both girls put the same amount of time and effort into making the dolls.

The nurses also probably had no way of knowing whether Mr. Lodge was donating anything to the hospital without checking, since he donates to many charities without some big public show like showing up with a 6-foot faux check to hand over to the hospital administrator. He might already be donating to the hospital without Veronica even being aware of it, since he doesn't tell her everything he does. On the other hand, I'm sure he's not aware of every situation in Riverdale where he could help by donating, so it was a good thing for Veronica to think about bringing the hospital situation to his attention. The point in general that I'm making here is that it's hard for me to recall any stories where Mr. Lodge is portrayed as a hard-bitten profiteer who is only concerned with increasing his own personal wealth, regardless of the impact on others. Sure, he could probably be ruthless when it comes to business rivals, or we might see $$$ in his eyes upon the sudden realization of a money-making opportunity, but he never seems to take advantage of the personal leverage conferred by his wealth when it comes to the good of the community. When the nurse says "They didn't get rich by giving money away", she's just plain wrong about Mr. Lodge -- he's not hoarding his wealth like a miser.

You never know with Archie. In some stories he's critical of Veronica (like the previously-posted "Complete Circle"), but more often he defends her against someone else's criticism. There was just a recent story in JUGHEAD & ARCHIE digest where he takes Jughead's dare to disprove his contention that Veronica is an untrustworthy girlfriend ("Dear FAKE Diary"). In general though, he's more often less critical of her than he perhaps ought to be. You could argue that it's that same lack of any honest critical perspective about Veronica that's responsible for her often treating him so badly -- because she hasn't any respect for the fact that he doesn't stand up to her (and you could make the same case for Betty in relation to Archie, although in his case, respect is less the issue than obliviousness).

In this instance, Reggie's facile conclusion about Veronica's sadness is unwarranted, because she's not unapproachable to her friends to discover the true cause (although maybe Jughead isn't the best candidate in this particular case). They exhibit no concern for her whatsoever, and in this regard you might say Jughead is most culpable since he's got some inkling after listening to Betty -- but does it occur to him to ask her about it? Since Archie makes no effort to discover the truth, you'd think it doesn't matter to him and he couldn't care less. Reggie's flippant and callous dismissal of Veronica's feelings (which goes unchallenged) is what causes her to break into tears. To play devil's advocate for a moment, a less sympathetic and forgiving Old Testament judgment here about Veronica might be "As ye sow, so shall ye reap" -- if Veronica has a bad public reputation, whose fault is that?

Quote from: stylishnotebook on March 30, 2017, 07:25:43 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 30, 2017, 06:17:07 AM
Apparently Ronnie's got a long memory for these beach shenanigans... (I guess she had to wait until she remembered to wear her actual swimsuit).
This time it looks like the inflatable will be punctured on porpoise. 

Ouch!    Very lovely cover find.Thank you all for your opinions on the last story. My ranking would be a little different.

1. Betty (best)

2. Veronica

3. Nurses

4. Archie

5. Reggie

6. Jughead


My answer to my second question would be Betty. Even though we don't agree on the morality of some characters, I appreciate the dissenting viewpoints that are expressed so well here.

It helps to explain your reasoning for why you ranked them that way.

You felt more sorry for Betty than you did for Veronica? Why? Does Betty suffer in some way in the story for her beliefs or actions?

Do you think Veronica gave herself too much credit for helping make the dolls, or felt like it was a big deal when she didn't really do all that much?  Why is Betty more ethical than Veronica, if Betty doesn't really need to make any extra effort to behave the way she does, but for Veronica, she needs to overcome a history of self-centerness to do something nice for no reward?

And how is Jughead worse than Reggie? True, he's disinclined to believe Betty's defense of Veronica for most of the story, but when she tells him about how Veronica spent the afternoon making dolls to donate to the hospital, he goes out to try to tell her what a nice thing she did, and is kind of startled to see her looking so sad (but he's still puzzled about why). Jughead appears confused and doesn't know what to do now, so rather than go after Veronica to tell her what he was originally going to, he decides he'd better not disturb her while she's obviously upset. When he tries to tell Reggie and Archie about it, Reggie just turns Veronica's sadness into a major burn (typical Reggie), to which Jughead replies "Yeah, probably!" but he doesn't sound too convinced to me. Archie says nothing at all, which is kind of weird when you consider that he's dating Veronica -- he doesn't take issue with Reggie's opinion, and he seems not the least bit curious and strangely unconcerned about her sadness (which, when you think about it, is pretty unusual for Veronica).

I don't know whether to be mad about it or just laugh at the ridiculous irony. It's just completely wrong-headed. What was once lighthearted teenage comedy hijinks is now supposed to be some angsty dramatic tension, as Jan & Dean's "Won't come back from Dead Man's Curve" plays in the background.

Apparently Ronnie's got a long memory for these beach shenanigans... (I guess she had to wait until she remembered to wear her actual swimsuit).
This time it looks like the inflatable will be punctured on porpoise.    Payback, thy name is Veronica.