Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on March 29, 2017, 02:21:34 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 23, 2017, 03:23:19 PM

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on March 22, 2017, 01:43:11 PM
Yet another Hot Dog lookalike (but this Baby was after Hot Dog was already created. This is from 1986). Archie artists sure liked sheep dogs!

You have to wonder how much of that is the colorist's responsibility. When these 'Hot Dog-lookalikes' appear in stories, the colorist could have chosen any shades of coat from gold/orange to tan/brown to various gray shades, and if he had, we might not even be discussing those examples as 'psuedo-Hot Dogs'. Sometimes, as with this particular example, I wonder if the colorist even bothered to read it. He might just have looked at the big dog in the artwork and decided 'that must be Hot Dog, so white it is, then'.

  That's true. I hadn't thought of that.


I have a silly question, what do they use to color the comics, markers?

It's actually kind of complicated to explain, since there was a different system for coloring comic books printed using the old pre-computer technology system of four-color printing. That system basically used only 4 inks to print the comics, and a graduated screen-density for each of the 4 inks - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. Each of those inks could be printed in one of four screen densities - 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% (those would be the little dots you see if you look really close, excepting 100% which was solid ink). All possible colors would be named by a combination of letters (to indicate which of the four inks) and numbers (to indicate which of the four screen densities). In reality you can't combine black with any other color ink, and so that left 64 possible colors.

When the colorist was coloring, he or she was really just creating "color guides" for the printer to use to create the "color separations". Each page would need one separation of a single color ink for each color used on the page, and a separate printing plate would print that color on each page, so the colorist could only use markers or color dyes (Dr. Martin's was a standard brand of watercolor used, more commonly with a brush) which matched the possible combinations of the 3 inks (yellow, cyan, magenta) in those four densities. The individual separations would be lined up using registration marks so the printer would know the separations would all be correctly aligned after the paper had been run through all four printing plates. To be on the safe side, the colorist most often wrote notes directly on the color guides so the separator at the printer's wouldn't have to guess. This Superman page was colored by Glen Whitmore, who also did a lot of the coloring for ACP:



Nowadays depending on the printing technology available, it's easier to just color everything on the computer, because the colorist can then do the actual separations as the final step in the coloring process. There's a real difference now between the way the color printing looks if you look at an older (1980s) Archie digest and compare it to a new one.

A lot more detailed information on this is available here:
http://facweb.cs.depaul.edu/sgrais/comics_color.htm
and here:
http://www.comicartistsdirect.com/articles/coloring.html

Oh, the nurses were the worst, without a doubt. They go from ooo'ing and ahh'ing over the beautiful handmade dolls when they think Betty made them, but when she points out that Veronica made several of them, all of a sudden they're singing a different tune - it's "with all her money, a few measly handmade dolls?" Wow. From beautiful to measly, just like that. Okay, technically the curly-haired nurse never really said anything bad about Veronica, it was only the short-haired one that made the remarks, except for a couple of off-panel quips agreeing with those sentiments (that you can't actually tell who they're coming from). I mean yeah, ultimately it's Reggie that delivers the knocks that cause Veronica to burst into tears, but coming from Reggie it just sounds pretty typical for him -- on some other occasion, he'd say something just as nasty about Jughead or Archie, and usually right in front of them. Mr. Insensitive just happened to have perfect timing in this particular instance.

And I know this story isn't that old, but when was it exactly that nurses stopped wearing those old-fashioned uniforms? The 1970s? They've been wearing scrubs for a few decades now, at least.

That said, I almost question the credits on this story. Craig Boldman didn't write a lot of B&V stories, and this one definitely has more of a Kathleen Webb ring to it.

I feel sorry for Archie. He couldn't get a word in edgewise between Reggie and Jughead! (... but seriously... he doesn't say anything, or try to defend her at all? That's interesting.) And again, seriously... is this some kind of trick question? I should feel sorry for Betty, because no one pays attention when she tries to speak up in Veronica's defense? Or Jughead, for... who the heck knows?

You know, there's a number of these type of stories where Mr. Lodge (usually) says something along the lines of he likes to see Veronica hanging out with Betty, because she's a good influence, and helps bring out Veronica's better self. Well, Hiram wasn't around to say it in this story, but this one certainly exemplifies what he's talking about. Veronica wouldn't have done anything by herself, but she lets Betty talk her into it pretty easily, then she feels so good about it that she makes a mental note to also have Mr. Lodge make a nice donation, and doesn't even want to make a show of it by appearing at the hospital when Betty donates the dolls. So it's understandable when her good vibes are crushed by overhearing the nurses' talk.

Also, a small but interesting thing to note here in the first panel -- Veronica is carrying FIVE packages herself, so Carruthers only gets tapped to carry the overflow of an additional THREE. I mean, he IS part of the Lodges' domestic staff, so if she wanted to feel superior, she could have made him carry them ALL.

I only have two.

Jughead + Trula Twyst  - Actually pretty obvious with a close reading of the stories.

Dilton + Marcy McDermott-Lodge (or whatever it is now) - Actually sorta happened in Archie vs Sharknado, in whatever alternate Archieverse that took place in.

JUDGE DREDD (IDW 2015) #1-8
JEM & THE HOLOGRAMS #24 - It was good. Gisele's art makes a big difference.
ROM #8
THANOS #5
AVENGERS #5.1 (of 5)
MAN-THING #2 (of 5)
TITANS ANNUAL #1
DARK KNIGHT III MASTER RACE #8 (OF 9)
ADAM STRANGE/FUTURE QUEST SPECIAL #1
BOOSTER GOLD/FLINTSTONES SPECIAL #1
GREEN LANTERN/SPACE GHOST SPECIAL #1
SUICIDE SQUAD/BANANA SPLITS SPECIAL #1
KAMANDI CHALLENGE #3 (of 12)
MOONSHINE #6
ANNO DRACULA #1 (of 5)
LOBSTER JOHNSON: THE PIRATE'S GHOST #1 (of 3)
THREE STOOGES: APRIL FOOLS DAY #1
TALES FROM THE CRYPT #2
ARCHIE COMICS DOUBLE DIGEST #277 - "PinARCHIo" (gotta love it!), plus a couple of surprise Pureheart the Powerful stories, "The Knack of Time" and "Postage Due".

Quote from: VintageJon on March 28, 2017, 01:32:13 PM
I picked up the B&V Annual #252 at Shopper's Drug Mart the other day.  Pretty entertaining so far!  I was surprised to see how many digests they had on the racks.  I counted at least 6 different titles.

That's 6 out of 7 titles that they currently publish (and not including the one-shot special Riverdale Digest#1, which shouldn't be on sale until next month). The regular titles are Archie, Archie's Funhouse, B&V Friends, Betty and Veronica, Jughead & Archie, and World of Archie. The full title of each ongoing digest changes from one issue number to the next -- a "regular" issue is titled Double Digest, and various extra-sized issues are titled Jumbo Comics Digest, Comics Annual, or various seasonal or holiday Annuals (the Annuals, by the way, are technically not true annuals in the sense that they're published more often than once per year). The remaining currently-published digest title is the 12-issue limited digest series Archie 75th Anniversary Jumbo Comics Digest, 7 issues of which have been published so far, with #8 due out on or around April 5th, 2017.

Quote from: Shuester on March 27, 2017, 03:36:09 AM

I agree that Reggie is the worst, followed by Veronica, followed by Archie, followed by Betty. Whoever this Ross guy is, he is obviously the best- saving Ronnie just because she needs help, and asking nothing of return. Nice.

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 25, 2017, 07:36:11 AM
If Archie hadn't been so quick to go running back to Veronica (he did, after all, refer to her as a rat), Betty would have told him that the repair was only temporary. (What did he think, that she carried an inflatables patch-kit in her swimsuit?)

Knowing Betty, I wouldn't be surprised if she did have an inflatables patch-kit with her on the beach. It's Betty. Usually when she fixes something, it ends up better than before.

From a certain perspective, I think you could arguably say that the way Betty fixed it ended up better than before. 

Who's at fault here? Does Archie ever stop to think about anything? Wouldn't a normal person wonder how an inflatable raft could be fixed in just a couple of minutes at the beach, with no access to say, a store or supplies of any kind? Wouldn't the average person at least take a couple of seconds to look at the repair before attempting to use the raft again? What am I saying?! Most people have this thing called a brain which they use to store what we call "common sense", and use it by reflex. Of course, when Archie is thinking about Veronica it simply wipes every other thought out of his pathetic excuse for a mind.

JUDGE DREDD CRY OF THE WEREWOLF (one-shot)
JUDGE DREDD: DEVIATIONS (one-shot)
THE ART OF JUDGE DREDD HC
BAD COMPANY: GOODBYE, KROOL WORLD (VOL. 1) TP
BAD COMPANY: KANO (VOL. 2) TP
BAD COMPANY: FIRST CASUALTIES (VOL. 3) TP
JUDGE DREDD (IDW 2012) #17-30

DIE KITTY DIE! HOLLYWOOD OR BUST #2 (of 4) [digital] - I spy, with my little eye, a guest appearance by Eyeda! (She knows all the witches.)

Quote from: SAGG on March 25, 2017, 06:32:31 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 25, 2017, 04:07:00 PM

For Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty was consulted by you, so that's not fair... 

Have you ever noticed that nobody ever calls him just plain "Charlie"? It's always his full first and last name, "Charlie Brown". What's up with that? How weird would it be if anytime someone addressed you by name, they always used your full given and family name? Peppermint Patty is the only character that talks to him like he was a normal person.

Can you imagine if Chuck Clayton was never referred to by any of the other characters as anything but "Chuck Clayton"?

"Hey, there's Chuck Clayton! How's it going, Chuck Clayton? We're all meeting down at Pop's later on - me, Jughead, Betty, Veronica, Reggie, Dilton, Moose, and Midge. Would you and Nancy like to join us, Chuck Clayton?"



You might try searching images for "Chuck and Nancy", and while you will find both images of the Shazzan and Archie Comics characters in there somewhere, it's amazing how few of those show up, compared to the main volume of completely unrelated "Chuck and Nancy" images.

Archie (Archibald), Veronica,  Midge, and Reggie (Reginald) are all fairly uncommon names, to say nothing of Dilton, Jughead (or Forsythe), and Moose (whether his given name is Merton Matowski or Marmaduke Mason). Josie, Melody, and Pepper are all pretty uncommon, and Valerie only semi-common. Only Betty is (or was) a very common name (one of the many possible diminutives of Elizabeth). Chuck and Nancy are names both so common as to be generic, which makes you think that when they were originally introduced in Archie Comics, there wasn't much thought expended by way of making them unique or memorable in some way. That makes them token characters, but I'm undecided on whether that's better or worse than having chosen some more 'obvious' name for Chuck like "Fast Willie Jackson" or "Tyrone Washington". At least maybe if they'd given him some atypical name, it might have seemed like it was necessary to attach some distinguishing personality traits, talents or interests along with the name. Those early Chuck stories were all over the place, experimenting with who he was and what his defining traits were. For years, really the closest they get to defining him as a person is "sports guy". Well, Reggie and Moose are both sports guys, too, so I guess that's common enough, but it just seems like a bit of lazy writing to say "oh, he's into sports" and let it go at that. How much more interesting would he be if he had turned out to be a chess champion or a serious history buff or jazz musician or an early computer tech hobbyist? Or maybe a serious motorhead auto buff, or into woodworking or scale modeling or something. What's all the more puzzling about that is that the lack of distinguishing character traits wasn't a result of his only appearing in minor supporting roles in what was essentially someone else's story -- for years he was the virtual co-star of ARCHIE AT RIVERDALE HIGH, so the failure to define him much isn't a result of a lack of room to do it in the stories. I'm not sure if this was the result of fear on the part of Archie Comics. They could point to Chuck and say, look, we have a black person living in Riverdale, and he's exactly indistinguishable from the average Riverdale teen in every way, so in that way he's representative of all black people. The only problem with that idea is that by being so relentlessly dead average, he sticks out as not like the other characters. None of the other continuing characters in Archie Comics can be described as average, so why should Chuck be? They finally settled, sometime in the early 1990s (more than 20 years after his introduction) on an interest in comics and art. Nancy remains vaguely defined in characterization, talents and interests to this day (even more true for Midge, who's been around even longer), while continuing or reoccurring characters created later are generally easier to identify in terms of their individuality.

SHAZZAN's Chuck and Nancy were brother and sister, like SPACE GHOST's Jan and Jace. The SUPER FRIENDS' Zan and Jayna have names and identical costumes (and a pet space monkey) suspiciously similar to Jan and Jace, and like them, are young superheroes-in-training -- but just like Chuck and Nancy had to touch the two halves of their magic ring together and invoke the name "Shazzan!" in unison to summon their magical genie, Zan and Jayna had to bump fists and shout "Wonder Twin powers, activate!" together, to access their respective super-abilities to transmute into any form or water/any form of animal. (In my avatar icon, I had Dan Parent draw Superteen and Powerteen bumping their fists together with a magical glow as an homage to the Wonder Twins.) I doubt the Archie creators were paying much attention to SHAZZAN, and ACP's Chuck and Nancy weren't introduced at the same time. In the earliest stories Chuck had no regular girlfriend. They're just common names, and were probably chosen from a group of names that you might find among any typical school classroom of students. A closer connection would be that Nancy (from Shazzan) was portrayed by the same actress who was also Josie's voice in Josie and the Pussycats -- Janet Waldo.

I don't really care who they kill. It matters that little to me. Go ahead and nuke the entire town for all I care. After Afterlife With Archie, what is there left to shock me, really?

Death has become fairly meaningless in comic books, anyway. Who really gets all bent out of shape when Captain America, or Wolverine, or Superman dies these days? It's been "done to death" (how apropos). It's all pretty ho-hum, and nobody feels any gravitas about how meaningful it is. All it really means is that you won't be seeing exactly that version of a character for a while (which is about the same as the cancellation of some character's series). There are uncounted ways to explain it all away as having never really happened, later resurrect the character somehow, or simply reboot him again and start over. Big deal.

As an interesting side point, Archie Comics was the very first comic book company to have an ongoing character die, way, way back when that was something unheard of, and actually meant something. That would have been The Comet, in PEP COMICS, which led to his brother swearing revenge on the criminals who killed him and becoming The Hangman.

I'll agree with SAGG's assessment, with the caveat of reversing the order of #3 and 4. Betty didn't lie; she DID fix Archie's raft. He never asked how long the repair would hold for. If Archie hadn't been so quick to go running back to Veronica (he did, after all, refer to her as a rat), Betty would have told him that the repair was only temporary. (What did he think, that she carried an inflatables patch-kit in her swimsuit?)

I might add that Archie is so completely reliant on Betty for so many things, and he barely even has any awareness of it. She freely offers her assistance to him in innumerable ways -- anything from auto repair to sewing to baking him goodies to helping him with homework and test preparation, and rarely gets anything more than a passing acknowledgement or brief-then-forgotten thank-yous. Archie is so helpless, so incompetent, in SO many ways that it brings out Betty's natural sympathies and mothering instincts, even though she's learned to expect no real gratitude in return. She's resourceful too, so she'll use whatever she has on hand to get the job done -- and what has she got with her at the beach, but chewing gum? Is it Betty's fault that Archie has become so accustomed to accepting her help and taking it for granted?

A side note here is that this is just one of many, many stories in which Veronica and/or Betty attempt to explain the difference to Archie (or any of the boys, really) between "beachwear" and a "swimsuit", but somehow it seems like they never get it or remember.

The final point here would be -- to Archie, it's only water; and to Veronica, it's only money. He'll dry out and she'll buy another suit.

Quote from: SAGG on March 23, 2017, 06:37:48 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 23, 2017, 10:30:56 AM
Wow, why is everything so itty-bitty? I have to wonder what these people are constructing these web sites on. It's just a pain to have to hit Ctrl+ multiple times, but I wonder what the creator was viewing the site on?

Quick question, DR: Why did you say the pictures were so small?    They're quite large on my screen....

When I first looked at the link on my computer at home, the pictures looked normal-sized (that is to say, they looked like they were displayed on my screen at the pixel height and width at which they'd been scanned), BUT the text was displayed in really tiny fonts, and the whole page had a huge amount of gray space on either side of the page. I just now looked at it again, on a different computer, and the fonts are displayed in a nice readable size (if not a little larger than necessary), BUT the images as displayed are also blown up to the same relative proportions (you can tell they're larger than the original image size as scanned, because you can see dithering, or fuzziness in the colors).

Or maybe I'm mis-remembering and I did originally look at the page on this computer and the fonts displayed as tiny (and I subsequently used Ctrl++ to enlarge the whole page as displayed, but have since forgotten this, although my computer would remember this so I wouldn't need to use the Ctrl+ again).

AND I don't know what kind of screen display you're viewing the page on. It might look perfectly normal, say, on a 9"-diagonal tablet, while I'm looking at the site on a 11.75"x18" monitor with a default display resolution of 1050x1680.

Normally the hypertext (HTML) that the creator used to create the page should dictate some things about how the page displays, scaling both the fonts and images according to both the screen dimensions and pixel resolution native to the computer on which it's being viewed. For example, you sometimes find older web pages created a long time ago before larger monitors and higher screen display resolutions became common, that don't account for these things in the HTML code used to create the page, when scaling the images and fonts, or whether the text is justified or centered, or aligned to right or left.

Not all simple questions are as simple as they might at first appear! 

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on March 22, 2017, 01:43:11 PM
Yet another Hot Dog lookalike (but this Baby was after Hot Dog was already created. This is from 1986). Archie artists sure liked sheep dogs!

You have to wonder how much of that is the colorist's responsibility. When these 'Hot Dog-lookalikes' appear in stories, the colorist could have chosen any shades of coat from gold/orange to tan/brown to various gray shades, and if he had, we might not even be discussing those examples as 'psuedo-Hot Dogs'. Sometimes, as with this particular example, I wonder if the colorist even bothered to read it. He might just have looked at the big dog in the artwork and decided 'that must be Hot Dog, so white it is, then'.

Wow, why is everything so itty-bitty? I have to wonder what these people are constructing these web sites on. It's just a pain to have to hit Ctrl+ multiple times, but I wonder what the creator was viewing the site on?

My favorite was this line. New theory on "What's the deal with Jughead?":

QuoteOf all the guys associated with Archie, Jughead was the most reserved in his horniness.  Perhaps it was the weed that killed his sex drive.  I don't know.  But he still had his moments.

This guy had the right idea, though. The whole site focuses on an aspect of Archie Comics of the past that was really great, that I miss in the more toned-down stories of ACP's "modern era" (1987-2015). They were clearly tuned-in to one of (if not the) primary appeals of Dan DeCarlo's work, its innocent sexiness, and not afraid to exploit that.

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on March 22, 2017, 08:29:40 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 22, 2017, 02:08:12 PM

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on March 22, 2017, 01:34:45 PM
You know, when I made that post I actually thought "I have the feeling DeCarlo Rules is gonna come and rain on my parade" and, boom, sure enough you did  You are always so matter of fact. Remember that I specifically said "I'll just imagine that these two skipped school to be together all day". Who cares if they didn't actually  skipped school together and spent the day by themselves!? I'm just imagining here, you know, fantasizing. You should try it sometime 

Like I mentioned a while back, for me the only way I would actually tolerate Riverdale would be if they put Reggie and Betty together (but even then I would hate the show and just like that pairing) but that is never going to happen. Reggie is non-existent on the show and they already paired Betty up with Jughead, so Riverdale is actually not Betty/Reggie shippers' best bet

What can I say. The very idea that so delights you, sends shivers down my spine and makes me cringe, because regardless of how irked Archie's behavior towards Betty sometimes make me feel, pairing her up with Reggie instead seems like inflicting a punishment upon her far far worse, which she's done nothing to deserve -- the "Punishment Plus" story that was just posted being an excellent example.

Even beyond the two specific characters involved, this particular shipping fantasy is representative generically of what I feel is the most pernicious myth that females as a gender seem to hold -- that "bad boys" can be saved or changed (or that there's really a heart of gold buried deep deep down beneath the uncivilized exterior) by the true love of that one special woman (in effect, she has magic powers to alter reality to her own liking). That particular archetypal myth has probably been one of the greatest sources of heartbreak and human misery throughout the ages, and it's why battered women's shelters are always full. The sad reality is that people really don't change. It just makes me really sad.

And you know what, I can't help the way I feel about it. Among the Gang of Five, Betty is my favorite character. She's a sweet girl, and I'd like to believe that she deserves that kind of "happily ever after" ending that good karma earned for her. But whenever I see it brought up, my immediate visceral reaction to the B/R fantasy is one of muted horror, followed by "That poor, poor girl." So who should she walk off into the sunset with? I honestly don't know. Adam is probably the best candidate. Yeah, boring old Adam. The way I see it, other people's happiness probably looks pretty boring to the rest of us.

You have to be able to separate real life from fiction, then.  Just because in real life the "bad boy" always remains a bad boy and women suffer from it doesn't mean that in fiction land, in make-believe world (which is what these comics are) that has to be the norm. In fiction world we can let our imagination run wild and happy things can actually happen. And it is okay to imagine it.
We have been through this before. I understand your points and yes, in the real world it is bad most of the time, but again, this is a cute little fiction world. And anyway, if we took in consideration what actually happens in the real world, then by real life standards so many of the couples in Riverdale are so wrong if you think about it.
I love Betty too. She's always been my favorite and I always want the best for her. If the writers do a good job(like in The Married Life)then Reggie can be and will be a good choice for her. 
Oh and I actually don't mind Adam, he's a good kid. Heck, I even like the Betty/Jason pairing. He's a snob but has a big crush on her and I think he would also treat her well.

I understand what you're saying. On the other hand, it gives me pause to wonder whether this is really a "harmless" kind of fantasy, or whether it actually contributes to the perpetuation of that archetypal myth to which I referred, which is what I find so disturbing about it. I called it pernicious above, and what I meant by that was: I hope for most people's ability to distinguish fantasy from reality, but this is a particularly seductive type of fantasy, because it plays into people's optimism and a belief in the human ability to effect change in the world around us, as well as long-established ideas about love conquering all, or moving mountains. The wish-fulfillment here is operating in a gray area because it's difficult to establish exactly what it is that makes humans behave the way they do. However, the real statistics say that this optimism about the ability to effect change in others' behavior is misplaced, and it's easy to see that as contributing to someone believing they failed because they didn't try hard enough or their love wasn't strong or pure enough. As I said, it's a gut reaction which is hard for me to avoid.

In deference to the B/R shippers I'll try to restrain my natural revulsion and check myself from replying in the future.