Quote from: rusty on February 22, 2019, 12:44:20 pmArchie 3000 is scheduled to get a collection in the near future

VERY near -- next Wednesday! I never thought the original ARCHIE 3000 was as interesting in the execution as the two Rich Margopoulos titles (JUGHEAD'S TIME POLICE and EXPLORERS OF THE UNKNOWN), or even the mostly Mike Pellowski-written DILTON'S STRANGE SCIENCE. ARCHIE 3000 was more a product diverse hands -- the stories shorter, with no real running plotline other than "Archie in the future". In other words, if ARCHIE 1 was ACP's answer to the Flintstones, then ARCHIE 3000 was ACP's answer to The Jetsons. More could have been done with it, I think, but it was early in Dan P's career. I'll probably review the trade collection whenever I can get to it.

Ah heck, since they're going there, why not line up new miniseries for ARCHIE 3000 and DILTON'S STRANGE SCIENCE while they're at it? Hey, even BIG MOOSE got a one-shot.

Help! POLICE! I've been robbed!! Somebody cleaned out my bank account! I used to be a multimillionaire, but now I'm Only A Poor Old Man. I lost all my karma, too. I'm flat busted. O, woe is me.

Well, that's pretty cool. I wonder if "Jughead Prime" is the same one from the previous JUGHEAD (2015-2017 R.I.P.) series? Too bad it's only a miniseries, but then again, I guess so was the previous JUGHEAD'S TIME POLICE!

Here's some classic early Dan DeCarlo, from KATHY #10 (Feb. 1952, Standard Comics). The basic formula for all teen humor gags is the same. "Janey" could be Veronica, and "Leroy" could be Archie, and "Jasper" could be Reggie.

Out this week:

ARCHIE & FRIENDS MUSIC JAM #1

Apparently (I didn't think too hard about it at first, since I'm used to seeing seasonal one-shots for Xmas and Halloween) this is the start of a companion "ongoing" series of one shots, analogous to BETTY & VERONICA FRIENDS FOREVER, where they reprint 4 recent stories (this time from the ARCHIE digests instead of the B&V ones) of Archie & Friends, each issue having a different theme. All four stories in the first #1 issue are written & drawn by Dan Parent, but there is a teaser ad at the back of the book for the next forthcoming Archie & Friends one-shot, so I'd say it looks like another ongoing series (if people buy them) of one-shots. The stories all seemed mighty familiar (not surprisingly, since I read them all quite recently in the ARCHIE MODERN CLASSICS VOL. 1 TP), but presumably future issues in this series would be released before the "best of year" TP compilation.

I can't recall seeing any subscription ads anywhere for BETTY & VERONICA FRIENDS FOREVER, but they might just be waiting a while until the 'ongoing' status of these "one-shots" is firmly established before putting that option out there. Or maybe at $2.99 cover price, they can't really make a subscription price that seems attractive and still allow a decent profit, what with mailing costs for overhead. Then again, where are they going to place the ads... not in the digests, since that would tend to point out the obvious... that these stories are in fact recycled from VERY recent new digest lead stories. No, they should probably only advertise subscriptions for these titles in their floppy-format comics. It's a dilemma, but a subscription to the B&V FRIENDS FOREVER and ARCHIE & FRIENDS one-shots would solve the problem for those who like classic Archie stories, specifically in the floppy comic-book format, but don't necessarily care to spend $7 per issue on a reprint digest title, just to get ONE new 5-page story.

Quote from: irishmoxie on February 06, 2019, 11:15:05 am

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on January 31, 2019, 11:21:50 am
MONICA ADVENTURES VOL. 1 & 2 (PapercutZ/CharmZ)

I'm really intrigued by this. Too bad it doesn't come digitally. Is it similar in tone to B&V or too kiddish? I've read some things from Papercutz. The Barbie series was definitely for kids while I enjoyed Chloe (originally a French comic).

Huh! Now THAT is weird. According to the Papercutz website, their books are available digitally on ComiXology, Amazon Kindle, iBooks, GooglePlay, Nook, etc. ... BUT no MONICA ADVENTURES to be found among the many other Papercutz titles available. I wonder why?  Monica is distributed by Panini (one of the world's largest publishers of comics internationally) in Brazil, and at one time there was an English-language version of Monica Teen (their preferred title; translation software calls it "Monica's Youth Group" or "Monica's Young Gang" or something like that) being produced by Panini for distribution in South America (*see below*), but apparently that is no longer the case (which may or may not have anything to do with Papercutz acquiring the North American rights). For some reason I'm guessing, digital distribution was not included in the rights granted to Papercutz. Either that or Papercutz does not do same-day-and-date digital releases with the print comic versions of their titles - which I thought was industry standard now, but I could be wrong (?)

You can browse the past editions (in Portuguese) in the Monica Teen series (Turma da Mônica Jovem in Portuguese) at Panini's Brazilian website (just ask your browser to translate the page; it seems to work fine in Chrome) at https://loja.panini.com.br//panini/vitrines/msp-revistas-turma-da-monica-jovem.aspx  just to get some idea of what the series is like. It seems there have been three separate series of Turma da Mônica Jovem in Brazil since 2008; the first series is now simply called "First series", and it was followed by a "Series 1" and a "Series 2". I don't know if that means that there was a little bit of a reboot after the initial series, but I can see that the character designs changed somewhat between "First series" and "Series 1". The characters seem to be extremely adaptable to either the standard high-school life/rom-com situations, or to more 'fantasy adventure'-type stories. Some issues are standalone stories, while others are part of multipart story arcs (and there does seem to be some continuity within each series that leads me to think the stories should be read in the order published). The crossover with the Justice League happened because Panini also distributes Portuguese-language versions of DC Comics (and Marvel's too... not surprising since they were once OWNED by Marvel -- long story). The Monica's Gang-related titles (kid version, teen version, and several individual character spinoff titles) had 8 separate titles or issues crossing over with the DC characters.


And oh yeah -- THAT happened, too.

I've been spending a lot of time over the past week or so sifting through scans of Golden Age, public-domain comic books. In this specific instance, it's the comics published by Harvey Comics between the years 1941 and 1951. I can't recall what started me on this little project, but somehow I was on the ComicBookPlus website, and I happened to notice that they had scans of the entire run of Harvey Comics' GREEN HORNET title. A few years back, all that was posted was the covers and the "backup features" of each issue of Green Hornet. I should mention that GREEN HORNET was not a title that consisted entirely of stories about the Green Hornet. Instead, it had between 16 and 24 pages (more often on the lower side) of GH stories, and some of those were text stories of from 1 to 3 pages. It was a 52-page comic (64 pages during WWII), yet less than half those pages were devoted to Green Hornet. I'd always wanted to read all those Golden Age Green Hornet comics, but there was no way I could afford to collect that run of 47 issues (the first 6 were actually published by a different publisher than Harvey Comics). They're reasonably-priced compared to DC or Marvel Golden Age comic books, but there's just so few pages of Green Hornet in each issue. Anyway, I guess The Green Hornet Incorporated (which owns the rights to the character) had formerly objected to sites like Digital Comic Museum and ComicBookPlus posting scans of the Green Hornet comic books, even though (legally speaking) the copyrights on those comics were never renewed and had expired. Those sites just don't want to piss off the rights-holders and get involved in some legal contentiousness, even if they're completely within their rights in posting those scans. Anyway... maybe it had something to do with Dynamite Entertainment's active license in publishing Green Hornet comic books. Activity on that character has died down quite a bit now, and maybe GH Inc had a change of heart and relented. SO here was an opportunity to finally read (and own digital copies of) all those stories. I like to sift through each book individually, saving only the specific pages I'm interested in, and sorting them all into file folders by character. To make a long story short, not only did I sift through issues 7 through 47 of Harvey's GH title, saving just the Green Hornet stories, but I decided to take the opportunity to do the same with another long-running Harvey superhero title, BLACK CAT (which ran 29 issues as a superhero title before changing to BLACK CAT MYSTIC, a horror/suspense comic which no longer featured the title character). Then I went on to research other Harvey anthology titles of the Golden Age like SPEED Comics, CHAMP Comics, ALL-NEW Comics, and others that had a variety of different characters in each issue, some of the features being superhero stories. I made a list of the superheroes and which issues they appeared in, and then saved all those stories in their own folders, a complete archival collection for each character. At least, aside from Black Cat and Green Hornet, all the superhero characters who made less than twenty or so appearances, which amounted to less than 20 characters. That leaves only half-a-dozen relatively long-running characters for me to sort through issues of SPEED and GREEN HORNET and save copies of their stories in their own folders: Shock Gibson and Captain Freedom from SPEED Comics, and Spirit of '76 & The Zebra (both of whom continued from the first 4 issues of POCKET Comics), and Blonde Bomber from GREEN HORNET. I'm not trying to save every feature that ran in every title, not even every non-humor feature. Just the superheroes, which account for maybe 20 to 25 percent of the story pages of a typical Harvey comic from the 1940s. There were a LOT of short-running superhero features, a few medium-length runs, and very few long-running superheroes -- just the six I mentioned, plus Blonde Bomber which wasn't really a superhero feature, but I can make up my own rules about what to save, so I'm doing it!

I'll also save any work I find (and I'm surprised by how many different companies this guy worked for) by cartoonist Ed Wheelan, simply because I like his style, and there's never EVER been a collection of ANY of his work, to my knowledge. Wheelan's best known (if at all) by collectors for his work on a parody/melodrama strip called Minute Movies (originally "Midget Movies") that seems to have been the prototype that E.C. Segar followed when creating Thimble Theater (which later became just POPEYE). Wheelan was super-talented, easily on a par with Segar, but never seemed to find that magical character to make one of his strips a big hit with the public.

I did something like this once before when I sifted through all the Golden Age MLJ titles and saved all the superhero stories in their own digital collections. It's kind of labor-intensive, but it interests me and I learn a lot about the company and characters in the process. I already started saving a few characters out of Crestwood Publications' PRIZE Comics (Dick Briefer's New Adventures of Frankenstein and Ken Crossen's Green Lama) and I may extend that to all of the other Crestwood superhero characters, too.

Another interesting phenomenon to note is that while many trademarked characters from long-running newspaper strips (like DICK TRACY) are not posted on these scan-sharing sites, many ARE, so you can read newspaper reprints like Milton Caniff's TERRY AND THE PIRATES or Ham Fisher's JOE PALOOKA (both of them published in a long-running series by Harvey Comics) on DCM or CB+. One such strip I found while sifting through Harvey's titles was INVISIBLE SCARLET O'NEIL, Russel Stamm's newspaper strip which I've long wished for a collection of. Now I have (a digital) one, because I made it myself!

Quote from: SAGG on February 02, 2019, 08:09:27 pm
I prefer reading it on a smartphone. Much better for me... 

It's kind of an Apple design/control philosophy though... that sort of thinking of "let's reduce the number of user options or controls; we're not worried about flexibility or offering different choices for different users, let's just make a one-size-fits-all thing that fits the profile of the majority of users". If that doesn't happen to fit your preferences or type of use, too bad. It's obvious that the user interface is designed to fit a portrait mode screen, as opposed to a landscape mode one. So they're automatically dismissing potential readers using laptops or PCs as a statistically negligible audience. The print comic analog to this reading experience is... a roll of toilet paper, where the panels can take up any number of sheets. Okay then, there are other webcomics sites, too.

Quote from: SAGG on February 02, 2019, 04:53:30 am
Anyone reads Webtoons? There are some terrific stories on there from South Kore (translated, of course), such as Lookism, True Beauty, Unordinary, and others...

"Adventures of God" looks pretty good. How did THAT not get made into an Adult Swim or Comedy Central animated show?

Oh, and Dean Haspiel (THE FOX) is on there, too -- with his "New Brooklyn" superhero universe that includes The Red Hook (since issued in print as a graphic novel by Image), and the most recent sequel, Warcry.

On the technical side, you can tell Webtoons is aimed squarely at tablet and smartphone readers, because the reader interface works pretty crappy on a landscape-mode screen on a laptop or desktop (I can't even view a full panel vertically top-to-bottom without reducing it in size). Webtoons' vertical scrolling of panels might be fine for swiping in portrait mode on a smaller screen, but I find it annoying to have to keep scrolling, because it's a mouse button I have to keep holding down to keep moving the slider bar. Left-to-right horizontal panel progression with simple back-and-forward buttons to click would make the reading experience a lot less tedious. And THAT makes me not want to spend much time on the site.

Quote from: rusty on February 01, 2019, 11:58:00 pm
I won an auction for books 3-10 of the Archie Riverdale High series by Mike Pellowski.  I already had two of the books, but needed the rest.  I still need the first two books and there was a special as well.  There doesn't seem to be a lot of information out there on the series, but I think there were only the 11 books.

If/when you get around to reading those, a comparison between the original novels and the "New Look Archie" digest comic adaptations (also written by Pellowski under a pseudonym) would be interesting. What was left out/added or changed (besides the titles) in the decade or more between the two versions?

Quote from: archiecomicscollector on January 31, 2019, 01:21:24 pm
I bought The U.S. of Archie by Peter Pan Records, c. 1975 from my local antique mall.

I always wondered what the guys at Filmation were thinking with that one. I mean sure, for about a year and half the whole country was going crazy with "bicentennial fever" or whatever you want to call it, and the U.S. government was marketing the flag-waving patriotic celebration concept like nobpdy's business.

Still, you had to figure the hard-headed business guys in TV production knew how these things work, and that those animated shows were only profitable to the extent that you could get the maximum amount of mileage out of them as reruns. Naturally after the bicentennial was over anything tied in with it was going to seem stale and dated, so... what were they thinking? Kids were only going to put up with an "educational" Archie show about U.S. history as long as the bicentennial fever raged on. And indeed, the U.S. of Archie had nothing like the shelf-life of the Filmation Archie cartoons that had come before it (except for maybe TV Funnies, another odd mismatch of two disparate ideas, which also didn't play well in reruns).

That makes merchandise items specifically spawned by The U.S. of Archie incarnation exceptionally rare. Got (or know of) any items specifically merchandised from Archie's T.V. Funnies?

ADDENDUM:  I was just scrounging around the net, looking for more info on this MONICA TEEN thing, and came across these images. Not to be outdone by Archie teaming up with KISS or BATMAN '66, Monica and her friends had crossovers with Astro Boy (and other Osamu Tezuka characters) and more recently, the Justice League. Seems doubtful that we'll ever get to see those reprinted in Papercutz' CHARMZ series, though.



Also: "Summer Fun" issues are never a bad thing...

MONICA ADVENTURES VOL. 1 & 2 (PapercutZ/CharmZ) - It's hard to describe exactly what this is, but I'll give it a shot. First of all, to call it by its correct (Brazilian) title, it's really MONICA TEEN; what that means is it's a 2008 spinoff of the long-running (since 1963) Brazilian (kid gang) comic MONICA. So, it's like if LITTLE ARCHIE had been the original, and they only thought up "Teen Archie" in 2008. The original MONICA strip is in the tradition of kid comics like L.A. or Peanuts or Dennis the Menace -- but extremely simply drawn. Monica Teen ages the characters into their (early, it looks like) teens, and completely changes the art style to something vaguely manga-esque (certain aspects of the style here actually remind me of Gisele's art -- not completely a manga style, but incorporating a lot of manga elements to it). The covers attracted me here, and while I don't think the interior artwork looks quite as good as the covers, it's still an attractive style. It's hard to say who the main artist(s) are here, because credits given on the books are... unusual, by American standards. At any rate, what we have here is a young teenage rom-com, with occasional callbacks to the original (kid version) strip, MONICA. These are a little over 100 pages for $8.99, BUT they're in black-and-white. Personally I'd rather have paid a couple bucks more retail cover price for color, but maybe the original had no color for them to pass along pre-made separations, so it would have made the books cost more like $12.99 to hire an American colorist to do that. For some odd reason, Papercutz opted to translate Monica Teen Volumes 3 and 7 from 2012 (and renumber them 1 and 2 in the MONICA ADVENTURES series). These are still basically comedic stories, despite the rom-com angle. There's an element of 'will they or won't they?' with a text afterword in the second volume in which the creator of Monica speculates about how romantic commitment seems to affect various famous comic strip couples. MONICA is credited as being one of the most successful and long-running comics in Brazil, and has been exported to other countries. I wonder if I don't get a slight impression that (like Archie) fading popularity of the original led to the creation of Monica Teen (in a completely different, more contemporary, style of cartooning) in 2008 (the original version still continues though). At any rate, it's this spinoff that interests me because of its similarities to Archie, not the original Monica strip. I would buy further volumes of this, if there are any, from Papercutz.





REGGIE AND ME VOL. 1 TP - Or should I say, "Reggie and Me Classic", not to be confused with that piece of [censored] ACP published as a miniseries a couple of years back now. Of the 36 Reggie stories in this collection, 13 were drawn by Al Hartley; 8 were drawn by Bob Bolling; 8 were drawn by Bill Vigoda; 3 were drawn by Bob White; and one each was drawn by Harry Lucey, Samm Schwartz, Stan Goldberg, and Dick Malmgren. The usual mix of writers include Frank Doyle, Al Hartley, Bob Bolling, and George Gladir. Stories cover a span of over 50 issues, from #20 (Oct. 1966) to #73 (Sep. 1974). This is a good point to mention an awareness on my part that these stories are being specially selected (or de-selected) by the editor. That would be either Jaime Lee Rotante (credited as "Editor") or Carlos Antunes (credited as "Associate Editor"). One of THOSE people specifically chose to DIS-include the "Reggie as Evilheart" stories that lead off REGGIE AND ME issues 19 through 23, which kind of burns my butt. And I guess I could complain retroactively that the Superteen stories were left out of the BETTY & ME collection as well, and the Pureheart stories left out of the LIFE WITH ARCHIE volume. The latter two don't bother me as much, as those stories have been reprinted elsewhere... but the Evilheart stories are rarely ever reprinted. And I could say that the overall high quality of the stories in the BETTY AND ME volume made the lack of Superteen stories included less noticable. BUT I was really looking forward to seeing those Evilheart stories. There better be a couple of Archie superhero trade collections down the road somewhere. An "Archie 1" collection would be nice, too, seeing as how they left those stories out of the EVERYTHING'S ARCHIE volume altogether. You can bet dollars to donuts you won't be seeing a collection of "The Best of CHUCK CLAYTON" stories that they specifically sorted out of the ARCHIE AT RIVERDALE HIGH collection. That was pretty much the only opportunity C.C. would have had for a 'classic collection', but they decided to give him the bum's rush.




BETTY & VERONICA JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #270 - This is the "Valentine's Day" issue, such as it is (only one story, alas). The BETTY & ME section is back, and I marvel and the number of Dan DeCarlo stories that they've been able to dredge up from that title (many of which are still fresh to me). My impression was that DDC didn't do all that many B&M stories after the earliest issues, as he quickly got busy as both the line-wide cover artist for ACP, double-duty on the B&V spinoff issues of Archie Giant Series, and (by the mid-1970s) taking over pencilling on the Archie newspaper strip. Cheryl Blossom's stories continue as reprints, in a chronological progression, towards the back of the issue, which is another feature I always look forward to.

Quote from: rusty on January 26, 2019, 11:31:50 pm
Future Quest Presents 1-12 - These stories were a lot of fun.  I wouldn't mind seeing an ongoing series with some of these characters or another anthology series.  The Jeff Parker written stories were probably my favorites here.  The Space Ghost three parter was nice in both art and story.

Totally agree. I didn't particularly care for Parker's version of an update on Mightor, but aside from that, good work all around.

Quote from: rusty on January 26, 2019, 11:31:50 pm
Looney Tunes 238-246 - This series is still fun, even if some of the stories are reprints.  They are from so long ago that they seem new.  I did see one funny accident, though, where they included the indicia from the issue that was being reprinted as part of the story page.  This series is now tied in terms of # of issues with the original Dell title.  That tie will be broken soon.

I believe that makes Looney Tunes currently DC's longest-running contiguously-numbered title (since April 1994). By that I mean a title which you can actually find each of the 247 (as of this week) issues, numbered as such. As opposed to those titles that later revert to their original legacy numbering after having been re-numbered as #1 at some point. Of course DC has had many titles which numbered higher than 247 in its history prior to 2011, but Looney Tunes and Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? were the only titles to survive the New 52 reboot/renumber and are still continuing with their original numbering.

Quote from: rusty on January 26, 2019, 11:31:50 pm
Scooby-Doo Team Up 20-45 - This series is a lot of fun with the Scooby Gang meeting a different DC or Hanna-Barbera character or group in each issue.  Sholly Fisch does a nice job writing this and even maintains some continuity.  The art is pretty good, too.

Boy, do I EVER agree! Scooby-Doo Team-Up has been my favorite DC title for the last few years. What is more amazing than that is the fact that prior to this series, I was NOT that huge a fan of Scooby-Doo. If not for Sholly Fisch, this could have been a fairly ordinary kids title. And it hasn't gotten stale, either, not even after all this time.

Quote from: rusty on January 26, 2019, 11:31:50 pm
Of course, there are those boxes of graphic novels and collections that have accumulated plus 6000+ back issues yet to be read...

Same here. I don't know of an actual count on the back issues for me, but the boxes of graphic novels and collections are pretty staggering.