Even as the Sword of Damocles represented by COVID-19 hangs like a grim spectre poised to crush Diamond Comic Distributors (and the entire comic shop retailing industry as it has existed in the 21st century), there are new solicitations. Anything could happen, at the time I'm posting this, but the month's ACP solicitations are more exciting collectively than they've been in a while, IMO. In addition to continuing the just-shipped SUPER DUCK reboot (which I thought was funny and just great), here are some of the notables:


SUPERTEEN Betty Cooper is back! In her own series!! (These are just 2 out of 5 cover variants)




Another Archie crossover miniseries by the Archie Meets Batman '66 creative team of Jeff Parker & Dan Parent!

Certainly not one which would have occurred to me. Well, at least they're trying to keep the crossover concept going, but legal logistics probably rule out any kind of 'dream crossover' projects with Star Wars or Spider-Man. Superman would seem to be at least a possibility based on previous AC/DC co-productions, so fingers crossed for next time.




World of ARCHIE 100th Issue Special:

Not on my usual reading list, but I'll certainly be picking this one up (I HOPE!!) based on this solicitation description:
(W) Bill Golliher (A) Various (CA) Pat & Tim Kennedy
BRAND NEW STORY: "Hundreds of Possibilities!" Celebrate the milestone 100th issue of World of Archie! Archie takes a nap only to be awakened by someone pounding on his door. To his surprise, it's his best friend Jughead-but not the Jughead he recognizes. This one belongs to something called the Time Police, and he comes with a warning: all the Archie space time continuum will soon be collapsed into one reality. Archie must join forces with Jughead to save the day-and all of time as we know it!
In Shops: Jun 17, 2020
SRP: $7.99

Ooooh!! An Archie Multiverse story featuring Deputy Marshal Forsythe P. Jones of the Time Police!! SWEET!! Doesn't say whether the new story is longer than the standard digest lead of 5 pages, but one hopes against hope for a one-time exception 20-pager in honor of reaching 100 issues. Certainly sounds like more plot than they can squeeze down into a standard 5-pager, though. FINGERS CROSSED!



On the trade paperback front, there's this (No real details, so it's a crapshoot as to whether there will be any significant percentage of not-previously-collected stories making up this volume):

Is it merely the trade paperback version of the earlier-revised HC Deluxe Edition of the even-earlier Best of Archie Comics Volume 1 trade collection? Or an entirely different remix? No way to tell at present. Buyer Beware!



And of course, the continuing exploits and/or travails of the "All-New, All-Cynical" SUPER DUCK. NOT an All-Ages title as you might expect:

SUPER DUCK #1 read somewhat like a strange fusion of Mighty Mouse and Marvel's Howard the Duck. A complete reboot of the classic ACP character -- no prior familiarity necessary. Highly recommended by this reader!



Finally, on the Archie-peripheral collectibles front, there's THIS book (for a mere $5 cover price) from ACP licensee BuzzPop:

Quote from: Sitcomics on March 20, 2020, 03:37:20 amShort answer: not for a while.

Long-winded writer's answer: The 5th Binge Book is 2/3 drawn and hopefully 3/3 written & drawn in a couple months. The plan is to switch to Diamond next year, assuming Diamond still exists by then, which means waiting a while to print the entire new story. You can actually read the new chapter (and all 11 previous digital issues) for free on Kindle Unlimited right now by following the link and part two should follow in a couple months. Have fun!

Whoa. You hadda bring THAT up. I've heard rumblings that... all is not well in comic book retailing-dom. And if Diamond Comic Distributors ceases to function, that's pretty much all she wrote for print comics retailing as it has existed up until this point in time, because there's really nothing to replace it. Bookstore sales of collected editions and graphic novels can go on, and of course digital comics, but not the printed type of floppy comics. All would be apparently collateral damage victims of the COVID-19 Apocalypse. I guess that would effectively sort of level the entire playing field for the little guys in comic publishing, but... *brrrr!* I don't even really want to think about it.

Hey Darin!

Good to hear that Super Suckers is still a going thing, and that Corona vampires haven't caused the end of Bung Hill civilization (such as it may be...)

Any projection on the next SS Binge Book? I need that for my collection.

I didn't see this one coming, because I didn't read Dynamite's solictation for this issue closely enough. I had been buying the previous issues more to get the Dan Parent cover variants than for any other reason. #1-8 are done in the same "New Archie" style as the earlier DC crossover with Harley & Ivy. Which is nowhere near as interesting to me as it would be if Dan Parent drew the story. But surprisingly to me (I was completely unaware until I opened the cover of #9 and began reading) Dan Parent DID in fact draw the interior artwork for this entire issue.

In 1972, Tom DeFalco began his career in comic books working as an editorial assistant for ACP, where he began writing scripts on the side, but one of the earliest things he did was to conceive and develop the Archie reprint comics digest:



The Archie digest line would go on to become the company's most profitable format for decades. Tom DeFalco went on to work for Marvel Comics beginning in the 1980s, where he spent the next 20 years of his career. He later served as Editor-In-Chief at Marvel from 1987 to 1994, making him one of the longest serving individuals to hold that post, and later returned to write for Archie Comics in 2000s again.

Hats off to Tom for brainstorming that little digest of collected reprints that managed to make it into more retail outlets than any other comics published from the 1970s onward!

The inverse law applies. If ACP solicits something, the more I want it, the more likely it will be cancelled, rescheduled, delayed, cancelled again... ad infinitum.

With the first TP collected volume, Sabrina had been at the lowest point in her popularity since the cancellation of her ongoing series (last seen in Tania Del Rio's manga version), but NOW Sabrina's star is on the rise again with her own Netflix adaptation, and we STILL can't get a decent trade collection of Sabrina stories published, never mind one in color.

ACP is launching a new digest title, ARCHIE SHOWCASE DIGEST. No information about whether this is another "limited series" digest title of 12 issues like ARCHIE 75th ANNIVERSARY DIGEST (2016-2017) and ARCHIE MILESTONES DIGEST (2019-2020) so far, but I'm intrigued by the solicitation copy which reads "The Archie Showcase digest series will place the spotlight on Archie Comics' hottest characters". Well, if it's a 12-issue limited digest series, then we'll only get the top-selling dozen characters: Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead, Reggie, Sabrina, Josie (and the Pussycats), Cheryl Blossom, Kevin Keller (...or maybe not), Katy Keene, Mr. Weatherbee, and...  

Moose? Dilton? Ethel? Chuck? Mr. Lodge? Miss Grundy? Li'l Jinx? Who knows. MAYBE Super Duck, since he's got a current floppy comic limited series... but I kind of doubt it. More than likely the only characters being "showcased" here will be those that have figured significantly on RIVERDALE or other ACP video series.

Characters who I'd like to wish would get a SHOWCASE digest spotlight issue, but who probably won't (even though they could find more than enough stories to fill a Jumbo Digest), because I don't think ACP would be that daring to risk an issue not selling (sure would be nice to be proven wrong, though):
- THAT WILKIN BOY
- WILBUR
- MADHOUSE GLADS

I mean, theoretically, even an irregularly-seen character like Trula Twyst, Cricket O'Dell, Frankie Valdez, Wendy Weatherbee, Raj Patel, Ginger Lopez, or Veronica's cousin Marcy McDermott could have a Showcase issue devoted to them, as long as they could fill enough pages with stories that featured that character (that leaves out Harper Lodge, Toni Topaz, and Shrill...) Not that I'd ever really expect them to do anything like that.

And they've already wasted the entire first issue by devoting the "spotlight" to Archie Andrews -- Whoa! Now there's a character who's just not getting enough exposure!!    Well, at the very least, I guess I'll probably get a Jughead, Betty, and Veronica solo digest issue out of the deal (and probably a Reggie one as well), so at least I know it won't be a total loss.

https://www.previewsworld.com/Catalog/MAR201592

He outlived all his contemporaries at Archie Comics. Truly the last of the Old Guard. I think he had been editing for ACP since the mid-1960s, when Harry Shorten left the company. Who knows how this will affect the continuation of "classic style" Archie?

Quote from: Tuxedo Mark on January 24, 2020, 10:06:56 amGood review. Wait, this is volume 2, and it covers 2018? So there was no volume covering 2016 (the first year in which new stories appeared in only the digests)?

Sorry, I had a brainfart. Still stuck in the timewarp of last month, but at the same time trying to think "previous year". Since edited and corrected -- the stories are indeed from last year, 2019. Volume 1 covered the stories from 2018. My bad.

New digest stories from years prior to that were collected in a series of digital-only releases entitled ARCHIE BEST OF 2015/2016/2017 DIGEST ANNUAL (available on ComiXology, Amazon and elsewhere), but were never made available in a print collection, unlike the ARCHIE MODERN CLASSICS series.

If I recall correctly, ACP started including new 5-page stories in every digest issue sometime in 2014 (not sure of the exact month), so the year 2014 did not have a new story in every single issue of every digest title from January through December, but that was the year that the digests ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE (#1, March) and JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE (#1, June) were launched, and the inclusion of new 5-page stories may have started with those first issues (if not the other digests published in the same months).

It's good to get this because it represents kind of an annual survey of classic Archie stories. There were 48 stories in this book -- I got the feeling that a couple were left out to keep it down to 256 pages. By my account there should have been 50 Archie digest issues released in 2019; possibly a couple of those individual digest issues had more than one new story, so maybe as many as 52 new 5-pagers saw print in 2019. Of the 48 stories in this collection, Bill Golliher wrote 28 of them (and he's virtually the sole writer now for B&V stories). Francis Bonnet wrote 9 stories appearing in the 3 Archie digest titles, followed by Angelo DeCesare with 8. The remaining 3 writers only contributed a single story in 2019 (or if they did more, they weren't included in this collection). Dan Parent drew most of the B&V stories, and contributed a single Archie & Jughead story (which he also wrote) as well. I wish that Jeff Shultz and the Kennedy brothers had drawn more of the remaining stories; their work is sorely missed and I always appreciate seeing a new story by them.

I don't recall seeing any stories by Francis Bonnet prior to 2019, but on average, they're as good as any of the other stories in this collection. That just strikes me as really odd, that a new writer could potentially break in at ACP by writing classic Archie stories at a time when the number of pages of those stories is at an all-time low, but there it is. Unless "Francis Bonnet" is actually a pseudonym for some established writer who for some reason doesn't want to reveal his true identity. He does seem very familiar with the characters and typical Archie-style plots, though, so I wonder...

I no longer subscribe to any of the three Archie digests, although I still get the two B&V digests. It's good to be patient and get a large dose of the new Archie stories at the end of the year, though, which makes this compilation really worthwhile for me.

Quote from: Archiecomicxfan215 on January 22, 2020, 10:44:56 amI recently purchased this book from Barnes and Nobles. Only copy in the store near me.

I wish they'd do more volumes of that series, and BETTY'S DIARY, too. That was absolutely one of the best in the Archie Comics Presents line so far. And how about a VERONICA volume while we're at it?

This story from 1962 sounds familiar, so I'm going to say it HAS been reprinted, since that's the only way I would have gotten to read it. IIRC, Archie imagines himself a juvenile delinquent, but of course he's an utter failure at that, and Fred Andrews manages to prove otherwise. Without going through a bunch of trade paperback collections to find it, I can't actually say where it was reprinted, though.

Quote from: Captain Jetpack on December 04, 2019, 06:44:55 amHow do I adjust my settling, so that the oldest posts are at the top of the Thread, & the newest at the bottom?

Here's something I think might work to fix it:

1. Click on your username to go to your account.
2. Click on "Forum Profile", and from the dropdown menu choose "Look and Layout".
3. Scroll down and under "Board and Topic display", make sure the box next to "Show most recent posts at the top in topic view" is NOT checked.

Let me know if it works. In my profile, that box is not checked, but the newest posts are at the bottom of the thread.

Isn't it that way normally by default? Mine is, anyway. You must have done something to change it.

Quote from: Captain Jetpack on November 22, 2019, 06:56:52 amHave you have a special time in your life, when Archie Comics were important?

NOW. They're important now because, while at one time the type of comics (humorous, fun, lighthearted comics that portray a kind of idealized middle-American small town high school experience) that are in Archie comics was very common, those type of comics no longer exist -- anywhere BUT in Archie comics. So, like endangered species, sometimes we never really appreciate the things we always took for granted would be there, until they've all but disappeared.

For me, while I had developed an appreciation for Dan DeCarlo's work (and to a lesser extent, Dan Parent's) years beforehand, my attitude towards Archie comics was pretty casual -- I mean, they'd always be there whenever I got around to finding them, right? It took something like being hit over the head with a lead pipe to wake me up; a screaming headline like "THE DEATH OF ARCHIE". That was July of 2014. And luckily, at that time, you could still get just about every trade paperback and hardcover collection of Archie Comics that had ever been printed (by ACP, IDW, and Dark Horse, too). And indeed, as promised, the for-real final issue issue of ARCHIE, #666 (The Number of The Beast) rolled out barely a year later, signalling the end of an era that will never return. Sure, B&V continued for a little while longer, and there have been mini-series and one-shots (and the 5-pagers leading off the digests) since then, but we're never going back, so let's enjoy what little is left of classic Archie while it's still there.