I did like it. I preordered all the subsequent issues. I've been meaning to post more reviews, but lately I just can't seem to find the time to write much. It seems like I can barely finish reading most of the comics I get in one week before the the next week's comics are in...

Oh, and let's not forget Wilbur himself, who merely stopped dating Laurie Lake and Linda Moore, and started dating Josie, with crewcut and personality intact, after dyeing his hair black:



Thanks for checking out those issues for me.

At some point, I've got to write something substantial about "The NEW Wilbur" of 1958-1959 (i.e. Doyle/DeCarlo's).

One of the the things is that they tossed most of Wilbur's old supporting cast (like Red and Slats) as old-hat and ho-hum, and brought in a bunch of new characters, which served functionally to make WILBUR even more like ARCHIE than it already had been. Some of those characters were:

Alec (an obvious stand-in for Reggie)
Tiny (an obvious stand-in for Moose)
Pepper (an obvious.... wait, wha...?!?)

The thing is this reboot was the first new thing at ACP to take advantage of the fact that Dan DeCarlo was no longer gainfully employed at Marvel/Atlas on MILLIE THE MODEL and numerous other titles.

When you look closely at those new characters they interjected into WILBUR, and compare them closely to the early issues of JOSIE, you can see those Wilbur supporting characters as transitional modes between Archie's gang knockoffs and as prototypes for Josie's cast of friends.

The earliest version of Alex Cabot is nearly identical in appearance (and personality) to Alec from Wilbur, apart from the fact that Alec's hair was an undifferentiated black blob of ink, while Alex's had brown highlights.

One Wilbur story ("An Ounce of Bounce") has Pepper Magee, a tomboyish girl with short hair and freckles -- actually, she looks a bit like Cricket O'Dell, but also a little like Josie's Pepper without glasses and reddish-blonde hair. And Tiny's IS like Moose, but also a bit like Sock from JOSIE.

Oh wait, and I have ARCHIE & FRIENDS DD #10, too. Don't know how I missed that.

Sorry, I meant "most of those are from LAUGH", not PEP, since there were twice as many issues of Laugh in the same space of about 18 months +/-

Yeah, I wrote that before I really thought about it, and them realized I could eliminate about 80% of the issues from the relevant titles and time frames in question, simply by crossing off any issues I already have or that are completely indexed at GCDb... So as it turns out, the only ones I have no access to data for are:

ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #215, 216, 218, 234, 247, 251

WORLD OF ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 37, 42

ARCHIE & FRIENDS DOUBLE DIGEST #3, 6, 10

I'm not going to worry overmuch about the 200 issues of LAUGH digest (only about 10 of which are indexed at GCDb). Those are old enough that if they had DeCarlo Wilbur reprints in them, those stories have probably appeared somewhere else already again. I've already got a list of about a dozen Doyle/DeCarlo Wilbur stories for which I have no original sources indexed (most of those are probably from those un-indexed issues of PEP, which believe it or not was only published bimonthly in that year-and-a-half timeframe from mid-1958 to the end of 1959 (LAUGH was published monthly). I figure there are either two or three complete un-indexed issues of WILBUR.

I didn't post my reading list for this week yet. Still trying to finish up reading a couple of things, but I'll post it sometime tonight or tomorrow.

Getting sidetracked by overtime at work and a couple of little research projects I've been working on. Speaking of which, there's one where I could use your help. I'm trying to put together a database of ALL the Frank Doyle/Dan DeCarlo WILBUR stories.

These only appeared in a limited number of WILBUR issues (#79 or 80 - not sure which was the first - through issue #90, which was the last) published between 1958 and 1965, and the credits on all the stories are identical: Frank Doyle scripts, Dan DeCarlo pencils, Rudy Lapick inks, and Vince DeCarlo letters. Single 6-page stories also appeared in LAUGH and PEP from Sept. 1958 through Feb. 1960, but not in every issue. The last three issues of WILBUR (#88-90) were published in 1963, 1964, and 1964, and I'm relatively certain that all of those issues were reprints. I know for a fact (GCDb) that issue #88 reprinted the contents of #80, while #89 contained all stories by Joe Edwards, so #90 (1965) is also almost certainly reprinted from an earlier issue, but which, I don't know -- it has to be either #79, 81, 82, or 85, because those are the only issues in that run that aren't indexed at GCDb. Altogether FD & DDC did between six and nine issues of WILBUR, plus I have data for stories originally published in PEP #131-137 and LAUGH #90, 95, 97, 100-102, 104, & 107.

What I'm trying to do is compile a listing of all the reprints (at least for the modern digest era, where they tend to appear in their own sections in the digests), so I'm going through all my ARCHIE COMICS DOUBLE DIGEST and WORLD OF ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGESTs looking for what Wilbur reprints I can find. I only have issues going back to 2015 (except for a few scattered ones) on those titles and ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE, which is where Wilbur reprints would have been most likely to appear (they were never in any of the Jughead or B&V digests to the best of my knowledge). Thanks to GCDb, I have a good list of the original issue stories, but I'm missing data for stories from WILBUR issues # 79, 81, 82, and 85; PEP #130, and LAUGH (1st series) #91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 98, 99, 103, 105, and 106. No I don't expect you to have that info! What I'm trying to do is locate reprinted FD/DDC Wilbur stories that can't be sourced with the data for the other original issues of WILBUR, LAUGH and PEP that I've already compiled. By a process of elimination, if I can discover some reprinted stories not indexed in the GCDb, then I'll know they must have come from one of those issues of WILBUR, LAUGH or PEP that I listed above that haven't been indexed yet.

So if you have any time to go through old digests (don't have to go too far back, only about 5 years prior to 2015), I'd appreciate any info on DeCarlo Wilbur stories you can find reprinted. I already have a list of all the ones reprinted from ARCHIE COMICS DOUBLE DIGEST #222 through 234 (when it was a regular section), and am working on the ones in my collection (ACDD #258-present). So if you happen to have any issues from around #200-257 (except #222-234, that I already have data for), or any other ARCHIE digests from the same time period (starting around 2009... I don't think Wilbur stories were reprinted much before that, except occasionally in LAUGH COMICS DIGEST, before that was cancelled with #200), I could use the help. I think there are a few in The Best of Archie Comics TPs and Archie's Favorite Stories TPs, but I have all of those, so I can look through them. Basically just any ARCHIE digest titles from 2009 through 2014 is where you'd need to look, plus any earlier LAUGH digests if you have some, plus that digital Wilbur collection. If they're DD titles, Wilbur stories would probably be in its own section with 3-4 stories per section (not counting 1/2- to 3-page gags or short-shorts), but I ONLY need the data for the Doyle/DeCarlo stories (pretty easy to identify for you, right?). The only data I'd need is the story title and the number of pages.

LMK if you can help; no hurry or anything! Let me know if you want me to send you the data speadsheet I have compiled so far (in MS Excel format).

Are you excited about the last RiverDale on Thursday?

I forgot to post my list! I've been plenty busy reading, so I've posted this week's list to the thread now that you reminded me.

I missed FCBD because I had to work overtime Saturday! I had my LCS owner hold copies of some FCBD titles for me that I'll pick up next week.

Hey, yes, although the main “Archie” titles themselves (A, J, and B&V) aren’t really that entertaining at the moment, and they seem to be trying to ignore the rest … I see CAoSabrina will make a reappearance … but the whole thing seems to be grinding to a halt — even really small companies now have more, better and more consistent stuff on a weekly basis … so I haven't been HERE in a while (as you can probably tell, and I’ve been looking into as many old (‘40s & ‘50s) comics of that ilk as I can (Archie, Marvel & DC) as well as reading through long runs of other comics from the last 20 years or so … I guess I’ll try to at least check here now and then ☺