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Messages - Vegan Jughead

#31
Quote from: ASS-P on March 30, 2018, 06:24:05 PM
...Let me get this straight - the standard paper version of THE ARCHIES was available do a while - through bricks and mortar shops and thru Amazon - And,  I assume,  other Internet dealers who sell paper stuff? - but was WITHDRAWN FROM SALE for a while :crazy2: ? But now is available again? Ay Yi yi :idiot2: :buck2: !


I've only heard that on this message board.  I never found that to be the case anywhere else.  To make things more confusing, issue 7 is officially delayed by a couple of weeks until April 11th, but I got 2 copies of issue 7 with my subscription BEFORE the original publishing date of March 28th. I only have one subscription but Archie Comics has sent me 2 copies of the last few issues. 
#32
Quote from: BettyReggie on March 23, 2018, 10:35:08 PM
I preorder Riverdale & some of the Digests. I couldn't find Archie #32. Is it on a break?


Archie 31 is in very late May and according to Archie Comics on Facebook, Archie 32 will be early July.
#33
All About Archie / Re: Archie meets Batman '66!
March 23, 2018, 03:45:58 PM
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 23, 2018, 10:59:59 AM
Look at how scared Archie looks on that Francavilla cover variant. Now, I'm a huge fan of Francavilla's work in general (although to honest, AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE is probably one of my least favorites of all the things he's worked on; I much prefer Francavilla's creator-owned series, BLACK BEETLE), but I'm thinking about skipping that cover variant because it's just not suited to this particular comic book, tone-wise.

Sandy Jarrell's variant is my absolute favorite here, and he(or she)'s an artist whose prior work I'm entirely unfamiliar with. The biggest point to make about that art is that it's the best-designed of all the covers, and perfectly captures a vibe of fun and grooviness that's totally in sync with those late-1960s issues of LIFE WITH ARCHIE where The Archies made their first appearances. I'm kind of embarassed to say it, but s/he's outdone some of my favorite artists on that one cover, including Dan Parent, Mike Allred, Francesco Francavilla and Ty Templeton. Their covers are fine, but none of them are illustrations which I'd place near the top of each of their personal lists of most outstanding covers.


Sandy is a he and I totally agree.  That cover has been my desktop background from the moment it showed up online!
#34
All About Archie / Re: Archie meets Batman '66!
March 23, 2018, 09:03:07 AM
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 23, 2018, 06:26:52 AM
Francesco Francavilla's "AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE MEETS BATMAN '66" #1 variant cover --




That's really great! They should use him on an ongoing comic.  Oh, wait.....
#35
All About Archie / Re: Archie meets Batman '66!
March 22, 2018, 07:22:43 AM
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 22, 2018, 02:25:37 AM
Quote from: Vegan Jughead on March 21, 2018, 06:36:41 PM
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 21, 2018, 11:18:12 AM


I don't know if anyone else noticed, but a year ago Dan Parent was writing and drawing all the 5-page lead stories in the digests (and doing the covers as well), and now he's only writing most of them, and drawing some of the B&V stories.


I noticed but I figured that was because he was doing Your Pal Archie and now he's gonna do this crossover and the new Betty and Veronica miniseries, in addition to all his Die Kitty Die stuff.  I'm pretty sure Archie will keep Dan as busy as he wants, or at least as busy as they can.  He was the last "classic" artist for awhile until they started bringing some of those folks back and I'm sure it's because he's the favorite of Archie Comics. 

I think eventually they're gonna have to cancel the reboot flagship series since sales are dropping, and maybe there will be new "classic" style comics for Dan to draw then!

In Dan Parent's interview in COMIC BOOK CREATOR #16, he mentions that he's always kept a low profile when dealing with Archie management and tried to just do the work as best he can, not taking any sides in the various management issues that had cropped up between the Goldwater and Silberkleit camps. On the other hand, Fernando Ruiz made his feelings plain to management about how he felt about their treatment of him when classic Archie work dried up. Taking into account that DIE KITTY DIE rather ruthlessly satirizes management people at a company not too dissimilar from ACP, I have to wonder if someone in ACP management may not have had a sense of humor about being parodied, because it does seem to indicate Dan & Fernando in alignment with regard to how they perceive things at ACP.

And it's ironic that Jeff Shultz, Bill Galvan, Pat & Tim Kennedy, Bill Golliher, Angelo DeCesare, Alex Segura, Tom DeFalco, Rich Koslowski and Jim Amash can come back and do new work for ACP on classic Archie stories after a couple of years downtime, but Fernando Ruiz can't (and probably doesn't want to). With just the 5-page new lead stories in 5 digests (that's just 250 pages of new stories a year) those pages can probably be filled easily even without Dan Parent and Fernando Ruiz. Only the floppy comics readers care about the individual creators, and there are no ongoing classic Archie comics in the floppy comic format (until and unless BETTY AND VERONICA FRIENDS FOREVER is proven to be an actual ongoing title).

I'd be just as happy (more than ecstatic, really) if I could see new issues of DIE KITTY DIE even on a bimonthly basis, without having to mount a new Kickstarter campaign for each new miniseries. It matters less to me what characters Dan and Fernando are working on as long as they're producing a comic book in the teen humor genre. Same goes for Darin Henry & Jeff Shultz' SUPER 'SUCKERS. I love reading the big fat Binge Books but would be happier if it were a regular-sized comic coming out on a regular publishing schedule. Both of these titles are being published less for commercial reasons than as a sheer labor of love for the creators, although neither one could obviously continue if the creators weren't able to make some money off them.

I blame the comic shop market which insists on the floppy comic format, but that doesn't really like teen humor comics. That puts Archie Comic Publications in a difficult position when it comes to the floppy comic format, which is hard for the main audience (kids) of teen humor genre comics to find (and not perceived as a very good value at $4 for 20 pages of story, compared to the Jumbo Comics digests which have 175-180 pages of content for $7). They're used to purchasing Archie Comics in regular retail stores (supermarkets, Walmart, Barnes & Noble) -- not having to subscribe, mail-order, or make a special trip to a comic book store to get them.

The fact of the matter is that ACP is now publishing forty 192-page Jumbo Comics digests a year, and ten 128-page ARCHIE AND ME Comics Digests a year, burning through the reprint cycle at a prodigious rate -- much faster than it did a decade ago, when ACP was publishing four 98-page digests and four 188-page Double Digests (which were each, on average, published about 8 times a year). At that same time ACP was still publishing 6 or 8 Archie-related floppy titles generating 22-24 pages of new stories in every issue. You'll notice that the bulk of the stories reprinted now in the digests are from floppy comics that originally appeared in the mid-1990s through the mid-2010s, so you can easily say that older reprints begin to lose their relevance to a young audience as time passes. That stream of new stories feeding into the digests to keep the pipeline of more recent stories flowing has slowed to a mere trickle of its former self, as the classic Archie-related floppy comic titles began succumbing to cancellation, one by one, in the 2010s. Which begs the question, where will the future classic Archie reprints be coming from, given the fact that they're already being reprinted with greater frequency than ever before? Not from the floppy comic titles, it seems, as those can't seem to manage to sustain themselves in comic book shops where the main consumer base is indifferent to teen humor comics, and not from those special crossover projects like Archie Meets Kiss, Archie Meets Glee, Archie vs. Predator, Archie/Sharknado, Archie Meets Ramones, and Archie Meets Batman '66, either. Personally, I'd be happy to pay a buck or two more for the cover price of a Jumbo Comics digest if it contained 20 pages of new stories. Or maybe ACP could come up with some new hybrid format with less pages, but a larger page size on slightly better paper -- say the same size as the old Archie & Friends All-Stars trade collections, with 20 pages of new stories, 100 pages of reprints, and 12-18 pages of advertising/editorial content. Those would still fit in supermarket racks, as they're about the same size as The Old Farmer's Almanac and other similar-sized publications.


These are all great observations, DCR.  I'm not sure what Archie can do. I don't think there's much of a future in floppy comics anyway, for any publisher. That's why you're seeing all these special editions and crossovers and reboots.  Most comics readers I know just wait for the graphic novels if they buy physical product at all.  Obviously, there are exceptions and I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see Archie Comics publishing digests for that much longer anyway.  They just sit on the shelves in all the stores that sell them in my area.  The hardcore people subscribe since it's so much cheaper and I don't know how many they sell at retail, but it's not happening in my area. 


Having said all that, I'm letting most of my digest subscriptions expire.  I just can't find time to read them.  I'll probably keep B&V and World of Archie for as long as they're published.  I still subscribe to Archie, Jughead The Hunger, and Riverdale (although as I've said, I wish they'd get Pitilli off that book because I actually think it's the best floppy they're publishing right now otherwise). 


IF they were to make some of the improvements/alterations to the digest format that you suggest, I'd happily jump back on.   
#36
All About Archie / Re: Archie meets Batman '66!
March 21, 2018, 06:36:41 PM
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 21, 2018, 11:18:12 AM


I don't know if anyone else noticed, but a year ago Dan Parent was writing and drawing all the 5-page lead stories in the digests (and doing the covers as well), and now he's only writing most of them, and drawing some of the B&V stories.


I noticed but I figured that was because he was doing Your Pal Archie and now he's gonna do this crossover and the new Betty and Veronica miniseries, in addition to all his Die Kitty Die stuff.  I'm pretty sure Archie will keep Dan as busy as he wants, or at least as busy as they can.  He was the last "classic" artist for awhile until they started bringing some of those folks back and I'm sure it's because he's the favorite of Archie Comics. 


I think eventually they're gonna have to cancel the reboot flagship series since sales are dropping, and maybe there will be new "classic" style comics for Dan to draw then! 



#37
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 21, 2018, 10:47:08 AM
I think I get it. I was just desperate for new Archie titles probably accounts for a lot of their sales these days to people who were reading Archie comics before Afterlife With Archie and the New Riverdale Archie. You can't read comics that they don't publish, you can only pick from the handful of new comics they DO publish.

And it's slim pickings for this month's solicitations, with neither a new issue of ARCHIE, or of JUGHEAD THE HUNGER being solicited. I'll be getting the two B&V Jumbo digests by subscription as usual, so I just need to special-order SUPERTEENS VS MIGHTY CRUSADERS #1 and VIXENS #7, and I'm only really semi-interested in those. I'll probably read VAMPIRONICA #3 and not buy it, if there are copies in my LCS, but I sort of feel like if I happened to miss it, it wouldn't be any big deal to me either. Haven't made up my mind yet, but I may quit Vixens after #10 (that's assuming it goes any further than that). So if there aren't any new titles coming along besides ARCHIE MEETS BATMAN '66, by the time that's solicited I may be down to just that for ACP floppy titles. My biggest disappointment is there are no trade collections solicited this month.


If you mean the month I posted, there are two trade collections: Archie at Riverdale High Vol 1 and The Complete COSMO 


ARCHIE comes out in late May and again in early July according to Archie Comics when I asked them on Facebook.  Not sure why The Hunger isn't solicited in June unless it's destined for miniseries status!
#38
All About Archie / Archie meets Batman '66!
March 20, 2018, 06:56:58 AM
This could be a really cool crossover especially since Batman '66 is based on my favorite (and IMO) only Batman, Adam West. 


And also because DAN PARENT is doing the art! 


http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/archie-andrews-batman-66-comic-series
#39
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 19, 2018, 10:20:34 PM
Quote from: Vegan Jughead on March 19, 2018, 06:26:46 PM
Looking forward to the Archie At Riverdale High trade paperback and for some reason, despite not being all that interested, I'm thinking of picking up Vampironica after seeing #3 in this solicit. 

Just curious why #3, presuming from what you've said that you didn't pick up #1?

Or for that matter, what about THE HUNGER made you want to read that (which you liked, IIRC) "despite not being all that interested" in VAMPIRONICA. What's interesting is that (at least prior to Vampironica #1) The Hunger is currently ACP's best-selling floppy comic title. It's kind of hard to judge on the writing, but I at least thought the artwork in Vampironica was a little better than that in Jughead (and actually, better than that in Sabrina, as well).

I was left fairly underwhelmed by VAMPIRONICA #1 based on the fact that nothing about it feels particularly interesting or unique. It's far too similar in tone to its obvious model, VAMPIRELLA. Oh, another good female vampire who fights to protect people from evil vampires (and whatever other supernatural evils or monsters threaten humanity)? It just feels too derivative of lots of other vampire stories.

If this keeps up the next title they should come out with is a HUNGER companion title, THAT WILKIN WEREWOLF. Or maybe they could just keep ripping off Vampirella. Since that series had a spinoff character called PANTHA, a woman who could change herself into a black panther, maybe they should do a Josie & the Pussycats horror book where they all turn into various large, predator species of cats (lioness, leopardess, pantheress).


I don't know why I'm interested in what I'm interested in, DCR.  Something just clicked.  I don't try to overthink it.  I may not pick up Vampironica. Probably will depend on my mood.  I think I read THE HUNGER because I love Jughead and I was just desperate for new Archie titles.  I still like it, at least all the issues up to the last one which I haven't received yet because it's late AS USUAL. Ha ha. 


I never read Vampirella since, as you know, if it isn't published by Archie Comics, I probably haven't read it! 
#40
All About Archie / Archie June 2018 Solicitations
March 19, 2018, 06:26:46 PM
Looking forward to the Archie At Riverdale High trade paperback and for some reason, despite not being all that interested, I'm thinking of picking up Vampironica after seeing #3 in this solicit. 


https://www.newsarama.com/39121-archie-comics-june-2018-solicitations.html
#41
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 18, 2018, 03:58:05 PM
One other possibility just occurred to me, which... if it turned out to be true, I'd find REALLY funny and ironic. What if one of the musical artists (The Monkees, Tegan & Sarah, Blondie, or whomever...) ONLY signed the contract with ACP to allow use of their likeness(es) under the mistaken impression that they'd be appearing in a comic book story with "The Archies"? Which is to say, what if they'd grown up with and been a fan of (the CLASSIC) Archie comic books, and were expecting to get "Archiefied" in a story with... THESE guys?



And then were SO disappointed to discover what the finished product looked like, that they felt that they'd been deceived and tricked??


That would be funny but somehow I doubt that's the case.  Ha ha.
#42
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 18, 2018, 12:48:29 AM
Quote from: Tuxedo Mark on March 17, 2018, 07:20:00 PM
Has the series been cancelled after #5? That's the last issue that I saw on Amazon, and it seems like the entire series was removed around a week or two ago.

Issue #7 was the last to be solicited through Diamond Comics. Whether #6 or 7 will actually see print NOWseems iffy at best. Sounds like ACP may have run into some legal difficulties having to do with licensing rights to the musicians appearing in the series. That probably means no trade paperback collection, either. Or at least, no COMPLETE trade paperback collection.


I hope that's not the case.  I can't imagine the disappointment of Alex Segura and Dan Parent if the Blondie issue doesn't happen.  They both LOVE Blondie and of course Dan has a variant cover on that issue. 
#44
Reviews / Re: Some reviews.
March 02, 2018, 07:47:35 AM
You're a stronger man than I am DCR.  I liked reading your review way more than I can stand the idea of B&V as bikers. 



#45
Quote from: BettyReggie on February 22, 2018, 05:28:36 AM
I can't wait for next Artist to take over the Archie comic. I'm not crazy about her style. Does any one like it?


I like it pretty well.  I liked Audrey Mok on Josie and the Pussycats and I like her on Archie.  Of course I'd rather have Dan Parent or Jeff Shultz or Bill Galvan, but their art wouldn't go with the current stories. 


I was actually happiest with Veronica Fish out of all the reboot Archie artists.