Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 25, 2016, 01:05:38 AM

The inclusion of Jellybean as a teenager in The Married Life is kind of important because it's the one thing in there that really tells you exactly when The Married Life is taking place compared to the classic Archie stories: Jellybean is 15 years older, so The Married Life is taking place 15 years after high school.

This is a new one on me. I don't remember a specific number of years ever being nailed down within the story. Maybe it was said in an issue before I started drawing.

I was always told, however, that the Married Life took place some five years or so after the wedding stories. I was always told to draw the characters as if they were in their early to mid twenties. I know we had characters doing things someone at that age might not necessarily be ready to do... such as run for mayor or run a major corporation... but I figured... y'know... It's Archie!

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 25, 2016, 12:28:35 AM

The people making publishing decisions up there sure do change their minds a lot from one week to the next.

You have NO idea.

Describing Archie Comics' publishing strategies as "erratic" would be generous and kind.

It should speak big, thick volumes that we never, ever entertained the thought of pitching Die Kitty Die at what should've been our home base of operations. We really just couldn't do it.

And it's really working out for the very best! Stay tuned for some MAJOR Kitty announcement coming VERY, VERY soon!

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 24, 2016, 02:56:33 PM
I wonder whatever became of Fernando Ruiz' reboot of Cosmo (it was supposed to be its own graphic novel, and shown in the back of NIGHT AT THE COMIC SHOP TPB, along with the reboot of Sam Hill). I think the Sam Hill reboot got released as a digital exclusive. I wonder why they didn't do that with Cosmo, unless it was never completed.

I always wondered what became of my reboot too.

I was asked to submit a series of Cosmo sketches as part of a proposal to resurrect The Merry Martian. A huge fan of Cosmo, I eagerly jumped into this and I drew a stack of sketches of Cosmo and his supporting cast. These sketches were submitted and as with other situations, I never heard anything again. Later I learned, that proposals and sketches from other artists were being entertained. At that point, it was safe to assume that my pitch had been either rejected or at least was no longer under consideration. Ultimately, no new Cosmo ever came of any of these proposals.

Last year I was told directly, "Our next big thing is going to be Cosmo and that's going to be all you."


Again, nothing.

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 21, 2016, 07:08:15 AM


Sharry the Spy Girl appeared in other stories? This is news to me! Where, pray tell?

I know she was in a few of my crowd scenes in Life With Archie.




Sadly, you'll probably never see Sharry again!

Thanks for the nice write-up and all the kind words, PTF.


The Man From R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E. remains one of my all-time favorite projects that I've ever worked on and one of the works of which I am the proudest. I had a blast working on that one. This would be the very first time I ever worked with the legendary Tom DeFalco. What a delightful man! I'd been a fan of Tom's work when I was a kid reading a lot of his Marvel work like Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and Thor. It was a thrill to be working from one of his scripts and the experience turned out to be even better than I hoped.


Tom writes a perfect "artist's script." By that, I mean he provides just enough information in his panel descriptions that I can tell what is going on, but he still leaves me plenty of room to play and have fun. Thus I was able to go crazy with the background gags and cameos. Tom loved it! He was such a gentleman that when he saw my pages, he called me at home and left a long, very complimentary message on my answering machine. (Believe me! I listened to it over and over!) It was a very kind gesture to make and it added to the thrill of working with him. One of my favorite childhood writers called me to tell me how much he loved what I did. It was very nice of him to do that.


The collected trade is really the best way to enjoy this story. It is packed with extras including my sketches for the characters and the covers. It really is a very nice slick well-designed package.


A few behind-the-scenes notes...


1. The covers were done well in advance of the script. When I drew the initial cover sketches all I had to go by were very, very brief one to two sentence descriptions of each issue. I took the initiative and designed action-packed covers which is why Part 2 features a cover scene that doesn't appear anywhere in the story. Those ninjas I just pulled out of nowhere!


2. Since I didn't have a lot of story to go by, I designed the agents of R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E. uniforms that Archie is sporting on every cover without really knowing if they were going to be used or not. As it turned out, I was only able to get them in at the very end of the fourth and last part.


3. Page 5 Panel 7 of Part 1 features a cameo by the Nomad probe from Star Trek.


4. I designed the P.O.P. logo and based it on the Man From U.N.C.L.E. logo.


5. Panel 3 Page 9 of Part 1 includes cameos of Nick Fury and John Steed.


6. Norman's Taxidermy in Panel 1 Page 12 is a nod to the creepy hobby of serial killer Norman Bates from Psycho.


7. The last panel on Page 17 Part 1 is obviously a tribute to the famous "Spider-Man no more!" panel from Spider-Man. I'm pretty sure this was Tom's idea!


8. Panel 3 Page 3 in Part 2 has cameos from a number of G.I. Joes plus James Bond with his famous jetpack from Thunderball.


9. The girl in the foreground of Panel 1 Page 6 is Sian Mandrake, a student of mine at the time and the daughter of comic book artists Tom Mandrake and Jan Duursema. Sian is now an artist herself and a fellow teacher at the Kubert School.


10. Throughout the series, I was able to sprinkle in cameos of characters I created like Wendy Weatherbee, Raj Patel, and Tono!


11. The trade makes the very first time the Andy Andrews story was ever published anywhere.


Sadly, Man From R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E. was a moderate seller but not enough to urge Archie to revisit the idea. The trade itself was supposedly a steady seller but it's no longer in print. I used to do very well with the trades at conventions.

Look! I can draw Nu Jughead too!

Quote from: Mr.Lodge on April 15, 2016, 02:15:29 AM

Fernando, I didn't realize you were there for that long. 

Wow.

Yep.

The tombstone where my Archie career is buried reads:

1994-2016

RIP

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 15, 2016, 02:11:21 AM


Can you remember back when DeCarlo was having his legal battles with ACP?  Were these things discussed among the younger generation of artists & writers, or was there ever any sense of foreboding about the 'handwriting on the wall', etc?  After all, this was even after such well-publicized battles of 'creator vs. company' as Siegel & Shuster vs DC and Kirby vs Marvel. Surely at ACP this must have seemed like a large and scary prospect.

When I first started back in '94, the main guy at Archie... and deservedly so... was Dan DeCarlo. Very closely behind him was Stan Goldberg. They were the giants of the company and there was a sense that they were the top priority (Again, deservedly so!) and that they would always be taken care of. (HA!)

There was already a sense of foreboding because even then the company was trimming the fat. Books like Archie's Christmas Stocking, Archie's Spring Break Special and Betty & Veronica Spectacular were getting peeled away and we were getting worried. Brother, we had NO idea back then!

It was definitely a shock when Dan and the Company first started having their trouble. The shock, however, was tempered by the fact that Dan kept right on working. The guy was invincible! He could shake the Company down and they needed him so badly that they still gave him work. He even gave some pretty searing and candid interviews at the time and he was still working. The highest crime in Archie's eyes has always been when one of their creator's goes public. They can club you over the head and if you say "ouch" out loud, then YOU'RE the jerk. I'm not sure what exactly was the final straw for Archie if it was the actual lawsuit, the heated interviews or what but at some point they had enough and they stopped giving Dan work. When that happened, we realized that no one was safe.  No one, however, was more traumatized by the overwhelmingly negative publicity than Archie itself. In many ways, this was a black eye on them that never completely went away.

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 16, 2016, 03:42:22 AM

The thing you need to realize is that all of the ACP alumni creators are specialists who have spent decades honing their talents in one particular vein of cartooning. Most of them have devoted nearly the entirety of their careers to working ONLY for ACP, not the half-dozen different outfits that those big-name reboot creators have.

We sure did... and, Brother! Was THAT a mistake!

Well, I can do do commissions for fans who want the characters drawn the way they're supposed to look like.

Quote from: BettyReggie on April 15, 2016, 04:19:24 AM
I don't think they ever looked better.

Ugh! Isn't it possible to praise this reboot without insulting the work that has come before?

I certainly think Betty and Veronica have looked better in the hands of Bob Montana, Dan DeCarlo, and my pal, Dan Parent who drew the characters on model and with personality.

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 15, 2016, 12:10:56 AM
Sadly, I can remember back in the mid-1970s when the prevailing wisdom among comic book consumers had it that Jack Kirby was a hack, a has-been, washed-up.

I've been noticing this phenomena the last few years as we lose some of the Greats in our industry.


Solid reliable workhorses like Jim Aparo, Herb Trimpe and Nick Cardy are revered now after their deaths, but at the end of their lives, these guys couldn't get any work outside of commissions and convention sketches. It's only after these guys dies that all of a sudden their fans seen to roll out and sing their due praises.

Quote from: The Bee on April 14, 2016, 04:37:47 PM
I just hope when that day comes those artists like Tim & Pat Kennedy, Gisele Legace, and Fernando Ruiz tell them to stick it where the sun don't shine.

To be very, very candid, drawing for Archie was a job that had been declining badly for the past couple of years. My salary was eroding by thousands of dollars. Last year, I complained that it was becoming financially impractical for me to keep drawing for Archie. I was given a very modest ten dollar per page raise. A short while later, the number of pages I was being given was more than halved.
By the very end, I was drawing two five page stories and maybe a couple of covers per month. If I was lucky, I got to write one of those stories. All this got me a little over a thousand dollars a month. As I relayed in my blog, this past January, after I'd handed in what would be my last story, I was told that I wasn't going to be getting any more work for the foreseeable future. This came from the production manager. None of the higher-ups spoke to me at all. After twenty-two years there, this was BEYOND insulting.

Apparently, there isn't enough money to keep me around... although they seem to be able to afford Adam Hughes who believe me does not come cheap!

So we're talking about a job that was deteriorating, paying poorly and getting worse, and where I wasn't valued or respected. Its also a job with no hope for improvement.

As it stands, there is only ONE new classic story a week. A five pager. I was told very directly that Archie does not believe there is enough retailer interest to support any new classic titles.

What, then, would I go back to if I was ever asked back? To eek out a five pager a month? Where is the future in that? What opportunities are there for me? It's a dead end!

A bad job where I'm not valued, appreciated or respected.

No. Thanks.

Quote from: Gisele on April 13, 2016, 04:37:55 PM
When I draw for Archie, I force myself to be a bit more on model ('cause that's what's expected of me,) but I try to make it my own (so people know it's me.) With that said, yeah, I CAN draw Archie not on model. It's actually easier!

Archie USED to value artists who can draw their characters on model. Not anymore!

One of the worst things Archie Comics ever did was put us in the position of having to categorize ourselves as "Classic Archie" artists. We ALL used to be just Archie artists and everyone knew what that meant. Now we're Classic Archie artists or Reboot Archie artists. It's horrible, horrible branding!

Quote from: Mr.Lodge on April 12, 2016, 08:47:18 PM
I know I'm going to get some flack for this but I'm willing to risk it.....

Does anybody think the artwork for the Archie reboots is really lacking compared to those in the past? 

I won't say it's lacking, but I will say that much of it has been a very, very poor fit for these characters.


I don't blame the artists. I blame Archie Comics for this very ill-conceived and audaciously short-sighted idea.