Quote from: Purgatori on September 01, 2017, 11:03:56 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 31, 2017, 05:10:06 PM

And if he concluded that anyone but Bob Montana was responsible for the actual work of creation, I'll be shocked.

From the article, "Bob Montana plotted the first story with help from Harry Shorten, who had a Dell editor gone freelance, Vic Bloom, write the dialog. Vic Bloom named the Jughead character and also the area Riverdale. The 'Wally Williams' strip [created by Bloom for Popular Comics #48] had another character called 'Jughead' Lewis and the name of the city was Rivertown".

It's pretty remarkable though, how little that initial story resembles what became known to the world as "Archie". You've got Archie, and Betty, but considerably younger than what became their standard versions, and Jughead... well, the less said about the prototype Jughead the better. Apart from the hat, it's hard to see much of a resemblance to the character we know as Jughead today. And Veronica, which seems like a key component in the whole formula, was nowhere... a mere afterthought. As I say... the essence was distilled over time, but it all congealed in Montana's newspaper strip.

Quote from: Purgatori on August 31, 2017, 06:43:16 AM
The article about Archie's creation is likely to be contentious, but Clancy lays out all the evidence he could find and it's well worth a read

And if he concluded that anyone but Bob Montana was responsible for the actual work of creation, I'll be shocked. Although I'll be the first to admit that Harry Shorten had more than a little to do with it, as well, in the early days. But it took years for Montana to really distill "the essence of Archie", and that didn't happen until 1946, when he got sole creative control of the newspaper strip. Goldwater's contribution was in giving the marching orders to create a comic feature along the lines of Andy Hardy and/or Henry Aldrich, and in committing to publishing the thing -- but that's hardly my definition of "creating". He outlined the hazy parameters, inasmuch as it was copying a popular archetype in other media, but it doesn't take much creativity to do that.

And you know... if you took "Andy Aldrich" and mixed up the letters a little, and squinted a bit... it's not too far off from "Archie Andrews".

I did a search for this to see what turned up. Lurid Little Nightmares has a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/llnmfanzine/.

The book itself is a 206-page, 8.5"x11" trade paperback. It can be ordered here: http://www.leylander.org/boardman/#!/Lurid-Little-Nightmare-Makers-Volume-Seven/p/76110440/category=14445202. It's a little pricey at $28, but if you're only interested in the contents of the articles, you can get a black & white edition of the book for $14 (regular edition is full-color). I'm thinking about it. There are a couple of neat old 1950s Dan DeCarlo reprints in here, "Wendy the WAF" from G.I. JOE #8, and "Ship Ahoy!" from THE BRAIN #1. I'll have to double-check to see whether those were the same ones reprinted in Fantagraphics' THE ART OF DAN DECARLO.

Here is the contents page, followed by the editor's Introduction page:

08-30-17:
THANOS #10
X-MEN BLUE #10
SUPERGIRL #12
SUPERGIRL ANNUAL #1
YOUR PAL ARCHIE #2
CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA #8
BLACK MAGICK #7
SAVAGE DRAGON #226
SPACE RIDERS: GALAXY OF BRUTALITY #3 (of 4)
PROJECT SUPERPOWERS: HERO KILLERS #4 (of 5)
THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT: TERROR FROM THE  EARTH'S CORE #1
DONT MEDDLE WITH MY DAUGHTER GN VOL 01 (of 3)
DARKSEID SPECIAL #1 (one-shot)
BLACK RACER & SHILO NORMAN SPECIAL #1 (one-shot)

GUARDIANS OF GALAXY: MOTHER ENTROPY TP
MONSTER MASH: THE 1960s MONSTER CRAZE IN AMERICA HC
TIM SEELEY'S ACTION FIGURE COLLECTION TP
WHERE MONSTERS DWELL: THE PHANTOM EAGLE FLIES THE SAVAGE SKIES TP
LOONEY TUNES GREATEST HITS TP VOL 03: BEEP! BEEP!

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on August 28, 2017, 12:29:29 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 28, 2017, 07:50:31 AM

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on August 28, 2017, 06:30:07 AM

Agree with everything you wrote!  However, that's why I think I love Josie so much.  She's mysterious.  I know something is going on and I want to get closer to her to find out!

The allure of woman of mystery, eh?

There are a scant few stories where Josie actually seems to have something more important to say or do than her friends, that don't involve some dating drama with Alan or Alex. One is Holly G's "O Solo Mio", where she accidentally started a solo career doing musical commercials, and another is the story (forgot the title now) where the band was experiencing a stall-out in their career, and Josie started thinking about going back to school. While she's conflicted about her musical career, she goes on a camping sabbatical, leaving Val and Mel to play a gig themselves with the "help" of Alexandra. The stories rarely seem to focus on Josie like that though.

Thanks I gotta find that!  I like Holly G's stuff!

Look no further than THE BEST OF JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS TP, where Holly G's "O Solo Mio" is reprinted.

I checked out the GCD for clues and found the other story where Josie takes a break from the band to go camping. It's notable for a rare later appearance of Josie's parents (when this was first published in ARCHIE GIANT SERIES #584, Sept. 1988, Josie's last name was James) and the story is called "Cat at the Crossroads", an 11-pager written by Kathleen Webb with art by Stan Goldberg. I know I don't own that original comic, so I guess I must have read it when it was reprinted in ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE JUMBO COMICS #20 (July 2016). I don't think Kathleen Webb wrote a lot of Josie stories, but it doesn't surprise me to discover she's responsible for one of the most memorable ones to me. I'll have to double-check, but I think it might have been included in that BEST OF JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS: GREATEST HITS digital exclusive collection as well.

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on August 28, 2017, 06:30:07 AM

Agree with everything you wrote!  However, that's why I think I love Josie so much.  She's mysterious.  I know something is going on and I want to get closer to her to find out!

The allure of woman of mystery, eh?

There are a scant few stories where Josie actually seems to have something more important to say or do than her friends, that don't involve some dating drama with Alan or Alex. One is Holly G's "O Solo Mio", where she accidentally started a solo career doing musical commercials, and another is the story (forgot the title now) where the band was experiencing a stall-out in their career, and Josie started thinking about going back to school. While she's conflicted about her musical career, she goes on a camping sabbatical, leaving Val and Mel to play a gig themselves with the "help" of Alexandra. The stories rarely seem to focus on Josie like that though.

Welcome to the forum, Ronnie. Our stories are quite similar. Josie and Sabrina are my two favorites, largely based on having watched those TV cartoons as a kid. Like you, my initial re-interest in Archie Comics came about through an appreciation of Dan DeCarlo's work, in those books published by Fantagraphics and IDW collecting some of his work, and through two of the earliest trade paperback collections ACP put out, The Best of Josie & the Pussycats (2001) and Betty & Veronica Summer Fun (2003). After that my interest became attracted when the multipart storylines began appearing, especially the work of Dan Parent.

Strangely enough, I always felt Josie was the least defined, personality-wise, of all the characters in her self-titled series. Melody and Pepper (from the pre-Pussycats She's Josie incarnation of that title) were always the ones I found most interesting, and after that, Alexandra and Valerie. Even Alex is more interesting, in his own way. Josie seems nice, and she's pretty. She's the leader of the group, and sometimes is fought over for her attention by Alex and Alan M. (or before that, Alex and Albert in She's Josie). Other than that though, there isn't much I can say about what makes her character distinctive. There's a lot more to say about Melody, Pepper, Alexandra, and Valerie. (Alan M.'s kind of bland, when you get down to it -- in fact, so bland that he seems to have been quietly dropped after the original Josie series was cancelled in the early 1980s, and barely anyone noticed. He's made scant appearances since then.)

Just like with Archie, Josie is the character that the others seem to orbit around, like planets in a star system, but just like I feel about Archie, all of the real interest seems to be what's happening with the satellite characters, not with the star. Josie doesn't seem to be the one that initiates action or even reacts to situations as much as the other characters. Plot motivation for stories always seems to be initiated by Alex, Alexandra, or Melody, but never from Josie, who just seems to be the one caught up in the center of the whirlwind. Both Pepper and Valerie seem to play a similar role in the stories for their respective but non-overlapping eras, equivalent to the role Jughead frequently plays in Archie stories (stories where Jughead is the star more often operate by a different logic), that of the detached cynical observer, the smartest or most sensible of the group, and the one most likely to offer a creative solution to any given problem.

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on August 27, 2017, 07:56:43 PM

Quote from: SAGG on August 27, 2017, 05:38:14 PM
Scary thought: Were the 80's the last great Archie story period? 

Not for me.  I liked quite a few of the issues in the last couple of years before the reboot.  .


Especially Occupy Riverdale, Reversedale, and Mirrordale, and the one where they go to Riverdale Zoo and everyone turns into animals. I thought they did some great work, but unfortunately it wasn't selling.

Absolutely. There was a huge amount of experimentation and trying new types of stories in the decade preceding the reboot. Although that period coincides with the cancellation of most of the remaining ongoing standard format titles, there's a huge amount of change, perhaps more than in the previous three decades. Not all of the changes were for the good, and they tried and failed with many experiments, but a surprising amount of good material did manage to come out of that, even if it was the result of forced evolution.

Quote from: irishmoxie on August 26, 2017, 01:41:01 PM

When will the 1950s and 60s stories be in public domain? Then ACP can start publishing them cheaply.

It will be a long, long, time -- for intellectual properties created under the auspices of publishers and other media companies that still remain in business today, or whose intellectual properties have changed legal ownership by being bought or transferred to other companies. That's because copyright laws allow for more than one renewal, and the extension period covered by renewals has been lengthened in recent decades to cover a longer period of years -- thanks to the unceasing efforts of an army of legal footsoldiers working in the trenches of massive corporations like Disney Co, who stand to lose millions of dollars when their intellectual property rights are no longer exclusive, and they would then need to compete with others, to use a hypothetical example, to see which company could produce stories and/or merchandise based on the character Mickey Mouse that were more commercially successful with the consumer public. Disney Co has actively worked to change existing copyright laws so that they can hold on to their exclusive rights longer.

Or to put it more simply, it's the same realization that a collector has about comic books, as opposed to someone who merely reads them but considers them ephemeral and disposable. Yes, at one time, comic books were cheap enough entertainment that they were conveniently disposed of in the wastebin, or simply given away to anyone willing to take them. Likewise, the publishers of those ephemeral comic books never imagined that the characters and stories they were creating would be remembered or valued in any way, but would be forgotten when kids moved on to other interests. The same was true of radio dramas and early television shows. As a result many of the companies who created those copyrighted stories either weren't conspicuously aware, or just couldn't be bothered, to renew those copyrights, if they couldn't see any profit in it for them. "One man's trash is another man's treasure"...  And never more so than when that treasure is realized to represent a potential source of continuing income -- and you're not talking about one individual's nostalgia, but a corporation's lifeblood.

But I'll admit to puzzlement over your comment about public domain status somehow resulting in ACP being able to publish cheaply. "Public domain" simply means that ownership of those PD comic book stories belongs to -- the public, not any one individual or corporation. Public domain status doesn't make it cheaper for ACP to publish anything. It means, theoretically, that anyone can publish those stories, as long as they can manage to avoid legal trademark entanglements. DC or Marvel could do reprints of those 1940s MLJ comics -- if they thought they could make money doing so. But then of course, ACP would take them to court on some trademark defense ploy, if merely to occupy them with bother and legal expenses, and deter DC or Marvel from making a profit off those reprints. Warners lawyers would easily crush any legal representation ACP tried to mount, but the point is they'd try to make it annoying and costly enough that it wasn't worth DC Comics' efforts to publish the reprints. And in fact, DC's lawyers have used exactly that same tactic against small publishers (**cough, cough, AC Comics**) to "dissuade" them from using public domain characters created for Quality Comics in the 1940s (in copyrighted stories not renewed) like Phantom Lady, over which DC Comics merely claims the right of eminent domain. They SAY the character belongs to them (regardless of the truth of expired copyrights), and as such, they intend to use their legal clout to badger anyone who can't afford to stand up to their lawyers, into not creating new stories based on that character. They can't stop AC Comics from publishing Phantom Lady reprints though (or the recent hardcover archival reprints from PS Artbooks).

It baffles me why you think public domain would somehow make it "cheaper" for ACP to reprint those stories. They are getting them out there before someone else tries to do it and steal their thunder (and whatever potential customers there are). In fact, I don't exactly know the deal behind those Dark Horse Archie Archives, but Dark Horse could easily have said "Hey look, we're going to do this whether you want us to or not -- it's in the public domain, so why not just let us pay you a stipend to use the Archie trademark?" I don't know that to be a fact, but legally speaking they could have. And when they reach whatever date in the 1950s that the copyrights were renewed properly by ACP and are still protected, then Dark Horse would have to pay whatever fee ACP deems reasonable to continue reprinting Archie Archives. In fact they may already have reached that point.

Quote from: irishmoxie on August 25, 2017, 08:50:27 PM
The 1940s stories are in the public domain?

Copyrights on the 1940s MLJ comics were not renewed at the appropriate times, because when the renewals were due, nobody at the time imagined that there would be any future use for those stories. This is true of a lot of the Golden Age comics. Some characters which are still owned by DC Comics, like the characters formerly published by Fawcett Comics and Quality Comics in the 1940s. Comics published in the 1940s by Fawcett, Quality, and MLJ can be found on public domain comics websites. While the copyrights to those original stories expired when they were not renewed, trademark law is different. Some of the public domain comics have been removed from those sites by request of the respective trademark holders, because lawyers will always find something to contest, and even if some of the people hosting these sites are technically well within their legal rights, they don't want or need (and can't afford) to contend with some legal harassment.

Quote from: irishmoxie on August 25, 2017, 02:37:06 PM
Excited for a new sugar plum story and I love the Christmas digests. Boo on the Americana. We want the 60s reprinted! Why is ACP ignoring this??

Because they're idiots? Or maybe like Gollum hoarding his "precious".

Yeah. I already bought them when they were trade paperbacks (well, the three volumes I could find out of four), and then again when IDW reprinted them as combined hardcovers.

I don't buy the Dark Horse Archie Archives, but I'm pretty sure they reprinted all the 1940s Archie stories from PEP, LAUGH, and JACKPOT, as well as from ARCHIE, too. I only bought the Jughead Archives from DH. Give it a rest with the 1940s and early 1950s already. At this rate it will be the 2030s by the time they get around to reprinting the 1960s!

But the reality is the stories are reprints of reprints of reprints of reprints (of public domain stories).

Quote from: irishmoxie on August 24, 2017, 10:13:33 PM
How was Best of Josie? Was it reprints from the prior Best of Josie collections? Reprints from Music, Magic, and Mayhem?

Full review to follow in a day or two, with complete contents listing. I need some time to cross-reference the prior digital collections, but there's quite a bit of duplication of the 1969-1989 stories, including a fair number that just appeared in the ABB:MM&M collection, and 3 from the Josie & the Scaredy Cats digital collection. There are only a few stories collected here that I haven't seen reprinted before, most notably the infamous "Vengeance From the Crypt" by Frank Doyle & Stan Goldberg, from JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS #72 (Oct. 1973)  -- unfortunately marred by having been shot directly from the actual printed comic book pages; it looks a little muddy by comparison -- and 2 stories, "Love & War" & "Maxim Mix-Up" from JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS (1993) #2. Although reprinted before, there's a nice selection from the 2000s run of ARCHIE & FRIENDS (#52-55) of four complete stories by Holly G. The rest is filled with the usual run of Stan Goldberg & Rex Lindsey shorts (from TV LAUGH-OUT and the 2nd series of LAUGH, and later issues of A&F), plus (*sigh*) the obligatory advertisement complete reprint of JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS #1 (2016). It was still worth the price ($9.99 cover price - cheap!) for me, to get them in print format and collected all in one place (as opposed to scattered through a digest run of B & V FRIENDS).

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on August 24, 2017, 07:46:54 AM

Everywhere that I go locally that carries the digest NEVER seems to sell any of them.  I don't know how much longer we'll see the digests, period, especially with the upcoming price hikes.  I can't imagine anyone paying that much for these books.  I subscribe to some of them and that's the only way I can afford to get them.  And of course, if we no longer see the digests, that's not good for ACP.  I don't think trade collections are enough to keep them in the black as far as publishing and both my local Barnes & Nobles have reduced their shelf space of Archie trade collections as well.

For a number of years the trade collections seemed to be doing quite well for ACP, judging by the number of them that ACP put out. That changed in the last 3 years, with new trade collections (other than the few New Riverdale collections) virtually stopping, with the exception of the 1000-Page Comics and Giant Comics digests. While the other type of trade collections of classic material slowed down, 1000-Pagers and Giants seemed to cruise on ahead. Perhaps that's because the trade collections were largely popular based on collecting multipart storylines... Archie Marries, The Married Life, Freshman Year, Archie Meets Kiss, etc. (to name a few of the best-sellers), and with no more classic-style floppies, there are no multipart stories to collect in them. As for the 1000-Page and Giant Comics digests, maybe they just competed the digests out of sales. Once people realize it's the same stories as buying 2-3 months' worth of individual digest issues, at what amounts to a bargain price, it makes it easy to quit buying the regular digests.

08-23-17:
EERIE CUTIES: THE COMIC STRIP COLLECTION
EERIE CUTIES & MAGICK CHICKS VOLS. 01-04
THE BEST OF JOSIE & PUSSYCATS TP
SCOOBY-DOO TEAM UP #29 (Top Cat)
MANHUNTER SPECIAL #1 (one-shot)
KAMANDI CHALLENGE #8 (of 12)
BATMAN/THE SHADOW #5 (of 6)
DETECTIVE COMICS #963
RICK & MORTY #29
BLACK HAMMER #12
STREET FIGHTER VS. DARKSTALKERS #4 (of 8 )
KAIJUMAX: SEASON 3 #2
BETTIE PAGE #2
JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE COMICS ANNUAL #27
BLOOD BOWL: MORE GUTS, MORE GLORY! #3 (of 4)
HERCULES: WRATH OF THE HEAVENS #1
DONALD & MICKEY #1
SAUCER STATE #3 (of 6)
ROM VS. TRANSFORMERS: SHINING ARMOR #2 (of 6)
STAR TREK: NEW VISIONS #17: ALL THE AGES FROZEN