Quote from: SAGG on September 04, 2017, 04:20:33 AM
Interesting points, DR. DeCarlo was the only one who "fought" ACP, and paid a price for it. Goldberg and Schwartz "got in line". Bolling? I suppose he did as well...

And when you think about it, it was probably something he'd thought about ever since the whole Kirby vs. Marvel thing became common knowledge in the industry, and even just a few years earlier, when Sabrina became a hugely successful live action TV series, it must have started gnawing at him. He was the only one at ACP who could have done it, because he was the only one left alive who could claim to have actually created something of value. Well, him and George Gladir, who co-created Sabrina with Dan. Who knows if Dan ever had a conversation with Frank Doyle about Josie while Frank was still alive -- but even then, Dan could still claim primacy of creation in that instance, because HE brought the idea for Josie to Archie Comics, and he had documented proof (sample newspaper strips he'd done prior to 1963) of having a prototype version of Josie before ACP (and Doyle) was ever involved. With Sabrina, it was just a script he got from Gladir, so if the two of them didn't agree to go up against ACP together, then there was no way one of them could have fought that battle alone -- so maybe Gladir didn't want to risk his one source of work in the industry. It was a risky thing for Dan to go up against Archie Comics as the creator of Josie, because if he won, then where else could he have taken the property? Marvel and DC weren't publishing anything like that in 2000. I think he was just looking to establish his authorship of the characters, and to ensure his family would have a continuing source of income from a percentage of profits from Josie. Schwartz didn't create Jughead, as valuable as he was to the company for that character, and Bolling... well, even if there HAD ever been any merchandising or licensing profits from Little Archie, what could Bolling have claimed to have created? A little kid version of a previously-existing character owned by the company? That was never going to fly in a courtroom.

The funny thing about the Kirby vs. Marvel thing is that it did not start out as Jack Kirby trying to reclaim some share of ownership or profits of the many major characters he created or co-created while working at Marvel. He just wanted his pages of original artwork back. In the 1980s, Marvel had a huge warehouse full of original artwork filed away going back decades, and they decided they didn't need the expense of maintaining that warehouse. Once the artwork had been photographed and turned into transparencies, it took up much less space and was easier to file -- that's where they created all their reprints from. So they just decided to empty this huge warehouse, and give the artists back all of their original artwork (which by that time, had become a valuable source of income for the artists themselves when sold to collectors). So Marvel started sending all the artists packages containing pages and pages of their work. And Jack got a package, containing some few hundred pages. A few hundred? Kirby had drawn thousands of pages for Marvel, and he wanted that back, so his family could benefit from selling it. And when Kirby pursued it, all of a sudden he was being sent all sorts of crazy documents to sign off on from Marvel's lawyers, before they would release those art pages to him... stuff basically signing away all claims of ever having created anything, stuff which would have been a legal document that he couldn't contest, saying that the company was the actual creator/author of the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, the Silver Surfer, Iron Man, Ant-Man, the Inhumans, the Avengers, etc. etc. etc. and Kirby and his heirs hereby renounced all future claims of any stake in ownership in any of those characters. Basically Marvel was withholding his original artwork as a lever to blackmail him, so THEY were the ones who turned it into a battle over who created what.

Yeah, now that I started thinking about all the stuff that was happening at Archie (and in the comics industry at large) from the beginning of the 1990s to when Stan Goldberg died, and the factors around him that may have had an impact on him somehow, it all seems to make more sense.

When did his work begin to look noticeably not as inspired any more? Seems to me it's right around the time when Jack Kirby died without getting any satisfaction from Marvel (1994), and coincidentally or not, that also happens to coincide with about the time that the next generation of Archie artists, recruited by the company in the late 1980s and early 1990s, began to assert their skills with confidence. Rex Lindsey was the first one to begin getting the more high-profile, better-paying assignments, like covers, pin-up posters in the 48-Page Giants, and merchandising artwork. Dan Parent was beginning to emerge from the shadow of his mentor, Dan DeCarlo, and he and Jeff Schultz became to the go-to guys for B&V covers and stories when Dan DeCarlo couldn't do it all. At first when these guys started, they just tended to be learning their craft and working at blending in with the house style, but as the mid-1990s were approaching, now they were beginning to step up as the new top talents.

Frank Doyle died around 1996, so maybe some of the feeling wasn't there for Stan in the scripts of the younger writers, as well. Then in 1997 Samm Schwartz died too. Guess who took up the slack of those pages he used to fill? Goldberg had to be feeling his mortality at his age, too. Then by 2000 there was that mess of DeCarlo vs. Archie Comic Publications, and you can't blame Dan for wanting to leave something for his kids and grandkids, but the reality of the outcome of that had to be a real joykiller for Goldberg too, and once again, who took up the slack of those pages that DeCarlo used to fill? I mean, that's about when it really seems like for Goldberg it became a question of... The countdown clock is ticking, so how much juice can I squeeze out of this lemon before it's completely dry? Like it was some kind of race against time for him to get his financial affairs squared away before work was no longer going to be available to him someday, and like he felt that was really his only salable commodity as a freelancer, to be able to fill all those pages by deadline, and be known as the guy who was a reliable workhorse. In a way, it's a lucky thing (it sounds awful to say it) that Stan died before the whole 2015 reboot thing happened, and I think he was probably aware that he wasn't going to merit any more special consideration for his "lifetime achievement" than Fernando Ruiz got for his 25 years of service.   

Okay, I gave some more thought to Stan Goldberg's situation, and I'll be honest with you. I'm not an expert on Stan's career, or Dan DeCarlo's either. I've read very few details about their life histories, or whatever personal situations, family situations, health situations, and the like they may have had to deal with. But I do have a fair grasp of the history of the comic book industry, so I can think of a few pertinent things that might help shed some light on a few things or give a little perspective. Mind you, apart from some confirmable facts I'm going to tell you, how it applied to Goldberg or how it affected how he felt about the work -- that's all just speculation on my part.

Dan DeCarlo, Al Hartley, and Stan Goldberg were all roughly of the same generation of comic book artists. All of them began their careers in the late 1940s or early 1950s, and by the mid-1950s each of them had settled at Martin Goodman's company, known now as Marvel, but at the time we're talking about, the 1950s, that's what's called "the Atlas era". Atlas because sometime in the early 1950s, Goodman decided he could make even more money if he self-distributed his own comic books and magazines. He had all kinds of magazines, movie fan magazines, puzzle books, whatever seemed to be popular at the time, and one of those things was "men's magazines", or "the sweat mags" as they were called. Just all very macho stuff, and as risque and sexy as they could be without risking being banned. Racy cartoon digest/joke books, with (non-nude) "girlie pin-up" photos, stuff like that.

So Goodman distributed as well as sold his own magazines and comics under the "Atlas Distribution" banner, and put a little globe with the word "Atlas" on the covers -- thus, collectors now refer to those as Atlas comics. Pre-Marvel, the big genres for Goodman were war, horror/mystery, westerns, romance, and humor. They were HUGE in the humor genre, and tried to put out enough different titles to crowd everyone else's off the newsstand, including Archie Comics, so when they got DeCarlo, Goldberg, and Hartley... that was their thing. "Girl humor" comics featuring Millie the Model, Patsy Walker, and dozens of others now mostly forgotten -- but Atlas was as big, or possibly bigger, than Archie Comics was at it, and UNlike Archie, it wasn't the ONLY genre they were doing. John Goldwater took notice of DeCarlo's work right away, and tried and tried to wheedle as much freelance work as he could out of him. Atlas had tons of titles, and all those artists had to do was walk into the office to drop off a completed story, and they'd be handed a new script (or several, depending on the number of pages) and then pick up their check for the story they just delivered on the way out the door. Then came the whole big scare with the nation putting horror and crime comics on trial, so those genres were dying on the vine -- but if you were a cartoony/humor guy, despite falling sales on everything else, it seemed like the one safe genre to be in. Everyone was a little nervous about the whole industry as sales continued to drop from all-time highs in the early 1950s, but if that's the work you were committed to, humor seemed to be the safest place to be. Not everyone could just switch back and forth from straight-adventure style art to funny stuff and back again, but Stan Goldberg (and to a lesser extent Al Hartley) could do that, so they seemed to be safe.

Dan DeCarlo didn't really like doing the straight stuff. He was the best at humor, and everyone knew it, including John Goldwater, who had been trying to win him away from Stan Lee at Atlas for years. But Stan Lee and Dan DeCarlo had a pretty good working relationship, and Dan must have figured why mess with a good thing -- besides, Atlas paid better page rates than Goldwater did, so DeCarlo confined his Archie work to "moonlighting" jobs for Goldwater. He also didn't like being told to draw it in a "house style" imitative of Bob Montana's work on Archie. It seemed like more work for him to have to imitate someone else, rather that just follow his natural style. But something happened in 1958 that changed everything for DeCarlo, and that's when Goodman decided that he could actually get wider distribution through a deal with American News, the #1 distributor at the time. It was less hassle if he didn't need to run his own distribution operation, and the profits he made off that should easily be made up for by his titles' greater distribution reach and Goodman cutting his own overhead costs, so he decided to close down Atlas Distribution. Bad mistake. Shortly after scuttling his own company and making the deal with American, the big distributor came under federal investigation for alleged ties to organized crime, and a couple of months later, the government forced the distributor to disband. Goodman was in danger of watching his entire company go down the tubes, with no way to get his comics and magazine to the retailers. He was forced to crawl on bended knee to fellow publisher Jack Liebowitz of National (later DC Comics), to make a deal with him because National owned Independent News, who distributed both Nationals' comics and other publications. Liebowicz threw Goodman a bone, and said he was willing to help him out, at the usual percentage of the cover price for distribution... he told Goodman he'd be willing to handle as many as... oh, EIGHT comic titles per month of his. Yeah, one problem with that... under Atlas, Goodman had been publishing and distributing over FIFTY comics per month. Obviously he was going to have to tighten his belt to survive, so the next day he called Stan Lee into his office to tell him that whenever any of their freelancers showed up to deliver their last assignment, Lee would have to tell them that that was it. No new assignments for as long as it took for Lee to use up the inventory they'd already bought, and then 6 or 8 months later it would be just enough work left to keep 16 bi-monthly titles going. When DeCarlo heard, he knew what was what, and figured it was finally time to take up John Goldwater's offer. By 1958 the humor titles' sales had slipped a LOT from the highs of the mid-50s, and Atlas' few remaining humor titles were slowly shifted over to a more serious soap-opera romance style (this was the good thing about having all GIRL humor titles, because it wouldn't have worked for any outright Archie imitation that Goodman might have published). So Millie the Model and Patsy Walker and a couple of others survived as bi-monthly soap opera romances, because Stan Goldberg and Al Hartley were able to adjust their styles to go that route, even though they were just as capable as humor artists. What work Dan DeCarlo could still get at Atlas was with those "men's humor" mags, drawing sexy one-page gag panels (besides, it paid better than a regular comics page rate).

So Stan Goldberg lived through all that, but stayed loyal to Lee and Goodman (he had a job in the production department as the company's main colorist, so freelance work was all like overtime pay for him). Al Hartley continued to hang in there, drawing Patsy Walker (and Patsy and Hedy) until 1965, when Patsy and Hedy was finally cancelled. Millie the Model (once Dan DeCarlo's baby, back in the 1950s when it was still a humor title) was being done by Stan Goldberg. After Hartley went to work on Goodman's sexy men's magazine cartoons, he eventually had enough of it by 1968, decided he was a born-again Christian, and quit to go work for Archie Comics. Stan Goldberg hung in there at Marvel, getting freelance work on the side from ArchieCo (AND DC Comics) beginning around the same time as Hartley split, but kept drawing both Millie the Model and Millie's Rival Chili on the side while keeping his day job in the production department as a colorist. In fact, he hung right in there until the bitter end, when the last of the humor titles (converted back from soap opera romances around 1968 in an imitative response to Archie Comics' booming sales (as a result of an animation deal with Filmation), but too late for Al Hartley to take advantage of it. Stan G. continued to take on freelance jobs at Archie and DC, but finally, Stan Goldberg moved over to Archie full-time in the mid-1970s, after the production department at Marvel was reorganized in the wake of production manager Sol Brodsky's death.

So Stan G has been through some sh*t, and seen some sh*t, and knows how the industry works. He'd always been a loyal company man, which is why he was the very last of the humor artists to abandon Marvel. And when he went to Archie, he had to adapt. Dan DeCarlo had already been there full-time for a decade before Hartley and Goldberg even started getting work from Archie here and there. They sort of had to worm their way in by that time, because there were few humor comic books (except for the Gold Key and Harvey kiddie titles, and animated character books) being published by anyone by that time, and only a few at DC and Marvel, and you can bet that the guys who settled at Archie before Hartley and Goldberg came over from Marvel wanted to keep those assignments for themselves if they could. But they were lucky in a way, because Harry Shorten had just left to start his own company, Tower Comics, and he lured Samm Schwartz away from Archie with him. Plus, the TV adaptations were booming in the late 1960s, so Archie was starting new titles, and it looked like there were going to be plenty of freelance jobs for Al and Stan, despite them being late joiners.

Only thing was, by now Dan DeCarlo was like the #1 main man at Archie, and (sorry Harry Lucey) he got to draw all the covers (because Richard Goldwater said so), and because covers sold comic books, and oh, by the way, Stan... could you and Al try to draw the characters the same way Dan draws them on the covers? So ironically, Stan and Al faced the same problem that Dan first had with Archie Comics when he started freelancing a few jobs in the early '50s... could you draw it the Bob Montana way, Dan? Eventually, both artists learned to adapt, at least enough. Stan was more successful at looking like Dan's work.

Now, let's skip ahead to the end of the 1990s. Stan's an old hand now, and other than Dan DeCarlo, he's the last of the big-time old-timers (and I guess Bob Bolling, but Bob was Bob, and he couldn't be anything or anybody else, and I don't think he wanted to try either). BUT now all of a sudden a bunch of characters that Dan DeCarlo co-created with Frank Doyle are getting made into a "Major Motion Picture" (the quotation marks are for irony) and Dan the company man is thinking maybe he goofed, that instead of trying to stay loyal and crank out the most pages every week, he should have provided his family with some kind of legacy that would outlast whatever paycheck he was getting from Archie Comics every week, even if it was pretty good money compared to other freelancers that worked for ACP. I'll let you look into the outcome of that little confrontation, but I'll just say this. You can bet that Stan Goldberg was paying attention to everything that went on in that little legal dust-up, and what the fallout of it was and what happened to Dan DeCarlo as a result.

And -- it occurs to me that even while Stan was maybe shortcutting a little in order to be able to increase his piecework count -- and maybe he HAD to, because he wasn't getting a page rate equal to what guys 30 or 40 years younger than him were making at DC or Marvel, his work seemed to suffer artistically maybe... after Jack Kirby's death in the early 1990s, which ended (for Jack) years of protracted legal wranglings with Marvel? Stan Goldberg had known Jack personally in the 1960s when he worked for Marvel. And then this business around 2000 or so between Dan DeCarlo and Archie Comics, was a similar situation in some ways...  But I'm sure Stan Goldberg was observant of a lot of things about the comic book industry, and what happened to a lot of older guys on the downward parabola of their careers, and he certainly had plenty of connections with people from the old days, especially all the people who passed through Marvel Comics in the 25 years or so that Stan worked there.

So if he took a few shortcuts so that he could get more pages done, put away some funds for retirement or health care insurance, or pay off some mortgages, or whatever... I can't lay any blame on the man.

Quote from: Ronny G on September 03, 2017, 12:19:40 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on September 03, 2017, 10:30:17 AM

It reminds me that there was a time when Stan Goldberg, on a good day, could work a little good girl art magic almost as well as Dan DeCarlo, the master.

I would've sworn that was Dan DeCarlo's art! Surprised that its Goldbergs. I usually could tell the difference, but he was good in his own way....However, I've been seeing some of Goldberg's later art in the digests I've been subscribing where they actually credit the artists. I don't know what years active he was at Archie. I'm guessing some of his stories are from the nineties judging by the fashions. I wondered what happened to his work?? It looked like a rush job. B & V's faces weren't attractive at all. Big round jawlines, and the eyes seemed out of place. I was thinking it might be the fault of the inker, too.
I tried to upload some pics of what I'm talking about, but it won't let me.

No, I know exactly what you mean. There's like a world of difference between the start of the 1990s and the end of the 1990s, and by the end of the decade, it seemed like he was drawing roughly 50% of the pages of new stories Archie Comics published.

I don't know what to tell you. Maybe he foresaw the way it was all going eventually and figured it was too late to reinvent himself somewhere else, so all he could do was focus on getting more and more pages out faster and faster, in the hopes that he could stash away a nest egg for when he wasn't going to have any work offered, or be even capable of doing it any more. It seems like it must be something like that. Slowly over the course of the last 20 years or so of his career it seemed like he stopped caring at all and was just operating on cruise control.  In the 1970s, 1980s, and even into the early 1990s his work just seemed more alive, but something must have happened that seemed to grind him down. Maybe it was the "dumbing down" of the sexiness of the girls. Sometime in the 1990s they all started wearing loose, baggy clothes so as not to be offensive to the mothers buying the digests for their daughters, I guess -- or maybe because that was easier for him to draw faster. DeCarlo seemed to resist that trend almost to the end, and they probably couldn't tell him he was wrong, because he was too valuable to the company. But somehow, Goldberg seemed capable of turning out the pages faster and faster, if with less feeling. Some pages he seemed to draw almost in his sleep, and perspective is skewed, eyelines are off-center, and all kinds of things, because you can tell he was trying to get it finished as fast as possible. But yeah, everything became round, round, round... because it's easier to draw a circular or oval line quickly -- wham, bam, on to the next page.

Don't get me wrong. I have total sympathy with him for whatever his motivations were. Comics is not an industry that is kind to most of its elder statesmen. You are a freelancer without a retirement pension, company-paid health plan, all the things most people take for granted, so I'm sure he had his reasons, and knew he wasn't going to be able to continue forever, so he had to make as much as he could before it wasn't an option any more.

And now a Preview of our Coming Distractions....

                 "Abra, Abra-Kadabra, I wanna reach out and grab ya...!"

Usually you have to read a Betty's Diary story if you want to look at pictures of young girls wearing skimpy nighties. But I guess it's not all that surprising that all kinds of creepy things seemed to want to take possession of Josie's body, whether they were Alexandra's relatives or not. Here we see Josie trapped in the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? opening credits sequence (possibly the result of too many slices of anchovy pizza before bedtime?)

It reminds me that there was a time when Stan Goldberg, on a good day, could work a little good girl art magic almost as well as Dan DeCarlo, the master.

And how about those kooky kreeps? Altogether oooky! Whenever this type of subject matter turned up (which was seldom) in a Dan DeCarlo or Stan Goldberg nominally comical comic book story, the spooks and hobgoblins always seemed to look just about halfway between a typical Jack Kirby monster and something out of a Warren Kremer Casper the Friendly Ghost comic. Which makes a weird kind of sense, I suppose. I mean, you've got the shrouded dude at the foot of the bed, reaching out and looking fairly convincingly menacing, but then the goofy-looking blue ogre and the green ghostly-worm thingy behind him suitably defuses that by having that sort of "obviously a nightmare" quality about them.

Quote from: SAGG on September 03, 2017, 06:37:42 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on September 01, 2017, 06:26:55 PM
In the world of Archie Comics, concussions are always cause for hilarity ensuing. 

I liked #1, if only for the reason of getting some new classic Archie stories again, and longer ones. I think I liked the Jughead learning to drive story better than the first part of Archie wins the lottery, but whether it's because I've gotten past the redesigned looks now or whatever, I have to say I liked #2 overall a lot better, especially the conclusion of the 2-parter. Reggie getting amnesia from a bonk on the head sounds like a real throwback to the Doyle-Lucey kind of stories from the late-50s/early-60s, which is a good thing.

I think Reggie's faking it. He's up to a massive joke on everyone....

You know him well... that's just the sort of thing Reggie would do. I hope it does turn out to be genuine amnesia, though, because it strikes me that the comical possibilities of that situation are far more interesting than if it turns out to be a mere prank. 

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on September 03, 2017, 04:15:01 AM
Try staring intently at the image of Josie and Albert for a minute...
    ... It takes on a psychedelic 3-D effect!!

And it occurs to me that some of you may look and say "Are you sure you're feeling all right, DCR?"... but the effect really is there.
It helps if you stare at it JUST the central image of the two figures on the cyan and magenta background, and it employs what is known as
the "anaglyphic" 3D effect -- the same as used in old 3D comic books and movies that use those glasses with red and blue (or green) lenses.
The parallax of slightly different views from both eyes and the high-contrast of the two-color background will appear to make the figures "float"
on a plane in front of the background lettering. Pretty clever use of two of the three primary ink colors used in the comic book printing process.

The next JOSIE collection released was the first to be a digital exclusive (it was later re-released with an altered cover design as PEP DIGITAL No. 69). It contained stories from five complete issues of She's Josie (1963), only one issue of which (She's Josie #1) was completely reprinted in any of the later Josie collections. Unfortunately, the collection didn't reprint ALL of She's Josie chronologically from the beginning -- after issue #1, it skipped to reprinting the stories from issues #8, 9, 10 and 13. Subsequently, all of the stories from Josie #2 and 3 were included as reprints in Archie's Big Book: Magic, Music, & Mischief (the complete contents of which will be detailed in an upcoming post).

Most of the older pre-Pussycats issues of JOSIE were reprinted in older issues of World of Archie Double Digest (with the exceptions of JOSIE #12, 14, 17, 38, and 42-44), so we know ACP has usable copies of the majority of those stories -- the remaining missing art pages could be reconstructed digitally by scanning pristine copies of the printed comic books and using Photoshop to clean up the scans. Can a Complete JOSIE ARCHIVES hardcover reprint collection be more than a decade away in the future? Time will tell... but in the meantime, this collection is a must-have, even for those of us (like myself) who much prefer print comics over digital.

Try staring intently at the image of Josie and Albert for a minute...
    ... It takes on a psychedelic 3-D effect!!

She's JOSIE: Before the Pussycats!	(124 pages)	source of 1st publication	Dec. 2013	writer	penciller	inker
A Gym Dandy - Chapter I	8 pages	JOSIE #1	Feb. 1963	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
Neat Workers - Chapter II	6 pages	JOSIE #1	Feb. 1963	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
Muscle Hustle - Chapter III	5 pages	JOSIE #1	Feb. 1963	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
Track Down - Chapter IV	6 pages	JOSIE #1	Feb. 1963	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
The Unhappy Hero - Chapter I	8 pages	JOSIE #8	Sept. 1964	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
Saved By The Belle - Chapter II	6 pages	JOSIE #8	Sept. 1964	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
And Away We Go - Chapter III	5 pages	JOSIE #8	Sept. 1964	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
Happy Ending - Chapter IV	5 pages	JOSIE #8	Sept. 1964	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
You're The Tops - Chapter I	8 pages	JOSIE #9	Oct. 1964	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
A Run For Your Money - Chapter II	6 pages	JOSIE #9	Oct. 1964	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
Fair Play - Chapter III	5 pages	JOSIE #9	Oct. 1964	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
Cereal Story - Chapter IV	5 pages	JOSIE #9	Oct. 1964	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
Team Spirit - Chapter I	8 pages	JOSIE #10	Dec. 1964	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
No Help Wanted - Chapter II	6 pages	JOSIE #10	Dec. 1964	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
Sideline Stars - Chapter III	5 pages	JOSIE #10	Dec. 1964	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
The Last Man - Chapter IV	5 pages	JOSIE #10	Dec. 1964	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
The Schemers - Chapter I	8 pages	JOSIE #13	Jun. 1965	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
The Dreamers - Chapter II	6 pages	JOSIE #13	Jun. 1965	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
Now You See It - Chapter III	5 pages	JOSIE #13	Jun. 1965	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
Now You Don't - Chapter IV	5 pages	JOSIE #13	Jun. 1965	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo

Next post -- the BEST OF JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS: GREATEST HITS digital exclusive collection from Dec. 2014.

TRUE BELIEVERS KIRBY 100TH BIRTHDAY $1 REPRINTS:
  GROOT! (reprints TALES TO ASTONISH #13 & JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #63)
  THE MIGHTY THOR! (reprints JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #83 & 85)
  ANT-MAN & THE WASP (reprints TALES TO ASTONISH #27 & 44)
  IRON MAN (reprints TALES OF SUSPENSE #40 & 41)
  THOR VS. HULK! (reprints JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #112 & AVENGERS #3)   
  CAPTAIN AMERICA LIVES AGAIN! (reprints AVENGERS #4)
  THE ORIGIN OF CAPTAIN AMERICA! (reprints CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS #1 & TALES OF SUSPENSE #63)
  NICK FURY, AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D. (reprints STRANGE TALES #135 & 141)
  THE INHUMANS! (reprints AMAZING ADVENTURES #1 & 2)
  BLACK PANTHER #1 (reprints BLACK PANTHER #1 & TALES OF SUSPENSE #98)
  ETERNALS #1
  DEVIL DINOSAUR #1

It's hard to believe that such important Marvel Kirby co-creations as the Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer weren't represented in this series of $1 reprint comics showcasing some milestone story highlights from Jack Kirby's career, but Marvel has their own agenda for things it wants to promote, like the current Guardians of the Galaxy series and Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. They refuse to even publish a Fantastic Four comic book any more, until they can get back the film rights from Fox Studios, so as a result they filled the gaps with reprints of some of Kirby's lesser oeuvre. It's all good, though. Earlier in August I'd read MONSTERS: THE MARVEL MONSTERBUS Vol. 1, an 800+ page hardcover omnibus filled with shorter (generally 8-16 pages) science fiction/giant monster stories Kirby had drawn in a flurry of creations between 1959 and 1961, any one of which could have been turned into a drive-in sci-fi movie classic. Just great, simple fun stories. Some half-dozen or so of those old Kirby monsters are still running amok in the Marvel Universe to this day (to say nothing of the Thing and the Hulk). To say that Kirby segued seamlessly from drawing monster menaces to monsters vs. superheroes (or super-monster-heroes) is no understatement. Particularly for the first few years, Stan Lee hedged his bets by including plenty of monsters in the early Marvel superhero stories, and romance subplots too, as the SF/mystery and romance comics began to give way to more and more superhero titles.

DC Comics, for its part, celebrated Jack Kirby's 100th birthday (August 28th, 1917) with a series of original 1-shot specials based on some of the characters Kirby had created during his tenure there:
NEW GODS SPECIAL #1
NEWSBOY LEGION & BOY COMMANDOS SPECIAL #1
SANDMAN SPECIAL #1
MANHUNTER SPECIAL #1
DARKSEID SPECIAL #1
BLACK RACER & SHILO NORMAN SPECIAL #1
-- Those were of varying quality, depending on the talents of the individual creators involved in the stories. My picks of the bunch were the Sandman Special, Manhunter Special, and Darkseid Special, which were more evocative of Kirby's own style of comics storytelling.

I'll be rounding out my weekend reading some lesser-known Jack Kirby works. I just cracked into The Art of Simon & Kirby HC and the Kirby 100 trade collection of art and essays yesterday, and will hopefully try to finish those off before next Wednesday's comics arrive.
JACK KIRBY'S IN THE DAYS OF THE MOB HC
JACK KIRBY'S SPIRIT WORLD HC
JACK KIRBY'S SILVER STAR HC
THE ART OF SIMON & KIRBY STUDIOS HC
KIRBY 100 SC

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on September 02, 2017, 05:21:09 PM
I know it will never happen but I would love to see a complete pre-Pussycats Josie done in a nice hardback.

Never say never. Every single knowledgeable fan of Archie Comics (including Dan Parent) that I've communicated with has agreed that JOSIE, (as a whole, but in particular the pre-Pussycats Doyle/DeCarlo stories) is one of, if not THE, finest comic series that ACP ever published. Eventually, someday, someone is going to figure out that there are enough people willing to drop some serious cash for a quality hardcover complete chronological reprinting of that series -- either ACP itself, or Dark Horse Comics, IDW Comics/YoeBooks, or Fantagraphics Books.

I just hope I'm still around when it happens. Archie is having a difficult time transitioning from a publisher whose traditional audience is casual pre-teen readers (without a lot of money to spend on more expensive collections) to a much smaller audience of older nostalgic comic book connoisseurs, some of whom are seriously invested in amassing a library of archival hardcover comics. The recent Deluxe Edition hardcover re-release of The Best of Archie Comics Volume 1, plus things like the Sabrina the Teenage Witch Complete Collection v1 gives me hope that they'll eventually figure it out.

Even as you get older, you continue to discover an appreciation for things, to which you'd been ignorant when younger, and my relatively recent conversion (beginning about 3 years ago) into a rabid fan of classic cartooning-style teen humor/girl humor comics is proof that it does happen. Reviews from respected sources, whether on the internet comics websites or in collector-oriented magazines like those published by TwoMorrows (Back Issue, Comic Book Creator, The Jack Kirby Collector) go a long way. Who'd have thought, twenty or thirty years ago, that a company like Fantagraphics (traditionally a publisher of Mature Readers titles like The Complete Crumb and Love & Rockets) would ever have released a hardcover like Innocence and Seduction: The Art of Dan DeCarlo ?

Who'd have thought there would ever be a Criterion Collection DVD release of old monster movies like Gojira/Godzilla (1954) or Island of Lost Souls (1932)? Those were movies which had not traditionally been given any serious consideration for their artistic merit, unlike the films of directors like Akira Kurosawa, Francois Truffaut, or Orson Welles. You can bet that people who never gave a passing thought to those films all of a sudden viewed them in a different light when given the stamp of approval that came with the inclusion of a film under the Criterion Collection umbrella. An appreciation for things which seemed ephemeral and inconsequential in their own time needs enough time to pass, to be reexamined and reassessed, like the vintage of fine wine. People reading Charles Shultz' Peanuts in their Sunday newspaper comic sections 40 years ago would stand agape in slack-jawed disbelief if they could peer into the future and see that the entire run of the comic strip would be collected in a series of expensive hardcover volumes, beginning some 30 years later.

Quote from: Ronny G on September 02, 2017, 07:38:25 PM
You said there are 8 Josie collections?!!? I have the 3 books you reviewed already, plus the one that just came out. I can't imagine what the other 4 are.

Here is a list of the Josie collections to date:

1.  1993-94 - Josie and the Pussycats (Vol. 2) #1 & 2 (48-page giant comics)

2.  Jun. 2001 - Best of Josie and the Pussycats TP

3.  Dec. 2013 - She's Josie: Before the Pussycats (digital exclusive collection)

4.  Dec. 2014 - Best of Josie and the Pussycats: Greatest Hits (digital exclusive collection)

5.  Oct. 2015 - Josie and the Scaredy Cats (digital exclusive collection)

6.  Mar. 2016 - Archie 75 Series #12: Josie and the Pussycats (digital exclusive collection)

7.  Aug. 2017 - Archie's Big Book: Magic, Music & Mischief TP

8.  Aug. 2017 - Best of Josie and the Pussycats TP (The Best of Archie Comics series)


In addition to the above-listed, there were Josie and the Pussycats: The Complete Manga!, originally released in Nov. 2013 (digital exclusive collection, and later re-released as Pep Digital No. 170), collecting the complete backup series (67 pages) by Tania Del Rio and Chris Lie from Sabrina the Teenage Witch (2003) #68 & 72 and Archie & Friends #96-104; and Josie and the Pussycats Vol. 1 TP (2017) collecting the first 6 issues of the rebooted 2016 comic book by Marguerite Bennett, Cameron Diordio and Audrey Mok. Since those stories stand apart from the traditional version of Josie and there's little crossover in content with other collections, I didn't include them, but here are the covers of those collections, anyway.

Continuing our review of various Josie collections (post #2 of 8*), both print and digital, we come to the first TRUE Josie trade paperback collection, from June of 2001. Once again, it took a media tie-in (in the form of a live-action movie) to motivate ACP to reprint a bunch of old Josie stories. Ah... it's ever the way with them. This happens to coincide with Josie & the Pussycats being promoted from a backup feature to taking the lead spot (and cover) of ARCHIE & FRIENDS, beginning with issue #47 (itself a reprint), but with #48-49, they got a 4-chapter, 22-page story by Dan Parent (w) and Rex Lindsey (a), broken into 2 chapters per issue ("Music For the Masses"). In the following issue, Holly Golightly stepped in to contribute the artwork, and she'd soon be writing the stories as well, for this too-short, but much-beloved (by me!) run of A&F. Suddenly Josie and her friends had a brief moment in the spotlight and a higher profile at Archie Comics than they'd had in almost two decades. This trade kicked off the celebration, with Rex Lindsey contributing a very nice cover (presumably Holly G was drafted as an afterthought, to replace Lindsey for some reason, but Rex had almost been drawing more covers for ACP at this point than even the prolific Stan Goldberg, so it's obvious that the editor was pretty happy with his work for the company. Perhaps his utility as a cover artist (not to mention as a Jughead artist) was just too valuable for him to be able to do a regular ongoing Josie strip as well.

*(I couldn't believe there were that many!! AND I'm even leaving out Tania Del Rio's Josie the Manga digital collection, and the recent New Riverdale J&tP trade!)

BEST OF JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS	100-page TP	source of 1st publication	June 2001	writer	penciller	inker
cover		new cover illustration by Rex W. Lindsay			Rex W. Lindsay
Whoever Heard of Girls With Guitars?	2 pages	BEST OF JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS	June 2001	Paul Castiglia
A Gym Dandy	8 pages	JOSIE #1	Feb. 1963	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Vincent DeCarlo
First Appearance of Alexandra Cabot	1 page (excerpted)	JOSIE #8	Sept. 1964	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
First Appearance of Alan M. Mayberry	1 page (excerpted)	JOSIE #42	Aug. 1969	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
Evolution of Alexandra's Stripe and Sebastian the Cat	1 page (excerpted)	JOSIE #43	Sept. 1969	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
Decisions, Decisions	6 pages	JOSIE #45	Dec. 1969	Dick Malmgren	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
Pussy Footing	5 pages	JOSIE #45	Dec. 1969	Dick Malmgren	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
Quiet on the Set	8 pages	JOSIE #50	Sept. 1970	Dick Malmgren	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
Josie and the Pussycats Come to TV	1 page	(ad originally appeared in multiple comics)	Aug. (?) 1970		Dan DeCarlo
Brawn Is Beautiful	5 pages	JOSIE #53	Feb. 1971	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
Ban the Blonde	5 pages	JOSIE #55	June 1971	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
The Early Worm Gets the Bird	5 pages	JOSIE #56	Aug. 1971	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
The Ghost of Dark Valley Manor	16 pages	JOSIE #57	Sept. 1971	Dick Malmgren	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
Up, Up, and Away!!	12 pages	Josie #58	Oct. 1971	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
The Pussycats Get A New Look!	1 page (excerpted)	ARCHIE GIANT SERIES #540	Aug. 1984	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Jim DeCarlo
Limo Rock	5 pages	ARCHIE GIANT SERIES #562	Aug. 1986	George Gladir	Dan DeCarlo	Jim DeCarlo
Cat at the Crossroads	11 pages	ARCHIE GIANT SERIES #584	Sept. 1988	Kathleen Webb	Stan Goldberg	Rudy Lapick
J&tP Skiing (pin-up)	1 page	JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS (1993) #2	Spring 1994		Dan DeCarlo	Alison Flood

NOTES: There's good and bad to be said about this collection. In contrast to my previous post, in this instance the listings in RED indicate a story which hasn't yet been included in any of the subsequent collections (print OR digital), and that's a fair number of stories, so this collection is far from obsolete, despite having many collections come afterwards. BUT it does also contain the superior and unusual "Cat at the Crossroads" by Kathleen Webb, where Josie experiences a life crisis about where she's heading with her future career.

It opens with a 2-page introduction by Paul Castiglia, "Whoever Heard of Girls With Guitars? ". Unfortunately, the editor here chose to include a number of "highlight" moments from stories, in the form of 1-page excerpts, as opposed to just printing the whole story. I could certainly have skipped the excerpt of Alan M's first appearance, plus the excerpt of the Pussycats as punk rockers, for just ONE of those stories complete (or even a single chapter of a 4-part longer story). The sorest point would be JOSIE #43 (as was standard practice, a booklength storyline comprised of four individual Chapters, or Acts) -- the one that explains how Alexandra discovers her ancestor, Sebastian Cabot (whose name was stolen from a notable television actor, who played "Mr. French" on Family Affair), was in fact suspected of "consorting with witches", and she realizes that his spirit may have been reincarnated in her pet cat Sebastian, who shares the same name -- thus, whenever Alexandra is in contact with her cat, she can perform black magic, and believing absolutely that it is so, she finds a book of sorcerous spells to study (self-fulfilling prophecy?). Thereafter, she will attempt to bedevil Josie with her newfound mystic skills, until someone (usually Melody) unwittingly snaps their fingers and breaks her spell. If this sounds familiar, it's because much later on, Sabrina's pet (familiar) cat Salem will also turn out to be a human trapped in a feline body. It hasn't happened yet, but I really want to see that entire issue (JOSIE #43) reprinted. It seems the Cabots have a family history of malicious, restless spirits who remain bound to the mortal plane and who have the ability to possess the bodies of the living (as both Alex and Alexandra will discover in JOSIE #70's "Vengeance From the Crypt").

Bottom line is, there are still quite a few stories here that are in no other collections, so buy it if you can find it at cover price or less. The 2-page pullout Dan DeCarlo pin-up poster of Josie and Valerie skiing (and Melody wiping out) from JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS (1993) #2 is reduced here to a single page image.

Next post --  the SHE'S JOSIE: BEFORE THE PUSSYCATS Digital Exclusive collection.

I know I said more than a week ago that I'd post the contents of the recent trade paperback, THE BEST OF JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS, but then the more I got into it, the more detailed information I started adding, and going back over the list of contents of all the previous Josie collections to see what had been reprinted in prior collections, and what hadn't.

For print editions, your choices are pretty narrow, so if it's a physical book that you want, then THE BEST OF JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS is a no-brainer, and it'll probably be a long time before some superior, more complete, collection of stories is published.

But let's go back and start at the beginning first. The very first reprint collections came in 1993 (August, most likely... with a cover date of "Fall") and January ("Spring") 1994, in the form most popular at that time, the Archie 48-Page Giant comics. Two issues were released, combining reprinted stories with a couple of new ones. New material is indicated on the contents table below in RED:

JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS (1993) #1	(48-Page Giant)	source of 1st publication	Fall 1993	writer	penciller	inker
(Josie and the Pussycats on stage)		new cover illustration	Fall 1993		Dan DeCarlo	Alison Flood
Rock and Roll	8 pages	new	Fall 1993	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Alison Flood
Decisions, Decisions	6 pages	JOSIE #45	Dec. 1969	Dick Malmgren	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
Pussy Footing	5 pages	JOSIE #45	Dec. 1969	Dick Malmgren	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
What Kind of Ghoul Am I	14 pages	JOSIE #64	Sept. 1972	Dick Malmgren	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
Josie & the Pussycats in outer space (pull-out poster)	2 pages	new pull-out pin-up poster	Fall 1993		Dan DeCarlo	Alison Flood
Up, Up, and Away!!	12 pages	Josie #58	Oct. 1971	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS (1993) #2	(48-Page Giant)	source of 1st publication	Spring 1994	writer	penciller	inker
"Josie & the Pussycats LIVE - The Hottest Cats in Town!"		new cover illustration	Spring 1994		Dan DeCarlo	Alison Flood
Love & War	8 pages	new	Spring 1994	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Alison Flood
Work of Art	6 pages	JOSIE #53	Feb. 1971	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
To Grandmother's House	8 pages	JOSIE #64	Sept. 1972	Frank Doyle	Stan Goldberg	Jon D'Agostino
Josie & the Pussycats skiing (pull-out poster)	2 pages	new pull-out pin-up poster	Spring 1994		Dan DeCarlo	Alison Flood
Melody (1 page gag strip)	1 page	JOSIE #96	Oct. 1977	unknown	unknown	unknown
Brawn is Beautiful	5 pages	JOSIE #53	Feb. 1971	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
If the Spirit Moves You	6 pages	ARCHIE'S TV LAUGH-OUT #62	Nov. 1978	Frank Doyle	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick
Maxim Mix-Up	5 pages	new	Spring 1994	Hal Smith	Dan DeCarlo	Rudy Lapick

NOTES: The first Josie 48-Page Giant comic was published by ACP in the hopes of catching a wave of nostalgia (or younger readers newly discovering the Pussycats for the first time) as a result of Ted Turner's Cartoon Network cable station's acquisition of the Hanna-Barbera library of animated programming, and subsequently airing H-B's Josie and the Pussycats on a daily basis in 1993. There's no mistaking it because it says so right on the cover, and no less than THREE ad banners reminding readers to watch the show ran below the first or last pages of various stories. These are very nice to have, even though the paper is somewhat thin, it is white (not the lower-grade newsprint) and the colors on the reprints look pretty nice, unlike a lot of the older digests. They are worth having for those covers and pull-out posters alone, in addition to the three new stories. "Rock and Roll" is notable for a brief appearance of Alan M. after a long absence, and even more surprising, the return of Alexandra's magical powers of witchcraft, after almost a decade since their last mention. In "Rock and Roll" Mr. De has the Pcats sporting more skimpy, bikini-like costumes on stage. It's hard to believe, but in 1993 it had been years since ACP could spare the MVP talents of original creator, Dan D., to work on Josie, and the short 5- and 6-pagers appearing in TV LAUGH-OUT (and later LAUGH Vol. 2) had at that point been mostly assigned to Gladir and Goldberg for at least a half-dozen years. I don't think "Love & War" and "Maxim Mix-Up" had been reprinted until the recent BEST OF trade collection either.

Next post -- BEST OF JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS TP (2001)

In the world of Archie Comics, concussions are always cause for hilarity ensuing. 

I liked #1, if only for the reason of getting some new classic Archie stories again, and longer ones. I think I liked the Jughead learning to drive story better than the first part of Archie wins the lottery, but whether it's because I've gotten past the redesigned looks now or whatever, I have to say I liked #2 overall a lot better, especially the conclusion of the 2-parter. Reggie getting amnesia from a bonk on the head sounds like a real throwback to the Doyle-Lucey kind of stories from the late-50s/early-60s, which is a good thing.

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on September 01, 2017, 09:31:52 AM

Quote from: Ronny G on August 27, 2017, 04:36:46 PM
Sorry to hear about some of the digests ending. I noticed my supermarket recently has downsized its rack of Archie digests it carries at the checkout lane at Ralph's supermarket on the West Coast. Used to have at least 2 or 3 different titles to choose from--now lucky if I see one! I've subscribed to 3 different digest titles in recent years. I love the classic stories from the 50s-70s--not too crazy about the recent material from the 90s and up, but it seems the digests are 60% newer stories. The digests started piling up in my house so I stopped renewing, but I recently got an email asking me to renew my subscriptions again for 6 issues for $9.99. I really don't need more digests piling up in the house, but it really is a good deal because one jumbo digest cost like $6.99 retail so I renewed my subscription to Betty and Veronica. Also, they have been kind enough to send me some "grace" issues after my subscriptions expired so I felt a sense of loyalty, cause I don't want to see the digests end. I also ordered the upcoming Best of Josie 400 page book from them so I should get that in the mail soon. They also want me to renew B&V friends, but it doesn't sound like it will be around. What would happen if I renewed i and they ended the title? Would they send me something else in it's place??

Ronny, I just saw your question.  If you subscribe to a title and it ends, Archie Comics will send you an email offering to switch your remaining subscription to another title.  Because of how many books have been cancelled over the last few years and new title being introduced, this has happened to me several times and it always works out fine.

Well... they had been pretty good at just replacing a title that didn't sell well with a new title, and it looks like that applies to at least Jughead and Archie being replaced by Archie and Me. It doesn't sound like this is the old "Me" (meaning Mr. Weatherbee) in the title, but what I'm concerned about is where am I going to get to read old Jughead stories?

I'm not sure how long that can hold, though. I can hardly count Riverdale Digest as a real digest title, even if they do throw some classic stories in there to bulk it out (and how long can they continue that, anyway?)  Judging by the sale on the newest issues of the floppy comic Riverdale, that won't be around much longer either.

I never could understand how Betty and Veronica could be the best-selling digest, and B & V Friends the worst-selling, at the same time (although I guess Jughead and Archie was really the worst-selling), at least according to what I'd heard. That just makes no logical sense to me whatsoever, if they both feature 80% B&V stories, and are only distinguished by one being the title that regularly reprints Sabrina, and the other being the title that reprints Josie. It's one 15-25 page section, so that couldn't make a difference.

Anyway, hope I turn out to be wrong about that. If they cut back to publishing only one B & V digest, that will really suck. I guess I wouldn't miss Funhouse all that much, as long as it was replaced by something reprinting all classic stories.