Archie's Rival REGGIE #14 (August 1954)


REGGIE #15 (September 1963)



Dept. of What Were They Thinking?:

So the cover gag on REGGIE #14 didn't exactly attract droves of readers to purchase that issue... to the point where it was the last issue of REGGIE to be published in 1954, with the title going "on hiatus" (a polite way of spinning "CANCELLED") for 9 years... Only to have the title resurrected in 1963 using the very same cover gag AGAIN! I dunno... maybe it's like when a Monday newspaper comic strip redraws the last panel of the strip (complete with identical dialogue) that had appeared in the strip on the previous Saturday when the story was interrupted by a day, as by way of reminding readers:
"Last time (109 months ago), in REGGIE..." (?)

Maybe they just thought there was something wrong with the way it was drawn the first time??

EDITED 06-10-18 to update release dates. Bookstore market release dates in BLUE, comic shop release dates in RED.
Items with no dates in red have not been solicited (as of 06-10) by Diamond Comics for the comic shop marketplace.

Archie Comics Presents... series:
  THE COMPLETE COSMO THE MERRY MARTIAN TP | 224 Pages | 5-1/4 x 8 | $10.99 | Jul 03, 2018 | Jun 13, 2018
  ARCHIE AT RIVERDALE HIGH VOL. 1 TP | 224 Pages | 5-1/4 x 8 | $10.99 | Jul 10, 2018 | Jun 20, 2018
  BETTY AND VERONICA SPECTACULAR VOL. 1 TP | 224 Pages | 5-1/4 x 8 | $10.99 | Aug 21, 2018 | Aug 1, 2018
  LIFE WITH ARCHIE VOL. 1 TP | 224 Pages | 5-1/4 x 8 | $10.99 | Sep 18, 2018 | Aug 29, 2018
  ARCHIE AND ME VOL. 1 TP | 224 Pages | 5-1/4 x 8 | $10.99 | Nov 13, 2018
  EVERYTHING'S ARCHIE VOL. 1 TP | 224 Pages | 5-1/4 x 8 | $10.99 | Dec 11, 2018
  BETTY AND ME VOL. 1 TP | 224 Pages | 5-1/4 x 8 | $10.99 | Jan 22, 2019
  REGGIE AND ME VOL. 1 TP | 224 Pages | 5-1/4 x 8 | $10.99 | Feb 19, 2019

Archie's Big Book series:
  ARCHIE'S BIG BOOK VOL. 4: FAIRY TALES TP | 304 Pages | 6-5/8 x 10 | $19.99 | Aug 14, 2018 | Jul 25, 2018
  ARCHIE'S BIG BOOK VOL. 5: ACTION ADVENTURE TP | 304 Pages | 6-5/8 x 10 | $19.99 | Jan 08, 2019

Best of Archie Comics series:
  THE BEST OF ARCHIE AMERICANA VOL. 3: BRONZE AGE 1980s-1990s TP | 416 Pages | 5-1/4 x 7-1/2 | $9.99 | Sep 04, 2018 | Aug 15, 2018
  THE BEST OF ARCHIE COMICS DELUXE EDITION BOOK THREE HC | 416 Pages | 6-5/8 x 10-3/16 | Oct 23, 2018

Archie Giant Comics Digest series:
  ARCHIE GIANT COMICS BASH TP | 416 Pages | 4-7/8 x 6-9/16 | $9.99 | Nov 27, 2018  *(NOTE - Page count reduced by 64; cover price increased by $2)

Archie 1000 Page Comics Digest series:
  ARCHIE 1000 PAGE COMICS ROMP TP | 1000 Pages | 4-7/8 x 6-9/16 | $14.99 | Oct 09, 2018

ARCHIE'S HOLIDAY COLORING BOOK TP | 128 Pages | 7-1/4 x 10-7/8 | $9.99 | Nov 06, 2018

ARCHIE MODERN CLASSICS VOL. 1: BEST OF 2018 TP | 256 Pages | 5-1/4 x 7-1/2 | $9.99 | Feb 05, 2019
  (The description in the solicition for this one is vague. Could be reprints of the new lead stories from 2018 digests, or something else altogether.)

ARCHIE: A CELEBRATION OF AMERICA'S FAVORITE TEENAGERS TP edited by Craig Yoe | 220 Pages | 8-1/2 x 11 | $29.99 | Oct 09, 2018 | Jul 25, 2018 
   -- A softcover reprint (with new cover) of the sold-out hardcover edition from 2011.

THE ARCHIES VOL 1 TP | 144 Pages | 6-5/8 x 10-3/16 | $17.99 | Jun 19, 2018 | Available now (comic shops)

BETTY & VERONICA: VIXENS VOL. 1 TP | 136 Pages | 6-5/8 x 10-3/16 | $14.99 | Jul 24, 2018 | Jul 04, 2018

JUGHEAD THE HUNGER VOL. 1 TP | 144 Pages | 6-5/8 x 10-3/16 | $17.99 | Aug 07, 2018 | Jun 18, 2018

THE FOX VOL. 2: FOX HUNT TP | 136 Pages | 6-5/8 x 10-3/16 | $14.99 | Sep 11, 2018 | Aug 22, 2018

COSMO VOL. 1: SPACE ACES TP | 128 Pages | 6 x 9 | $12.99 | Oct 16, 2018  (Collects Cosmo #1-5 by Ian Flynn & Tracy Yardley)

ARCHIE VOL. 6 TP | 144 Pages | 6-5/8 x 10-3/16 | $17.99 | Oct 30, 2018

THE ARCHIES VOL 2 TP | 104 Pages | 6-5/8 x 10-3/16 | $17.99 | Nov 20, 2018

BETTY & VERONICA: VIXENS VOL. 2 TP | 136 Pages | 6-5/8 x 10-3/16 | $14.99 | Dec 04, 2018

CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA VOL. 2 TP | 176 Pages | 6-5/8 x 10-3/16 | $19.99 | Dec 18, 2018

THE MIGHTY CRUSADERS VOL. 1 TP | 120 Pages | 6-5/8 x 10-3/16 | $12.99 | Jan 15, 2019  (Collects Mighty Crusaders 2017 #1-4 & Superteens vs. Crusaders #1-2)

^^ Dan DeCarlo in KATHY #8 (Aug. 1951, Standard Comics) ^^







^^ Dan DeCarlo in TIPPY TEEN #10 (Dec. 1966, Tower Comics) ^^

So, I happened to be in Walmart this morning, and sauntered by the racks which hold their small selection of paperbacks/hardcovers. kids' books, and magazines, and spied the latest issues of ARCHIE AND ME DIGEST (#6), and ARCHIE JUMBO COMICS DIGEST (#340somthing, I think..) and couldn't resist stopping to flip through them.

The last issues of these that I read were back around the end of December/first half of January, I think. I stopped getting them mostly because seven bucks (okay, cheaper than that when I still subscribed, and still cheap when I get a retailers' cost discount at my LCS, if I bother to order them -- but still, be that as it may...) just seemed like too high a price when about 75% of the stories reprinted (mostly 1990s/early 2000s; between ARCHIE #501-599 or so) I'd rate as "ho-hum". I was just growing bored with the reprint selections - there's too little variety lately in the Archie-centric digests, to my way of thinking. They still have those Dan Parent-written lead stories, of course, but that's asking a lot to pay for a single 5-page story.

So, skinflint that I am, I paused to flip through them to see if there was anything of interest there that I was missing, and spend 5 minutes or so reading the two new 5-page lead stories in both. I was surprised to see A&M digest had a new story with Wendy Weatherbee in it (whom I don't believe DP has used in any stories before, apart from being a mob-scene guest-star in the "Battle of the BFFs" multiparter, some years back). And then AJC digest had a new story with Cricket O'Dell in it (going on a date with Archie, yet)!

That reminded me that Dan has been bringing back a lot of seldom-seen supporting characters in stories lately, like Harper Lodge, Veronica's "wacky cousin" (Dan's description, from a fashion page) Marcy McDermott, Bridgett Furferfuhrer (can't recall her last name... never really cared for her) and didn't I see a story recently with Maria Rodriguez (or maybe I'm just imagining that, or thinking of a reprint I recently read)? And while I might reasonably expect to see such DP-created supporting characters like Harper, Marcy, or Bridgett, I wouldn't expect to see Wendy or Cricket. Who's next, Eyeda? (In the story where Cricket dates Archie, they go to an art gallery show, and there was a painting of floating eyeball - the centerpiece of some other elements - that strongly reminded me of Eyeda, whom Dan had previously used as a supporting character in his Sabrina stories in the early 1990s in the back of ARCHIE & FRIENDS). Makes me wonder if I didn't miss some other seldom-seen character reappearances, like maybe Trula Twyst (another character whom Dan has never really used) in some of the new DP-written lead stories from the three Archie-centric digests in the last few months.

The Cricket O'Dell dating Archie story struck me as kind of an oddity, in that I can't recall Archie ever showing any interest in dating Cricket (although I think the plot of the story had Cricket asking Archie, instead of the other way around). I almost wondered if that weren't a leftover from "The Many Loves of Archie Andrews", as it seemed like it would have fit in perfectly with that series from a couple of years back.  The Wendy Weatherbee story has her and her father back in Riverdale visiting, and immediately all the boys at RHS are lining up to date her, with extreme anticipation and high competitiveness. The Bee won't tolerate any nonsense, of course, so he takes it upon himself to review/interview Wendy's potential daters, and sets himself up as the final arbiter of who will get to date her. Archie gets "DISMISSED!" by the Bee at first sight. (It never fails to flabbergast me that no matter how many pretty girls Archie is dating or has dated, he's never satisfied -- he's just GOT to sample them all.) To no one's real surprise, Uncle Waldo declares the winner of the coveted date with Wendy to be none other than Jughead Jones (who tries to protest that he's not even interested in dating, only to confirm Weatherbee's precise reason for choosing him -- to make darn sure that there will be no chance of any potential romantic hanky-panky going on with his overprotected niece). Doesn't Wendy have anything to say about it?? Although, one gets the distinct impression that she's not exactly disappointed in the prospect of a date with Mr. Jones...

QuoteSeptember 2018 - 84 FULL-COLOR pages

BACK ISSUE #107 (84 FULL-COLOR pages, $8.95) jingle-jangles with Archie Comics in the Bronze Age! Archie's '70s and '80s adventures, STAN GOLDBERG and GEORGE GLADIR interviews, Archie knock-offs, Archie on TV, and histories of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, That Wilkin Boy, Cheryl Blossom, and Red Circle Comics. Featuring the work of JACK ABEL, JON D'AGOSTINO, DAN DeCARLO, FRANK DOYLE, GRAY MORROW, DAN PARENT, HENRY SCARPELLI, LOU SCHEIMER, ALEX SEGURA, ALEX TOTH, and more. Featuring an Archies cover by Dan DeCarlo, one of the celebrated artist's final illustrations before his 2001 death. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Available to order through your local comic shop (request Diamond Order Code MAY182064) or order direct from the publisher, TwoMorrows, as a print magazine or a digital download:

http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=133&products_id=1357&zenid=20f06fe1e40bd45408dbaf77fd7fecf8

I'm athletic and like to keep in shape.

My best gal-pal is Veronica Lodge.

I have blond hair and people say I'm good looking.

I'm a good student.

I love my sister and we get along great.

I believe in social justice and getting involved with my community.

My best guy-pal is Jughead.

I have a positive outlook, and people like me.

Even though I have a boyfriend, sometimes I can get distracted by a hunky guy.

I like journalism, and I might want to make it my career after graduation.

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[If your answer ended in Keller or Cooper, you are absolutely correct!]

Just for fun, let's see if anyone knows the answer to this.


Question 1)  Other than ARCHIE, what is the name of the longest-running (according to total number of issues) ongoing title which Archie Comic Publications has had in its entire history?

Question 2)  How many years did that title run (+/- 6 months)?

Question 3)  How many issues of that title were published before it was cancelled?



Important Note:  Any title that was cancelled, but then restarted again immediately with a new #1 issue is ineligible for inclusion by adding up the number or issues in more than one volume of the title. This leaves out such obvious contenders as JUGHEAD and BETTY AND VERONICA. Good luck! If no one gets it, I'll reveal the answer next week.

I'm about 80% through my second reading of this book, and I have to report that upon analyzing what Beaty has to say (and just importantly, what he omits talking about) I'm far less happy with the book than I was upon my initial reading. Probably because the first time around I was just bedazzled by the fact that anyone had taken the time to write a book about Archie that didn't amount to a company-approved summary of the publisher's history.

In fact, I'm going to say that I'm finding the book to be incredibly myopic and biased based on the author's own interests, so it presents nothing like a balanced and fair critique of (as I was expecting) the comic books published by Archie Comic Publications during the period of the 1960s when the cover price of those comics was twelve cents (cover dates from Dec. 1961 to July 1969).

Really the only thing that's of interest to Beaty in discussing is the comic book stories published by ACP in that period that directly featured Archie (and to a much lesser extent, Jughead). And even more to the point, Archie stories that were drawn by Harry Lucey (and to a much lesser extent, Jughead stories drawn by Samm Schwartz). Other comics (and characters) are mentioned either matter-of-factly, or in a way that is critical (in the negative connotation of that word) and/or dismissive. Writers like Frank Doyle are only mentioned in the context of their having written a script which was particularly brilliantly executed by either Lucey or Schwartz -- and Doyle is about the only writer mentioned (and once or twice, Bob Bolling). Now to be fair, the writers were not credited in the actual comics as published in this period, but shouldn't Beaty have taken the time to determine that information as much as is possible?

Dan DeCarlo is mentioned numerous times, but usually in a factual context, and barely discussed at all. The greatest wordage devoted specifically to DeCarlo is reserved for Beaty's observation of his design usage of the non-character "foreground girls" that decorated at least one panel of one story in every DeCarlo-drawn issue of B&V, and he presents it in such a way as to cast it in the light of a negative idiosyncratic oddity perpetrated by the artist. There is no discussion (although mentioned a few times in passing) of JOSIE, for example, because DeCarlo doesn't interest Beaty at all, nor do any comics which ACP published that were not focused specifically on Archie (and to a much lesser extent, Jughead). Various other titles are mentioned or discussed in a dismissive light, possibly some deserving of it, like the various Joke Books, but Beaty tends to feel negatively about anything that diverges from the standard, classic middle-of-the-road Riverdale story. Things that vary from that, like stories in Life With Archie, are invariably, when deemed worthy of mention at all, in for a harsh drubbing. "Caveman Archie" only escapes that same fate by dint of many of the stories having been handled by Lucey.

Other important characters are discussed, but only insofar as how they related to Archie Andrews in the stories, so once again -- no great amount of wordage is devoted to discussing Archie's Girls Betty and Veronica, because Harry Lucey (and Samm Schwartz) had little to do with that title. On the other hand, we get things like a two page discussion/analysis of a single-page Doyle-written, Schwartz-drawn Jughead gag, so that Beaty can discuss the brilliance of how Schwartz turned a lamely-written, unfunny joke into an exercise of turning a piece of crap into cartooning gold.

The minor-minor characters (Moose, Midge, Dilton, Ethel) are discussed and dismissed summarily as bad one-note ideas -- which may not be entirely unfounded, yet somehow they're still around, even if they might have been nothing more than reoccurring plot devices in those earliest stories.

Somehow, though, I find myself wishing for a critical analysis that was a little less biased and little more representative of ACP's total publishing output, even within a limited period like the twelve-cent era. Maybe that's my own bias because I find a lot of stuff that I like about that period had nothing to do with "standard Archie" (Josie, Sabrina, Madhouse) and I like stuff that Beaty clearly hates (Pureheart, The Man From R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E., The Archies). On the other hand, while he admits that Archie's Girls Betty & Veronica was the second best-selling title in this period, he spends very little time actually discussing it, certainly less than he devotes to Jughead, the third best-selling title, so it has to do less with their relative importance in the factual sense than it does with Beaty's abiding interest in both Archie and Jughead, and Lucey and Schwartz, and relative lack of interest in Betty & Veronica (apart from their function within Archie stories drawn by Lucey, and how they related to Archie in general) and Dan DeCarlo. Beaty spends an overlong amount of time constantly returning to explanations of how ACP's lack of continuity functioned within the stories, to the point where it seems like overkill.

Maybe what's needed is a critical anthology, in which different writers could present essays on different aspects of Archie Comics that they found merited discussing or analyzing, whether focusing on various characters, titles, or publishing trends, or some subtextual aspects of the story dynamics not immediately apparent on the surface or which seem worthy of exploration.

I've been re-reading Bart Beaty's TWELVE-CENT ARCHIE (since a new edition of the book came out with color illustrations) and seeing his comments in a somewhat different light than I did upon the first reading, a couple of years ago. I imagine that's because my understanding of the background context of the history of Archie has expanded considerably in the time since I first read it. Beaty is a devout admirer of Harry Lucey's work, and at one point in the book he makes the bold statement that "Of all the dozens of artists who contributed to Archie Comics in the twelve-cent era, the best, by far, was Harry Lucey." (emphasis mine) He goes on to say "His Archie is the most wide-eyed, his Betty and Veronica the most alluring, and his Jughead is the most relaxed."

"By far"? I had to think about that a bit, and while I'd certainly give it to Lucey when it came to Archie as the main character, and he draws a pretty sexy B&V, there's still something about his version of the girls that falls a little short, for me, of Dan DeCarlo's. How do I articulate exactly what quality it was that made DeCarlo's B&V superior to Lucey's?

When I think of Harry Lucey's version of the girls, it always seems to me that they carry themselves in a way a little too poised, a little too physically mature for their age. He's a good girl artist, but he subtracts a bit of his cartooning instincts and amps up his illustrator instincts when drawing them. His B&V seem reminiscent to me of the kind of glamour photography you might see from the 1940s or 1950s, and has a kind of "posed" quality to it, whenever B&V are strutting their stuff and showing off their curves.

Dan's B&V seem to have more of a relaxed, natural quality about them, as if caught in moments unaware that they're "having their picture taken". Despite the fact that they're both essentially the same girl in body and facial features with different hairstyles and clothing, Dan was better at making B&V each distinct by contrasting their different styles of body language. In thinking about it, I'd say DeCarlo better captured a balance in both girls' depiction between their youthful innocence and their physical charms, and that made them both more appealing and seem a little more real. I think he had a little better range on their expressions of different emotion than Lucey did, too.

Now, when it comes to who was the better ARCHIE artist (that is, the better artist for stories that focus on Archie as the main character), it's Lucey hands down. His range of portraying slapstick comedy, movement through space, and force and motion through body language was unequaled. He would have made a damn fine animator, if that had been the profession he'd chosen, because you can look at a Harry Lucey Archie story and see all the "key frames" (or "extremes") that would represent the points on which the animation turns, to be filled-in by in-betweeners. So if he had worked in animation, he'd either be the lead animator on the main character, or the director of the cartoon (who essentially does the same thing, in addition to coordinating all the other animators on the team). That ability to tell a story through slapstick action simply wasn't as essential a quality in most Betty & Veronica stories as it was in an Archie story.

And... I haven't quite decided whether Lucey was the best Silver Age Jughead artist or not, because I haven't quite spent enough time thinking about it or studying stories with that in mind, but my instincts are leading me to say... Samm Schwartz, particularly the pre-1965 Schwartz, whose earlier work I always liked better because of the inking quality on those stories before he left the company for the next four years (to go work for Tower Comics, and then DC). Schwartz' later Jughead is more minimalist, with fewer background details in the panels, and an unvarying ink line-weight, making everything look flatter and less 3-dimensional. But he still had a good storytelling sense of layouts and about the placement of figures within a panel to get some movement into it.

And beyond the Silver Age, after DeCarlo and then Lucey, who was the next best B&V artist after Lucey retired in the Bronze Age? I'm going to go with... Al Hartley. Especially when it came to Betty. Hartley seemed to have a real empathy for Betty, and it showed in his work, but beyond that, he was probably just, on average, the next best "girl artist". He didn't tend to flaunt that ability quite as much as DeCarlo and Lucey did, but when he wanted to, he could turn out some terrific stuff when the specific story allowed it. And after Hartley, once he'd been working at Archie for a few years and had gotten a handle on the characters and the house style... Stan Goldberg.

I thought some people here might be interested in seeing these statistics. The bar graphs were created by Kate Willaert, from data jointly compiled by John Jackson Miller of Comichron, in collaboration with Milton Griepp of ICv2. I've no idea of where they got access to statistics such as total book market sales, digital sales, and newsstand/subscription sales, but I have faith that these are reasonably close estimates that represent the most accurate snapsnot of the total market as anyone's likely to get. The graphics ought to be self-explanatory.

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)

Oldiesmann -- neither of these functions work since you went to the https:// secure site URL.

Not much in the way of details for this one... Amazon is pricing it for pre-order at $10 for "over 400 pages", so it seems likely this will follow The Complete SABRINA the Teenage Witch Vol. 1 TP in the black & white format, for a projected shipping date of September 12, 2017. That's if we're not hearing about the cancellation of the Sabrina trade collection first, within the next month or so. If it's not included in next month's solicitations for ACP product shipping from Diamond, it would seem to be even more suspect.

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Josie-Pussycats-Archie-Comics/dp/1682559300

... or is Amazon just fishing for preorders that it may not get, leading to this product being cancelled and never published?

https://www.amazon.com/Sam-Hill-Tom-DeFalco/dp/1619889056/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

  MADE  YOU  LOOK !! 

This is WAY advance notice, since this publication isn't due to come out until sometime this summer, but I'm just incredibly stoked that some comic fan publication is finally giving some recognition to Archie Comics. Here's a preview of the cover:



And the solicitation copy for this issue:

QuoteSummer 2017 - 84 FULL-COLOR pages

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #16 visits Riverdale High, U.S.A., to celebrate America's Typical Teenager Archie and his pals 'n gals—as well as the mighty MLJ heroes of yesteryear and those of today's "Dark Circle"—with a look at the 75-year-old comics line's wildest characters and titles. Plus we conduct career-spanning conversations with two of the imprint's hottest creators: Brooklyn's own DEAN HASPIEL (the Emmy-winning alternative-slash-mainstream artist who collaborated with HARVEY PEKAR) and DAN PARENT (GLADD award-winning cartoonist and creator of the Archie universe's ground-breaking gay character, Kevin Keller), who both jam on our great exclusive cover depicting a face-off between humor and heroes. Rounding out the ish are our usual features to fascinate and enlighten, including the hilarious Fred Hembeck. Edited by Jon B. Cooke.

Dean Haspiel previously collaborated with Mark Waid on THE FOX miniseries for Red Circle, the only title to carry over into a second miniseries for Dark Circle.

In addition to having the print version of the magazine distributed through Diamond Comics, TwoMorrows will offer the digital version for sale on its website here:
http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_132&products_id=1272
If you order the print version of the magazine direct from TwoMorrows, you can also get the digital version as a free bonus.

It finally occurred to me that cancellations of previously-solicited titles are such an ongoing problem with ACP, that there really ought to be a permanent thread to alert people to these cancellations when they happen. I hasten to remind people that that doesn't preclude the title and issue # in question being re-solicited at some later date, and finally coming out at some time in the future. However, it's also a good thing to keep in mind that non-ongoing titles like TP collections, magazine format, new #1 issues, and one-shots are especially at risk of that cancellation being of a much more permanent nature, and the title in question never seeing print at all.

At this point there are a few recent cancellations that I already mentioned elsewhere, so I'm not going to repeat those now, but going forward I will try to put all such notices in a single place, here on this thread, so that if people are wondering about any particular title, they can find this thread and check all the previous posts.

The newest cancellations I've just discovered:

ARCHIE COMIC SUPER SPECIAL #8
JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS 80 PAGE GIANT COMIC #1

Can't say either of these is a major shock (although both are a major disappointment to me, personally), as the SUPER SPECIALS have been suffering from these cancellations with the last 2 previous issues (and I'm actually surprised last year's Christmas issue, #7, got published at all). The JOSIE 80 PAGE GIANT follows suit with the previously-solicited, and then cancelled REGGIE'S 80 PAGE GIANT #1.

{Moved here from another thread, where it was SERIOUSLY off-topic.}

Quote from: steveinthecity on January 16, 2017, 12:53:55 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on January 12, 2017, 04:20:39 AM

Quote from: apple on January 11, 2017, 09:06:47 PM
hm interesting how going against the norm, being different, and "going your own way" absolves you of all sexuality.

Like in language. We have words. That mean things. You can say you don't fit into any category all day long but in all honesty, you still actually do.

If Jughead had shown interest in girls none of you would be avoiding calling him straight just because weird people don't fit into labels. But whatever.

I think I already covered this in a post above, but he has shown interest in girls. But only in SOME stories. In others he's a "woman-hater", and other characters in the story specifically identify him by that label. I probably can't find a specific example to post here, or even more difficult to pin down, one where he identifies himself as a woman-hater (although it's certainly easy to find stories where he expresses his criticism of the female gender as a whole), but I can remember reading stories like that. The ones where he shows interest in girls are much easier to identify, and some of them are harder to quantify. One subject of debate revolves around Jughead's love relationship with January McAndrews, Marshall of the Time Police and a future descendant of Archie Andrews, which has raised a few eyebrows among people wondering just what exactly is going on there. There are even stories where Jughead dates Big Ethel and winds up having a good time. But it seems that in some stories he most definitely IS straight. Another good example of those would be LIFE WITH ARCHIE magazine (a.k.a. THE MARRIED LIFE in TP), where Jughead is married to Midge Klump.

Your argument doesn't fit or support the agenda.

In hindsight I find it fascinating to look back on the brief period beginning in 1987, when JUGHEAD was relaunched with a new issue #1 (August 1987), until about issue #38 (Oct.1992) - a period of about 5 years (which also included the short run of JUGHEAD'S TIME POLICE). During this short time frame, there was a lot of experimentation with the previous status quo of Jughead. He started dating, and there were a number of different women that were important in this period of his life were (besides January McAndrews over in TIME POLICE). In the very first issue, Jughead reminisces about Marci, who is referred to as "Jughead's very first groupie". In issue #5, things really begin getting stranger when a new Riverdale student, Debbie Dalton, shows up at school and all the boys are smitten by her. Even Jughead, who begins to obsess over her when he sees her talking to Archie and he's afraid that they're dating. However, it turns out that Debbie only has eyes for Jughead, and the feeling seems to be mutual, so they soon begin dating. Even Archie and Reggie begin to become envious of him. If that weren't enough, in that same issue, Juggie receives a letter from his very first friend in kindergarten, Joani Jumpp (who had a crush on him then, and still does), letting him know that she's moving back to Riverdale. When she arrives she immediately becomes jealous of Debbie, and a new "triangle wrangle" is born.



By issue #7 Jughead's image among teenage girls in Riverdale is beginning to change, in a story where the girls are hanging out at the beach, gossiping (mostly unfavorably) about Jughead. To refute their impression that Jughead is cheap and miserly, Betty tells a story about how Juggie spent his last $2 to buy some food for a couple of homeless kids, and to refute their impression that Jughead is the epitome of laziness, Midge tells the girls how Jughead stayed up all night cleaning the school to help an injured Mr. Svenson pass an important inspection. The girls insist that Jughead is the least model student at Riverdale, but when they compare notes they realize that Jughead has given several of them useful ways to ace their math homework. At first they grudgingly give him credit for all these things, but they still insist that he's a slob with no sense of style or fashion -- until fashion designer Coolvin Clean arrives in Riverdale, and spots Jughead and wants to copy his "individualist" look. All of a sudden the girls' impressions of Jughead start changing and they begin to think of him as a real sweetie, and good boyfriend material.



In issue #10 Jughead finds a genie in a bottle who offers to help him get to know girls without having to go on dates with them, so he's definitely spending more time thinking about girls. But when he winds up with two dates at the same time, Juggie decides to get rid of the genie as more trouble than he's worth. In another story in that same issue, Jughead finds a little girl lost in a snowstorm and helps her get home, earning a few kisses from the girl's older sister.



By issue #12, Jughead's former reputation among Riverdale's teenage girls has done an about-face:



Issue #14 contains a story with a rare appearance of January McAndrews outside of TIME POLICE, when she arrives to send Jughead on a mission to the past, and Joani Jumpp is also in the same story. Jan reappears in issue #18 (these appearances occurred in-between the first two Time Police stories in World of Jughead [ARCHIE GIANT SERIES] #590 & 602, and JUGHEAD'S TIME POLICE #1), and by now Jughead's romantic troubles have become even more complicated than Archie's. Things will become a little simpler for Jughead though, because this is Jan's last appearance in JUGHEAD, and Joani Jumpp announces that her family is moving from Riverdale again at the end of the story.



By issue #19, Jughead finally decides "I've Had It With Girls!" (responding, no doubt in this case, to the majority of readers' wishes).


That was only a brief respite though, because Jughead would soon begin seeing a woman psychoanalyst, Dr. Sara Bellum, and then become a skatepunk and get his head shaved in a bizarre pattern. He continued to attract new female interests like Sassy Thrasher and eventually began a new romantic relationship with Anita Chavita, a paraplegic black Latina girl -- which, in what can only be described as a bizarre twist, invoked a new mortal enemy in the form of normally mild-mannered, but now embittered, Dilton Doiley - who harbored a secret crush on Anita, and became obsessed with splitting the couple apart.


When this extended experimental phase finally ended, the title merely shifted (with about a gap of a year in which nothing particularly atypical for Jughead happened) into another change in status quo for Jughead. One that -- finally -- didn't involve any romance. In issue #50 a new female entered Jughead's life in the form of new baby sister Jellybean.


But just in case you thought Jughead's life was FINALLY free of all female entanglements, now that he'd left January, Debbie, Joani, Sassy and Anita behind him...
There was still Ethel. And Trula Twyst. ...and Bella Beazly, Wendy Weatherbee, Sadie Cameron, Sandy Sanchez, Toni Topaz, DiDi Diaz, and Sabrina...

I subscribed to every single digest title that ACP published in 2016. Here's some data I compiled by tracking the in-store released dates (taken from Diamond Comics Distributors' website, so these are the dates that they would have appeared for sale in local independent comic retailers' stores) and the dates I received those same issues of my digest subscriptions in the mail. I unfortunately did not begin seriously tracking my subscription delivery dates until February 2016 (thus the titles released in January 2016 appear in gray font and are notated as "no data"), but otherwise tried to list all digest issues released in 2016. A single exception to that is ARCHIE COMICS DOUBLE DIGEST #275, released in comic shops on 4-Jan-2017. It was close enough to 2016 for me to include the data this summary, replacing delivery data that I failed to record for ARCHIE COMICS WINTER ANNUAL #265 (released in comic shops on 30-Dec-2015) so that I could have a total of 10 issues of that title (the proper annual frequency) represented.

Some other notes:
Issues listed in a RED font were ones I received later than they appeared in comic shops. Issues that were delivered by mail egregiously late (by which I mean 2 weeks or more late) are in BOLD font. Issues that were SO late that I had to email the subscription department to complain are highlighted in YELLOW, except for a single issue highlighted in RED -- JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE JUMBO COMICS #23, which, when it was over 3 weeks late, and I emailed ACP to complain, I was informed that they no longer had any copies of that issue to replace the one I was missing, so they issued me credit for another issue on my subscription for that title instead (and I had to special order that issue from Diamond Comics through my LCS).

Issues listed in a GREEN font were those that were delivered earlier than the comic shop on-sale date, and if they were received a week or more earlier, I listed that issue in BOLD font.




A few other comments seem appropriate here. It hardly seems likely that too many other digest subscribers are tracking issues of their subscriptions in this kind of detail (notice how I avoided the word 'obsessively' there - but looking at the data overall, there may be some good reasoning behind my obsession). Which leads me to wonder how many kids are missing issues from their subscriptions that simply never arrive and they never notice, or possibly their parents don't know where to direct their complaints (or can't be bothered, if they're even aware of it). This data certainly doesn't present a pretty picture for anyone thinking of subscribing to the digest titles, but it is what it is. I've already cancelled my subscription (after 2 issues, but by that time issue #3 and 4 were already in the pipeline) to ARCHIE 75th ANNIVERSARY JUMBO COMICS, and I'm planning to let my subs to both ARCHIE COMICS DOUBLE DIGEST and WORLD OF ARCHIE COMICS DOUBLE DIGEST expire (they currently only have a couple of issues left). I've got a few more issues of both ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE and JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE before I have to worry about making a decision on those titles, and I already re-subscribed to both B&V FRIENDS and BETTY AND VERONICA a couple of months ago (those are the two most important titles to me, that I don't want to miss an issue of). My LCS doesn't even normally preorder any of the digest titles for their shelf, so I'd have to order these special for myself every month, or go looking for them at the local Barnes & Noble every month.

It's hard to say how much of the blame here should be allotted to my local USPS (they can't possibly be handing even bulk rate mail this badly, this often, can they?), how much to ACP, and how much to "Subscription Genius". Subscription Genius is what is basically handling the subscription orders, although the order help department at ACP can obviously make modifications manually (and users can see certain data of their own and modify things like their mailing address, and renew subscriptions). Subscription Genius may be no more than an app that ACP licenses from a software group that automates certain tasks like tracking issue #s, addresses and billing. I don't know if they're an actual service that has anything to do with the printing and mailing of subscribers' copies. My own admittedly non-documented recollections as a subscriber from 2015 is that delivery of issues then seemed more or less timely, with most issues arriving up to a week or so either early or late, but things seem to have taken a significant downturn after October or early November of 2015, when online comic news sites carried the news of ACP having slashed its in-house staff, eliminating several permanent employees. I wouldn't even consider getting issues delivered a week or so late that big of a deal, if there was any kind of consistency to it, but this is too much.