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.

Any receive any Xmas gifts of Archie comics, digests, trade paperbacks, hardcover books, DVDs, merchandise, or anything?

From Diamond Comics, here is a list of ACP products for which all previously solicited orders have been cancelled, along with their Diamond order codes.

OCT161174   ARCHIE NEW RIVERDALE COVER BOOK #1 - CANCELLED
AUG161233   ARCHIES BIG BOOK TP VOL 01 MAGIC MUSIC & MISCHIEF - WILL RESOLICIT
AUG169241   ARCHIES COLORING BOOK #1 - WILL RESOLICIT
OCT161175   BETTY & VERONICA NEW RIVERDALE COVER BOOK #1 - CANCELLED
OCT161189   REGGIES 80 PAGE GIANT COMIC #1    - CANCELLED
SEP161300   SABRINA #8 CVR A REG HACK - WILL RESOLICIT
SEP161301   SABRINA #8 CVR B VAR SOUTHWORTH - WILL RESOLICIT
AUG161239   SONIC SUPER DIGEST #18 - WILL RESOLICIT
AUG169242   SONIC SUPER SPECIAL MAGAZINE #14 - WILL RESOLICIT

Amazon is now listing this formerly-solicited-and-then-cancelled TPB collection with a new publication date of September 26, 2017. None of the prior solicitations for this title that I'd seen in the past ever showed an actual cover for the proposed collection, which makes it seem especially nebulous. Generally, solicitations will have at least a "Not Final Cover" disclaimer over an image if the actual publication date is too far away for the cover to have been definitely decided upon. This solicitation on Amazon (as with all previous solicitations for this title) merely shows the cover to ARCHIE & FRIENDS #146, the first part of a 2-part "Twilight" parody story (Part 2 was in A&F #147), so we can conclude that that 2-parter forms the centerpiece of this them collection. It seems likely that any B&V vampire-themed collection would also reprint the 2-parter from BETTY & VERONICA #261-262 (the 'Betty the Vampire-Slayer vs. Vamperonica' storyline).

You have to wonder why they'd use the cover from A&F #146 though, since the TPB is titled as a B&V collection and Betty doesn't even appear on that cover, and there's just 'something' about the title "BETTY & VERONICA: LOVE AT FIRST BITE" that seems a little too innuendo-ish in its possible implications to begin with.

Anyway, here's the listing on Amazon if anyone's interested in pre-ordering this. The worst thing that could happen would be... nothing at all.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1619889463/ref=pe_11480_217674830_emwa_email_title_1

Since I've been seeing the ads for this in the digests, I decided to check it out.
http://www.bettyandveronica.com/



It's a fairly pricey collection, so obviously aimed more at the Veronicas out there than the Bettys. I'd be interested in getting the women's reaction on these. Which of these do you like or would you wear (leaving aside the question of whether you can afford to dole out this much cash on your wardrobe collection)?

And what's with the two differently-colored shoes? Is that an actual thing now? It sounds like the plot of an Archie Comics story -- or at least I remember one where Betty (or was it Veronica?) started a new fad at Riverdale High by accidentally wearing two mismatched socks to school one morning.

In other news --

• There's a Black Friday sale beginning at http://archiecomics.com/. Use codeword FRIDAY for 40% off and fill in some holes in your collection with stuff you might not have considered buying at full price.


• RIVERDALE has a premiere date of Thursday, January 26, 2017 at 9pm on "the" CW. (I never was clear on what that stood for, so maybe someone could clear that up for me, and why is it the only cable network that requires a definite article "the"?) That pilot episode should be worth a couple of threads worth of commentary for the forums.

Just wanted to point out a few items of note from ACP's Feb/2017 solicits.


First we got the long-delayed (two years!) 7th issue of the Super Special magazine, now another issue solicited for a mere 3 months later?
Keep your fingers crossed that this is back again, hopefully on a quarterly schedule. That means YOU SHOULD BUY THIS.


Get out your crayons, colored pencils and markers!
ARCHIE'S COLORING BOOK #1 is here to relieve your stress.

Good thing too, because I'll probably be stressing out over whether or not it will get cancelled until I actually see it listed as shipping the next week...
128 pages of coloring fun for a mere (?) $9.99.
(Coloring books cost TEN BUCKS now?? I remember when they were like, 89¢ ... There's that stress creeping up the back of my neck again...)
The solicitation copy describes this as "each image has an intricate background pattern to add to your color experience". Hope it doesn't turn out looking like that awful DISNEY VILLAINS Coloring Book, which was so busy with clashing op-art background patterns that there were no open white areas to actually color in (seriously -- look at the awful reviews for it on Amazon). I suspect that they came up with this scheme to prevent people scanning any simple B&W-outline art and turning them into useful decorative artwork featuring their popular copyrighted character images. Uh-oh, there's that stress creeping up on me again...

See now, here's both a good example (because it's an awesome Dan Parent iconic cover design, and B&V both look totes adorable here  ), and a bad example of what I mean. If they printed that same cover on a page in the coloring book in black & white, what looked neato-keeno when Dan Parent did it on a computer poses a perplexing problem to someone staring at it with a crayon, marker or colored pencil in hand, looking at the patterns on the girls' dresses and thinking "WTF am I supposed to do with this?", so it's not lowering your stress levels the way just gazing at the cover as Dan created it on the computer would.



And finally, then there's THIS...!

I WANT to believe, because I WANT to buy this SOoo BADDDD!
But after the quick cancellation of the recently-solicited REGGIE'S 80 PAGE GIANT COMIC #1, I just don't believe ACP's solicitations are for actual, real products anymore. At least when it comes to anything Classic Archie, beyond the usual periodical digest issues and the 1000 PAGE Comics and GIANT Comics collections.

Before I ask the questions, let me preface this by stating that some (if not most) of these questions may seem strange to some of you. So let me set this up by explaining why I think I need to ask them. I've read the first 2 issues of the New Riverdale BETTY & VERONICA (once only) but I don't own them so I don't have them to refer to. I've also read every issue of the New Riverdale JUGHEAD, but apart from #9 & 10, I don't own any of the first 8 issues. I've read the first two issues of ARCHIE, but don't own those either, and haven't even read issues #3-12 (or whatever number they're up to now).

I don't recall reading anything in those JUGHEAD issues that would seem relevant to background knowledge that a reader of BETTY & VERONICA would be expected to have prior to reading the story, but I'm not sure if that's true of the New Riverdale ARCHIE title. Ideally, a reader of B&V would not require any background knowledge prior to reading the story, but I realize comic books are now written in such a way that sometimes the reader of a new title is presumed to have also read previous titles published by the same company, and supposedly taking place within the same universe.

Now, it also occurs to me that since the New Riverdale comics are all part of a REBOOTED Archie universe, no information applicable to the publisher's previous incarnations of the characters should be presumed, either. Therefore any background information that the reader of BETTY & VERONICA can be presumed to bring with them before reading the story should go back no further in the publishing history than ARCHIE (2015) #1. I mean, isn't that the point, to get new readers to read the New Riverdale comics, and not assume that the readers had also read Archie Comics published prior to  ARCHIE #1? Clearly there are many specific aspects of the Archie characters in the New Riverdale comics that differ from their Classic incarnations, so they shouldn't be asking any readers to fill in any missing background information about the characters appearing in New Riverdale based on the pre-rebooted characters' incarnations.

So these questions I have are by way of determining whether background information necessary to the story in B&V #1-2 is simply not given in the story, or whether that information was stated or depicted in the stories in ARCHIE, and the publisher (and writer) has simply presumed that all of the readers of BETTY & VERONICA would have read those comics already. Also by way of determining whether the reason it doesn't seem like a real story to me (because there's too much background information missing for me to make much sense of it) is because in order to really understand what's going on in this story, I would need to understand things that happened in ARCHIE.



1. Are Betty and Veronica best friends? Are they friends at all? (Because it sure doesn't seem like it.) I know Veronica only moved to Riverdale recently in the new ARCHIE series, so where & how did they become friends (if indeed they are, sure doesn't seem like it)? If they're not friends, then how does a BETTY VS. VERONICA story even matter?




2. Is Mr. Lodge an evil greedy 1%er who doesn't care about anybody but himself/money/his family (maybe?)




3. Betty tried to explain why she's trying to save Pop's in the first issue, but what does Veronica get out of making sure Pop Tate is driven out of business? Another successful gourmet coffee franchise in Riverdale doesn't make a difference in her lifestyle one way or another, because she's too rich already for a few more $$$ in profit to change anything for her, right? She doesn't have to do a thing to help Pop Tate, but she doesn't have to go out of her way to annihilate him either, unless she's just doing it to crush Betty's hopes. And why do you think she'd want to do that, if that's what she's doing? She could just stand back, do absolutely nothing, and let the chips fall where they may.





4. Who do you think we're supposed to be rooting for in this story? And why does it matter? Places go out of business all the time, get bought up or change ownership, etc. You see it all the time, if you even notice it. Why would it be a good thing if Betty/Pop's wins, or why would it be a good thing if Veronica/coffee wins? The reason I ask is that if it doesn't matter to the reader which one wins, Betty/Pop's or Veronica/Lodge coffee franchise, then what do you think the story IS about?





5. This one's tough, and you won't find the answers in any of those other comic books, so you'll just have to put on your thinking cap. There's no right answer or wrong answer.
IF it does matter somehow, then WHY does it matter? What does Pop's symbolize or stand for? What does Lodgebucks Coffee (or whateverthehell the franchise is called) represent, and how do the values, ideas/ideals or philosophies that those two different companies embody have anything to say about anything? Are Pop Tate's and Lodgebucks Coffee metaphors for something else?




************************************************************************************************************************
I have some ideas of my own about Question #5, but I'm wondering if anybody thinks about these stories or what they're about, or just reads them in 10-15 minutes and puts them away in a bag and/or box and forgets about them.

This book collection (from the solicited-then-cancelled 6-issue miniseries of 2013) was solicited back in 2014, then cancelled. Amazon is now listing it for preorders again, with a projected publication date of September 5, 2017.
https://www.amazon.com/New-Crusaders-2-Dark-Tomorrow/dp/1936975734/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

That's awfully far in advance, and Diamond Comics has not listed this as an upcoming release as of yet, so I don't know if I should trust this (for that matter, I don't know if I should trust it even IF/when Diamond does start taking orders for it). Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE to have this book to complete my Mighty Comics/Red Circle collection, but 10 months is a looooooooooong way away for a company that really doesn't plan that far ahead. But maybe this is an example of them using some of that investment capital money to use up some of that in-house material that has already been bought and paid for. Presumably they couldn't do that before, because anything that they solicited that would result in a big printer's bill needed to be a product that would return the money laid out for that bill almost immediately, or it wasn't a justifiable use of their limited cash resources. Hopefully we will then get to see a couple of other previously solicited (but then cancelled) things coming down the road after this, like TPBs for the second story arc ("Fox Hunt") of THE FOX, and Tom DeFalco's SAM HILL (released previously as a Digital Exclusive collection), and a TPB collection of Dan Parent's digital-only miniseries LIFE WITH KEVIN.

So I just happened to be looking at Betty and Veronica Digest # 92 (dated Dec. 1997), and I came across this mail-order ACP house ad (variations on which I'd seen before) selling single copies of specific digest issues. In this case, the titles and issue numbers being sold were:

ARCHIE ANDREWS WHERE ARE YOU DIGEST #112 [On Sale Now!]
ARCHIE'S STORY & GAME DIGEST #39 [On Sale Mid-November]
VERONICA'S DIGEST #6 [Available Through This Ad Only]
LITTLE ARCHIE DIGEST #20  [Available Through This Ad Only]
BETTY'S DIGEST #2  [Available Through This Ad Only]

So I'm wondering about this "Available Through This Ad Only" business, since I'm not really sure how to interpret that. Those happened to be the last issues of both VERONICA'S DIGEST and BETTY'S DIGEST, and doing some checking, I see that those two digests only came out once a year. I'm not sure how often LITTLE ARCHIE DIGEST came out, but it seems like #20 (Sept. 1997) was the next-to-last issue, with the final issue being published six months later, in March 1998.

So the question is, were these just issues that ACP had some kind of short print run of, and then they sold them exclusively through mail-order sales? I ask because it seems like maybe they were trying some kind of experiment to see whether that was worthwhile for them. The rationale would be, these are characters that aren't as popular as the main digest titles, so sales through traditional distribution methods might result in a lot of returns-for-credit. However, if ACP just distributed the issues themselves, that meant that they got to keep ALL of the cover price (which was $1.79 for a regular 96-page digest in 1997), minus the cost of postage. Through the normal distribution methods, ACP got to keep less than half the cover price (probably closer to a third, actually).

-- OR, were these distributed through the normal channels, but they just sold poorly, and the mail-order ad just represents whole bunches of copies that they had left over in their warehouse afterwards, that they needed to get rid of? I know for a fact that they must have had tons of copies of BETTY'S DIGEST #1 and VERONICA'S DIGEST #5, because when I ordered a random digest sampler pack from ACP about a year and a half ago, they still had copies! But this isn't the first time I've seen mail-order ads featuring those titles (if not the exact same issue numbers) that claimed "Available Through This Ad Only". I've seen a similar ad (presumably from a year earlier) that mentioned those same two issues (BETTY'S DIGEST #1 and VERONICA'S DIGEST #5) as "Available Through This Ad Only".

I got a sneak peek at the Halloween ComicFest 2016 ARCHIE'S MADHOUSE giveaway comic which participating comics retailers will be offering to their customers during the last week in October.


Cover art:
Pencils: Dan Parent
Inks: Bob Smith
Previously appeared on:
ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #233 (Nov. 2012)

It contains the following stories:

ARCHIE in "The Secret Project"
5 pages
Script: Rich Margopoulis
Pencils: Gene Colan
Inks: Rudy Lapick
Previously appeared in:
(1st appearance unknown, probably circa late 1980s.)
JUGHEAD WITH ARCHIE DIGEST #130 (Dec. 1996)
WORLD OF ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #32 (Nov. 2013)
ARCHIE 1000 PAGE COMICS JAMBOREE (2013)

JUGHEAD in "Rare Scare"
6 pages
Script: George Gladir
Pencils: Rex Lindsey
Inks: Rich Koslowski
Previously appeared in:
JUGHEAD (2nd Series) #132 (Nov. 2002)
WORLD OF ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #11 (Dec. 2011)

ARCHIE in "A Chiller Diller!"
1 page (uncredited)
Previously appeared in:
(1st appearance unknown, probably circa early 1960s.)
WORLD OF ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #32 (Nov. 2013)

This has to be one of the best weeks for Archie (and "Archie-related") comics that I've had in a long, long time. What are the odds that ACP and Dynamite would both release a new floppy print comic book featuring the artwork of Gisele Lagace on the same Wednesday? Of course I'm talking about ARCHIE MEETS RAMONES and BETTY BOOP #1 (from Dynamite Entertainment).

On top of that, my two favorite ACP digests both came out this week, and I got both my subscription copies in the mail this week (both un-ding'ed and un-dented by the USPS, what are the odds?), BETTY AND VERONICA JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #247 on Tuesday, and B&V FRIENDS HALLOWEEN ANNUAL #251 on Thursday. Both of them came out in comic stores on Wednesday, so -- hopefully without jinxing things here, maybe they're actually starting to get it together down in the mail room at ACP subscription HQ.

And if those weren't enough, by pure chance (I wasn't even looking, just happened to find them by accident), I managed to find 11 issues (none of which I had) of the 1997 SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH comic book series in Fine/Very Fine condition (and a single BETTY AND VERONICA SPECTACULAR, issue #30 -- which just happened to feature a long Prom story with Cheryl Blossom in it). What did I pay for those? Would you believe cover price?? Which, by 1997/1998's economy, amounts to $1.75 each!

Wow, the only way this could have been a better teen-humor week was if the floppy comic version of Die Kitty Die and/or a new print edition of Super 'Suckers had come out.

So, while I still have a few days to go before I finish reading all of those, I just wanted to briefly mention what a delight it was, just paging through that latest B&V FRIENDS HALLOWEEN ANNUAL. Quick breakdown here; there are about 10 Halloween-themed stories or features included in this Annual (which amounts to 73 pages, if you really want to know). As you might expect, B&V stories predominate in this issue, with 15 of those stories or features, totaling 85 pages (notable as a stand-out is the 2-part, 11-page "How Much Is That Hunk In The Window?", with Cheryl and Jason Blossom). Next in volume come 5 Betty stories adding up to 34 pages (and including an 11-page "Betty Cooper, Super Sleuther" saga, with Betty doing her best to make Nancy Drew look like a dummy). Next, tied in page count, are 3 Josie stories or features (one 1-pager and a pin-up, and one long 14-page Dick Malmgren/Dan DeCarlo classic), and -- surprise!! -- FIVE Ethel stories. Both Josie and Ethel get 16 pages each (although Ethel's stories are spread out throughout the Annual). Next are 2 Sabrina stories and a puzzle page (one Stan Goldberg story, one Dan Parent story -- late '80s/early '90s, respectively) -- 11 pages, and 2 Veronica stories (two 5-pagers plus a "monster" pin-up, also 11 pages total). Mr. Lodge gets one page (2 half-page gag strips) to himself.

Dan Parent kicks off the Annual with the new story "The Costume Calamity!", and it's another in what seems to be a recent string of new DP stories that features topical fads. A few months ago, he did a story poking fun at the hoverboard fad (which I'd never heard of, and had to have Dan explain it to me when I saw him at Boston Comic Con - the story had just come out the week before); to me, when someone says "hoverboard", I'm thinking like those skateboards that really hovered without wheels, like Marty McFly in Back To The Future, not this thing he drew into the story which looks like the bastard offspring of the Segway. Anyway, he followed up in Betty & Veronica Jumbo Comics #247 with a story where Mr. Lodge gets into the "adult coloring book" craze http://www.cbr.com/betty-veronica-jumbo-comics-digest-247/, and in this Annual, he's got Betty costumed as "Ilsa, from the animated movie Chilled" (i.e. Elsa from Frozen) -- so Veronica, afraid of being shown up by what she admits to herself are "Betty's superior sewing skills, creativity, and resourcefulness" -- and on a side note, I was just thinking that was so blatantly honest of her to admit, that I thought I was reading a Kathleen Webb story for a second -- has the brilliant idea to go to the Halloween costume contest dressed in a cardboard box. But in keeping with Dan's trending to topical fads, it's a cardboard box painted to look like one of those highly-rasterized sprites from the game app Minefield. She not only looks like an idiot, but the fact that she can't foresee the obvious practical problems that her rectangular solid shape will cause is "comedy gold", as they say.

There's another Dan Parent feature (I hesitate to call it a story, as such...) It's a series of 21 'photos' from Betty & Veronica's childhood Halloweens together, loosely strung together by some bridging text narration, and entitled "Betty and Veronica's Halloween Memories". These 5 pages are all in full-bleed (runs to the edge of the page cut), full-process (gradient) color. I think DP just did what I'd considered impossible -- he got me to read a cleverly-disguised "LITTLE Betty & Veronica" story, and even more than that, to actually enjoy it. Somehow I just never felt these characters were "cute", as drawn by Bob Bolling or Dexter Taylor... but Dan Parent actually does make B&V cute as little girls. I suspect this feature came from one of the later, "magazine"-style B&V SPECTACULARS, and ditto for the (also full-process color) 2-page "B&V Halloween Style" fashion spread. The Annual also includes that now-classic 12-page B&V Halloween tale, Dan's "An Axe To Grind!" that features Veronica's truck-drivin' Aunt Gladys.

I will get to more of the above comics in some reviews later on in this thread.

This was the first issue of any of the New Riverdale comics that I actually read twice. Mainly because I just wanted to read it the first time and not slow the story down by stopping to read all of Ryan's little "DVD commentary" selections at the bottom of the page, so I went back and read it a little later, reading the little notes, too.

Originally I didn't think I had much to say about this, and wanted to wait until the next issue (or maybe even the whole story arc, however many issues it turns out to be) to comment so I'd have a better idea of how Ryan North was handling both Jughead and Sabrina (who we don't really get to know much about in this issue). But then I got to thinking about Jughead's whole emotional arc that he goes through as he's smitten (or thinks he is) with the Burger Lady. And JonInIowaCity made a comment in the Shoutbox about "So much for Jughead's asexuality!" which was one of the first things that ran through my head as I was reading the story for the first time, but now I don't think so.

In fact, I think this issue made some things clear about New Jughead (which don't necessarily apply to Classic Jughead, and probably don't) that I don't think I quite realized before. THIS Jughead seems to spend a lot of time inhabiting his own headspace, his own reality. Then I thought about how he loves hamburgers SO much that they serve as his creative muse to provide him with a source of artistic inspiration. Man, that is some kind of passion for hamburgers. He's like in another dimension of loving food that even the biggest foodies wouldn't quite get. After he ate his creation, "Grubhead", he even fantasizes having a conversation with the now-consumed art piece where Grubhead tells him "I would have done the same thing!" (which of course, since it's in Jughead's head, is exactly the sort of thing he'd like to hear).

Then I realized what is up with his whole obsession with the Burger Lady, and of course it has nothing to do with girls, or Sabrina in particular (he doesn't even know her name until that last page). Jughead LOVES hamburgers SO much, that he's in love with a girl in a costume who -- for him -- represents the personification of a hamburger, and Jughead's love for them. And unlike Grubhead, he doesn't have to fantasize the Burger Lady into existence, and she tells him exactly what he'd like to hear. She understands him (or so he thinks). She's validating his love of hamburgers, and encouraging it, egging him on to eat more hamburgers, try new and different kinds of hamburgers. This is all new to Jughead, who is used to being looked at as some sort of freak because of his obsession with hamburgers. For him it's like a dream come true, because for the first time in his life, a hamburger can talk back to him and carry on a conversation -- and the Burger Lady is saying all the right things to him. You've heard of "Hamburger Helper"? Well the Burger Lady is sort of a "Hamburger Enabler" for Jughead, and that's why he becomes obsessed with her. He feels at ease around her, just like he does sitting in front of a plate of burgers. Before he knows it, he's so relaxed that he's made a date with her without realizing it. He goes to Betty, all freaked out when he realizes what he's done, but I think he's hoping she'll talk him out of it. After all, she's just an advertising gimmick, she's being paid to do a job. But Betty turns out to be the wrong choice to go to, because Betty (being a romantic at heart) can't wait to see Jugead to go out on a date, so she encourages him to pursue it, not mess it up, and basically pushes him into it reluctantly, but all the while, Jughead is sort of envisioning reality colliding with his fantasy of having a real live hamburger to talk to and hang out with. As she's pushing and prodding him into it, this is turning into Betty's fantasy, not Jughead's. Even when Jughead shows up in the prearranged meeting spot, he's still going off into his fantasy world that the Burger Lady is an actual talking hamburger. When he sees her without her costume on, he's dismayed as his fantasy reverie is shattered and he now has to deal with the consequences of making a date with a real girl, not a hamburger fantasy.

My prediction: Jughead is going to try to back out and let her down easy, but it's not going to be that easy. Sabrina being new in town and kind of lonely, and going out on a limb to tentatively, hesitantly ask Jughead for a date (and give him every opportunity to decline gracefully), is going to be confused and hurt, and feel like he's just playing some kind of game with her, and she's not going to be happy about it. So then Jughead will have to deal with a teenage witch scorned. Oh boy.

There's a 16-page preview of Paul Castiglia and Rik Offenberger's new book, as discussed with the authors and host Jonathan Merrifield on The Riverdale Podcast Episode #231 (http://riverdalepodcast.com/post/148536816603/the-riverdale-podcast-episode-231-mlj) over at First Comics News (http://www.firstcomicsnews.com/?p=226006). The book is due to be released in comics shops on Sept. 21st, 2016, or you can order it directly from the publisher, TwoMorrows (link is on the preview article page), either as a print book or digital.

I'm SUPER excited about this book, and the previews reveal it to be a slick, colorful, and attractively-designed book as well. Check it out.

Did you know Archie is launching a NEW Josie and the Pussycats comic in September?

The cover price is $3.99 in the U.S. and Canada. So, if you bought each issue individually, 12 issues would cost you $47.88.

First 100 Subscribers Only!
Because you are a loyal Archie fan, you get this exclusive offer of 12 issues for as little as $19.99!!

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Together again for the first time! Superteen & Powerteen
(Mucho thanks to the great Dan Parent for his superhuman patience in putting up with me.)

... Well, not exactly, but you could be fooled into thinking that, in this parody comic that appeared in the Sept. 1970 issue of the NATIONAL LAMPOON. Actually, the artwork here by penciller Joe Orlando and inker Henry Scarpelli looks like it's straight out of an issue of DC comics' BINKY'S BUDDIES, one of the many Archie Comics lookalike titles from the late 1960s/early 1970s era.

For some reason this was a topic that popped into my head today, and I started to think about how I'd estimate that number, because... well, for me at least, it's a little like someone asking me how many TV programs I've watched in my lifetime, or how many hamburgers or slices of pizza I've eaten in my lifetime. Nobody (or practically nobody) keeps count of these things from the time they first started reading comics. You might know how many comics you OWN, but that's not quite exactly the same thing as how many you've READ. I mean different comics, not reading the same one over again. Then you have to ask, well what is meant by "a comic book"? Does one of those 16-page Halloween ComicFest issues count as "1 comic book" and one Archie 1000 Page Comics Digest count as "1 comic book" also? That doesn't seem right, and I have read comics in about as many different formats as there exist. But really I'm thinking of the standard format floppy comic of approximately 20-25 story pages as "1 comic book" so whatever the equivalent of that is. An Archie 1000 Page Comics Digest would be equal to about 40 or 50 standard comic books, so let's split the difference and say 45 comics. So there's the yardstick I'm going to use.

I then tried to figure out how long I've been reading comics, and how many years, and then how many weeks, that amounted to. Then I tried to estimate on average (conservatively) how many standard-size comics I'd read over that time in a typical week. Of course the average number of comics I read per week might be different now than it was at another time when I was reading more comics or less comics, so I tried to take that into account as well.

Long story short, the number of distinct standard page count comics that I've read over the course of my lifetime after doing the mental guesstimation and the math turned out to be about 40,000 -- or about 1 million pages of comics. That sounds like an exaggeration I'm sure, but after double-checking all my estimates, I feel confident that that's still on the conservative end of an estimation (it might even conceivably be 1.5 times that in actuality, but there's no way for me to be sure).

Loved the conclusion to this, and the teaser for the new series from Chapterhouse Comics. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the biggest Canadian comics publisher would be the one to most appreciate a new series from two classic Archie creators. The Archie/Canada connection continues!

While the new series from Chapterhouse Comics won't ship until October 26, I already went ahead and pre-ordered the Chapterhouse Summer Special 2016 (due out in July), which will have a preview of the new series.

Congratulations to Dan and Fernando on a great digital miniseries, and the launch of a new print series later this year!

I know we had a thread on the old site where we were discussing the practice of reprinted stories altering characters' race. I weighed in with the opinion that it didn't bother me in principle (as long as the reprint isn't an archival type collection, like a trade paperback... regular digests, it doesn't bother me) -- BUT what I DO find offensive is that it's so often done so poorly, in terms of choosing the character -- thus making the race change stick out like a sore thumb. It's like flashing a neon sign advertising with a big arrow "FAKE BLACK PERSON".

The most recent Archie digest, JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE JUMBO COMICS #21, contains the most ridiculous example of this race-changing practice that I've ever seen, proving that the colorists are so bored that they can't even be bothered to read the story which they're coloring, and are choosing which characters to race-swap on an entirely random basis, as long as they're not reoccurring characters. Well, this time the colorist goofed big time.

In the reprint of the classic Craig Boldman/Rex Lindsey Jughead story "LEMON Harangue" in this issue, LEROY LODGE has all of a sudden become black. Now granted, Leroy only appears in three or four panels in this story, and is only referred to by name in one of them -- although in the panel prior to that one, Jughead thinks "Oh great, here comes Veronica's bratty cousin!" But here's the thing... this story has SEVERAL incidental characters who appear in as many panels as Leroy, any one of whom would have made a suitable candidate for race-changing.

Leroy, on the other hand -- apart from being a fairly well-known (except to the colorist, apparently) character, has spiky hair, and freckles, and is accompanied in the story by an unnamed friend in all of the panels in which he appears -- why not the friend?!  Or the reporter who, walking by, observes Jughead attempting to charge Veronica $20 for a glass of lemonade, and thinks it would make an interesting human interest piece for the paper. Or the kid named Billy who asked Jughead to watch his lemonade stand for him while he took a break for lunch, or the entrepreneur who offers to buy Jughead's formula for lemonade thinking it must be the greatest lemonade ever created, if Jughead can get away with charging $20 a glass for it (Veronica bought 2 glasses), or the little girl who Jughead convinces that the lemonade must be terrible if Billy made it with his "grubby little hands" -- the whole point being that Jughead has only agreed to watch the stand because Billy agreed to let him have all the lemonade he wants for free, and Jughead wants to keep it all for himself, which is why he tries to charge Leroy $5 a glass for it, but Leroy passes, and then complains about Jughead's prices to Veronica.

The point is, there were at least four other incidental characters in this story that the colorist could have chosen to race-swap, but didn't.

Instead, he chose to race-swap Leroy Lodge, who is not only a reoccurring character, but Veronica's cousin who has appeared many times, and has always been Caucasian. UNBELIEVABLE. 

Here's an example of something I've never seen in any Archie stories before. I know what the stories are and where they were reprinted, but what I'm hoping is that someone can help identify where and when the stories originally appeared.

I happened to be reading ARCHIE GIANT COMICS COLLECTION, one of those 480 page digests that collects pages previously published in digests that appeared only a month or two earlier (for those that didn't know). ARCHIE GIANT COMICS COLLECTION was released June 10, 2015, and reprinted the two stories in question -- Veronica in "Prom Promoter" (previously reprinted in B&V FRIENDS DD #243, released May 13, 2015) and Archie in "Prom Problem" (previously reprinted in ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #15, released May 27, 2015). Undoubtedly I'd read both stories when they appeared in the earlier digest reprintings, but I never noticed the weird continuity between them because they were each reprinted in a different digest. In ARCHIE GIANT COMICS COLLECTION, they appear separated by a mere 26 pages.

"Prom Promoter" is a 6 page story starring Veronica, credited to George Gladir (writer) and Stan Goldberg (penciller). It tells Veronica's story of how she has to come up with a solution to allow her to leave with Mr. Lodge on a business trip to Patagonia, on a flight departing the airport at midnight on Friday -- the same night as Spring Prom Night. Veronica's proposed solution to Mr. Lodge is to have the private Lodge helicopter land on the RHS baseball field at 11:30pm and whisk her directly from the prom to the airport, while the band hired for the prom - Gilly and the Gig Pigs - in the bleachers, gives her a musical sendoff. In this story, Archie still hasn't ASKED her to the prom, but she's confident that he will. She tries to catch him at Pop's "having his usual pre-practice sodas" but misses him, so she goes to watch him at baseball practice, hoping he'll ask her for sure when he notices her in the bleachers after practice. Unfortunately for Ronnie, Betty is also there, and when Archie gets beaned by a fly ball and is lying at third base dazed and confused, she runs out to help him and while he's lying stunned and groggy he asks her to the prom. Out of luck, Veronica calls on Reggie as her back-up plan for a prom date, but he's just been beaten up by Moose for trying to kiss Midge (which happened in the same bleachers at baseball practice, but Veronica missed it because she stormed off after Betty announced to her that Archie had asked her to the prom). Fast-forward to Friday night's prom, and Reggie's there in a wheelchair with a nurse, and Veronica's dancing with Archie, who explains that Betty suddenly got the flu and had to miss the prom. Cut to time for Veronica's grand exit to the airport. She goes to the baseball field but the band isn't there to send her off (except for Gilly himself, with a tuba). Svenson explains to her that the rest of the band went to serenade poor sick Betty, and that all the prom-goers decided to go to "Tijuana Marvin's" to celebrate. As the Lodge helicopter flies away with Veronica, she asks the pilot to fly over Betty's address -- "You can't miss it, there's a band there", where she drops a card to Betty on which she's written "Dear Betty -- Hope you feel better! Get well soon! Without you I'm losing my competitive edge! Ron!"

Nothing particularly unusual or notable about that story by itself, but here's where it gets interesting. In the other story I mentioned, "Prom Problem", a 6 page story credited to Bob Bolling (writer) and Stan Goldberg (penciller), Archie can't sleep because he's being tormented by his personal devil and angel over whom to ask to Spring Prom Night. He can't decide, and until then he's avoiding both Betty and Veronica. After Archie ducks both B&V at school, Veronica goes to Pop's trying to catch him -- "He ALWAYS comes here for his usual two sodas before (baseball) practice!" Pop mentions that Jughead was just in and ordered two sodas, and as he's looking out the window, Veronica turns around to look and sees Jughead pushing a baby carriage past on the sidewalk with Archie wearing a bonnet in it... Pop says "Unusual 'tho, to give a baby that much to drink!" She runs out, trying to chase them in her spike heels, but can't catch them. She finally goes to baseball practice to wait for him in the bleachers near third base, but Betty's already there, and just as Archie gets beaned with a baseball at third base, Betty runs out to help, and while in his dazed and confused condition, Archie's personal angel whispers in his ear to ask Betty to the prom, which he does. Archie's personal devil mutters "ARRGH! You win this round!" Later at home, Archie's mother hands him the phone -- "It's Betty!" She can't go to the prom because she's got the flu. Later, at the prom, Archie's talking to Chuck about the whole crowd going to "Tijuana Marvin's" after the prom, but first Archie makes an arrangement for the band (guess who?) "Gilly and the Gig Pigs" to show up at Betty's house to serenade her as a consolation for missing the prom.

Now, each of those is a perfectly serviceable story on its own, but clearly there are too many specific points in common for this synchronicity to be a coincidence, specifically: Veronica trying to catch Archie at Pop's before practice, Archie getting beaned by a baseball at practice, and thereby asking Betty to the prom while in a dazed state, Betty getting the flu and missing the prom, the kids all going to Tijuana Marvin's after the prom, while Gilly and the Gig Pigs go to Betty's house and serenade her to make her feel better.

Neither is one story a re-write of the other one (common in Archie Comics, I know), because they both tell significantly different stories, that can't really be deemed as "a variation" on the other one's plot, yet just as clearly they are two stories of the same chain of events, told from different perspectives. I'm almost inclined to think that the credits given here are wrong, and that both stories were written by the same writer.

Does anyone remember where the stories (either or both) originally appeared? (Comics.org was no help, unfortunately.) I wonder if they had originally appeared in the same comic, or came out in the same month, or if the connection between them was ever mentioned in Victor Gorelick's "Editor's Notes" text feature that used to appear regularly for years in the 1990s.