Quote from: spazaru on May 18, 2016, 07:15:51 AM
Whatever you think of the reboots (I'm personally fine with them), I think we're getting some great art from them.

I miss the classic Archie artists. But at least Derek Charm's an improvement and a move in the right direction. Don't care for Veronica Fish's work at all.

Four digests solicited, with only one of them (Jughead and Archie #22) indicating the lead story is new. Not good. 

Quote from: irishmoxie on May 18, 2016, 09:55:20 AM

Quote from: spazaru on May 18, 2016, 09:51:47 AM

Quote from: BettyReggie on May 18, 2016, 09:17:27 AM
I just read Jughead #6 my digital copy. It was just ok, I would give it a B. The other 5 issues were better. I can't we haven't seen Ethel in any of the issues. It seems like they really don't talk about Jughead not liking girls. He was friendly with Betty. And he really can't stand Veronica.

Maybe the new writer and artist will bring Ethel in

I was re-reading Archie and I saw Ethel in a background in a scene. I believe it's the one where Veronica vomits up the sloppy joe.

I was just saying to myself the other day, "You know, there just isn't enough vomiting in comics." Good to see that ACP's addressing that.

Quote from: irishmoxie on May 18, 2016, 09:53:20 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on May 17, 2016, 08:08:48 PM

Quote from: invisifan on May 17, 2016, 06:20:30 PM
Starting a 10-pager: http://www.magickchicks.com/strips-mc/mc_soft_reboot_-_two_melissas_-_pg_1_of_10

If you haven;t read the story to this point you have to take the split at face value ...

I'll probably just wait until all ten pages are up. Just makes more sense... I like to read a complete story or a complete chapter. Most webcomics aren't really written in "newspaper strip" mode. I'm even kind of starting to feel that way about continued stories in monthly comics versus trade collections. It just seems so much more consistent and comprehensible that way (and the problem is compounded the more ongoing comics series you read).

Isn't Gisele calling the new EC/MC (since returning from hiatus) a "soft reboot" now? What split?

But if you only read trade paperbacks there will be low sales of single issues and series will end early and the comic industry could potentially fail.

It's probably an inevitable shift. Single issues are shifting to digital (you're living proof of that). Vertigo trade paperback sales have been outselling single issues for years. One issue with multiple stories is practically gone (Archie Comics is evidence of that). Single issues with a single complete story have been on the wane for decades. Consumers obviously overwhelmingly prefer the long-story form, so it shouldn't be surprising the sales of graphic novels and collected editions have grown stronger while floppy comic sales have grown proportionally weaker. Webcomic/digital first to collected edition is the comic industry model of the future.

Quote from: irishmoxie on May 16, 2016, 01:34:55 AM
I also am not a big fan of Reggie the villain and I don't like how they keep withholding info like what Reggie did that was so bad that he didn't want anyone else to know about.

Hit and run accident where he killed Hot Dog with his car and fled the scene before anyone saw him? At least, that's the answer in Afterlife With Archie.

SQUADRON SUPREME #7
ASTONISHING ANT-MAN #8
TITANS HUNT #8 (of 8 )
SILVER SURFER #4
JUGHEAD #6
CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA #5
HENCHGIRL #1&2 BUMPER EDITION
MICRONAUTS #2
ASTRO CITY #35
INVINCIBLE #128
FUTURE QUEST #1
THE BADGER #4 (of 5)
STEVE DITKO ARCHIVES VOL. 6: THE OUTER LIMITS (Introduction only - 6 pages)
WALLY WOOD: GALAXY ART AND BEYOND HC (Introduction only -21 pages)
ARCHIE BY BOB MONTANA: THE COMPLETE NEWSPAPER COMICS 1963-1965 (Introduction only - 3 pages)
GRAVEDIGGER: HOT WOMEN COLD CASH TP

Quote from: invisifan on May 17, 2016, 09:13:25 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on May 17, 2016, 08:08:48 PM

Quote from: invisifan on May 17, 2016, 06:20:30 PM

If you haven;t read the story to this point you have to take the split at face value ...

Isn't Gisele calling the new EC/MC (since returning from hiatus) a "soft reboot" now? What split?

If you're up to date with the series the "soft reboot" means it's a good point to come in, with most previous plot threads resolved - I was referring to Melissa's condition at the end of it.

Ah, okay. I didn't look at it yet, but now I noticed the "two Melissas" in in the URL.

I admit to confusion over the term "soft reboot". I KNOW what a reboot is. "Soft reboot" seems to mean different things, depending on who's using it. What Gisele calls a soft reboot, I call a "jump-on point". Sort of like a little clean-up around the house to get rid of the clutter and make things look neat and orderly if you know guests will be arriving, particularly those who aren't regular visitors. Just trying to make things accessible and inviting to the uninitiated. Not really a reboot, since nothing is really changing.


To me "soft reboot" equates more to "bold new direction", a shakeup in status quo.

Quote from: invisifan on May 17, 2016, 06:20:30 PM
Starting a 10-pager: http://www.magickchicks.com/strips-mc/mc_soft_reboot_-_two_melissas_-_pg_1_of_10

If you haven;t read the story to this point you have to take the split at face value ...

I'll probably just wait until all ten pages are up. Just makes more sense... I like to read a complete story or a complete chapter. Most webcomics aren't really written in "newspaper strip" mode. I'm even kind of starting to feel that way about continued stories in monthly comics versus trade collections. It just seems so much more consistent and comprehensible that way (and the problem is compounded the more ongoing comics series you read).

Isn't Gisele calling the new EC/MC (since returning from hiatus) a "soft reboot" now? What split?

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on May 16, 2016, 10:32:36 PM

Quote from: BettyReggie on May 16, 2016, 10:10:46 PM
I remember a story where Betty was Rolling Blading & she was almost hit by this huge truck. Reggie ran into the street. He saved her. His sweater was ripped. And few days later Betty made him a sweater to replace his rip one. He asked her to go the movies. So they as actually started to date but they were not sure if was true love. Archie & Veronica were jealous & actually missed them. In the end Reggie did what nice person would do & it proved he actually had a heart.

"For One Brief Moment". That's my favorite Betty/Reggie story.

Even though I'd read the story before in reprint form, I was surprised to find that issue (BETTY #43) with the original appearance of that story, while rummaging through a box of unsorted comics for 50c. I never find an issue of an Archie comic that way that contains some 'significant' or notable story like that. That story IS pretty much the Holy Grail for Betty/Reggie shippers. Doubtful that there'll ever be another.

Quote from: invisifan on May 16, 2016, 07:23:33 PM
The answer should be obvious to many (if not most) girls of her generation with very little effort (in fact the basics were used by Fred Saberhagen in his Dracula series of novels in the 1970s to allow him to shave conveniently) and that is the tablet (or even smartphone) with a front facing camera — almost universal these days on tablets (for skype & such as well as facial recognition) and common for phones too.  Where Dracula had a large video camera mounted over a monitor and had to train himself to switch (back) right-to-left, the modern device is hand held and can generate a mirror image for display automatically ...

Does she need to get a computer genius to write that software for her? Well, if you enter "hand mirror" in the search at Google playstore you'll get about 30 apps that do exactly that, plus options to zoom, brighten, illuminate, freeze, snapshot, flip, try effects and more ...

Jury's still out on whether or not vampires can be photographed. It varies depending on who's writing them. The minute you start mixing science and technology with the supernatural, then you're forced dredge up questions about "The Way Things Work", and ask questions about why IS it exactly, that vampires cast no reflections?

But what if you misplaced your tablet/phone or forgot to charge it? Left in the car or the bathroom before going somewhere else, and then you have to fix your makeup? Not so much more reliable than depending on your BVFF (best vampire friend forever) to check it for you. Kelly and Jess might as well learn to depend on each other. Fixing each other's makeup is just going to be a minor example of a lot of different ways that they're going to need to rely on each other's help not to blow their cover, and to protect each other from threats small and large.

Quote from: daren on May 16, 2016, 04:15:11 PM
Well the Archie stories are in cartoon-world mode whenever any main character tries to kill someone so I can see why they let it pass even if it's not by the rules, they meant those more for horror and superhero comics. Boomerangs are pretty deadly, guess that was the last of Archie! 

They are in cartoon-world mode about 95% of the time, Daren. Except if it's Al Hartley's Spire Christian Comics, or some other obviously didactic story about prejudice or world peace or a Christmas miracle or something, or parts (only parts, there's still some cartoon stuff in there) of LIFE WITH ARCHIE or ARCHIE AT RIVERDALE HIGH (which really seems more like it's Chuck Clayton's comic anyway). Usually it's easy to tell if there's no gag at the end of the story.

Quote from: spazaru on May 16, 2016, 06:21:55 PM
I want one starring Pepper where she comes back to haunt Archie Comics for dropping her from the storyline without even a send off.  It could be like Archie vs Predator where she just kills one person after another, preferably by playing really out of tune guitar, thereby showing why she wasn't in the Pussycats. 

Something like that.

You make me long for simpler times when PTF would just suggest something like giving Segarini his own series.
I mean, come ON!  Obviously playing the guitar badly is Albert's job. Pepper needs her hands free to hold the knives.

Quote from: invisifan on May 16, 2016, 04:19:21 PM
I's very difficult to track

You IS very difficult to track. You're jumping around connecting dots in a non-sequitur way that makes your train of thought impossible to follow.
What do mushrooms (yeah, technical classifications aside, very few people are going to characterize mushrooms as a "creature") have to do with cryptozoology? Mushrooms are KNOWN, cryptids are UNknown. Therefore whether fungi can be considered a group organism is completely irrelevant. And why DO you insist on answering a straightforward question with a riddle in the form of the answer to a previous cryptic remark of yours that I've long since forgotten about? That was rhetorical. Don't you DARE answer, since I'm sure you'll think you're being clever, but you'll just be being annoying again.


Oh, why would you just be unobfuscating and just explain what you meant about the makeup? Obviously too much to ask.

Quote from: daren on May 16, 2016, 03:46:12 AM
Next one:

It's been interesting to me noting some things about the daily newspaper strips in reading them. For instance, in panel two here we have Mr. Weatherbee's secretary, who appears in a LOT of the strips, but (at least up to 1963 where I've read) is NEVER addressed by name. But she is in every respect, by the way she's drawn, the woman who'll we'll later come to know as Miss (or Ms.) Phlips. Svenson appears in a lot of the daily strips, Weatherbee in almost a quarter of them. Miss Beazly appears almost as often as Weatherbee and Miss Grundy. There's even a reoccurring character named "Old Man Beazly" who I've seen in a half-dozen strips or so, but never together with Miss Beazly. No connection beyond the obvious same last name is ever mentioned.


There are other Bob Montana creations in the strips that I've never seen in the comic books, like Hooky Hogan, the school's habitual truant, who always acts in the strips like an incarcerated felon, scheming ways to "bust out of the joint". Another that just starts appearing in multiple strips in 1963 is Hunk, who is a bit like an even dumber Moose Mason. (In the strip where he first appears, Coach Kleats sends him to work out with weights and a medicine ball in the gym, hoping he'll lose some weight so he can be on the basketball team. After a while, Kleats checks on Hunk to see how he's doing, and asks him to now try putting the ball in the basket to see how he's shaping up. Hunk tries to shove the medicine ball through the basketball hoop.)

Quote from: daren on May 16, 2016, 04:04:12 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on May 16, 2016, 04:13:01 AM

Quote from: daren on May 16, 2016, 03:38:25 AM
Not so much the novelty wearing off (though, it helped) as the series not living up to the promise of the first couple of issues. It seemed like big things would happen with the Lodge corporation moving in and Archie and his friends trying to get jobs working for them, I thought they would all become more and more involved with that. There should be some exciting development like that to carry the action through and the main five need something that brings them together, they're more interesting as a unit. Instead the stories are just rambling on from one character to another and I find myself not caring about anyone very much...and some of the characterization from the classic stories doesn't work. It's okay for classic Archie to be accident prone without showing that he's, you know, on meds or getting some other professional help, because it's not done realistically. This comic IS realistic and he and his parents just come across as so irresponsible for not reining him in. 

Call it what you will. Some of the initial bloom is off the rose as people seem to be beginning to take a closer critical evaluation of the reboot and various details about how the individual aspects of art and story (especially) relate to the whole. Your criticisms being different than mine (or others') notwithstanding. I think there was just a groundswell of initial enthusiasm that carried a lot of readers along that blinded them to some details about exactly how things were working (or not, as may be the case) with the reboot. The "decompressed storytelling" certainly delayed that assessment on a lot of readers' parts.

Good observations.

I'm still hoping a little that Mark Waid can salvage, but I doubt it. There was an article says he doesn't have an overall plan for this series, it shows.


Other characterizations that don't work: spoiled screaming Veronica who was sometimes awesome in the classic stories that way but comes across like she is almost mentally disabled here without explaining it, she's had her moments now and then but thats probably as much me wanting to like her as her being likable. Obnoxious social climbing Mr. Mantle is a terrible idea, if they wanted to make one of the Mantles a bad parent or jerk why not Mrs. Mantle? We know less about her and for ONCE they could have one of the mothers be less nice than the fathers. Mr. Lodge isn't half as complex as he was in the classic stories. Of course Waid could be lulling us into taking their villainy for granted planning to spring surprise character revelations for them later but let's face it, this series probably isn't going to last long enough for that, their creepness is so entrenched now.

The idea of filling in some background detail on the parents is a good one in general, as that's an area where the classic stories are famously vague (and changeable to suit whatever circumstances a specific story required). What, exactly, IS it that Fred Andrews, Hal Cooper, and Forsythe Jones (a.k.a. Jonesy) do for a living, anyway? I mean, of ALL the parents in the classic stories, only ONE has a very specific occupation/career -- Ricky Mantle, newspaper publisher.  It's a detail of those other characters that hardly ever comes into play except in the vaguest sort of way. Fred Andrews... doesn't he work in an office or something? Well, it's not too specific, but I guess it eliminates a lot of career possibilities. But what does he DO in that office every day, and what sort of business does he work for? It's never really gone into beyond some stories where something non-specific like "Andrews, where are those reports?! I need them TODAY!!" comes up in the plot. Mr. Lodge is "a businessman" and a millionaire, but what is the nature of his business, and how did he make his fortune? The latter is never really answered in classic stories, and the former is changeable to suit whatever type of business is relevant to the plot of a specific story. In effect, Lodge owns any and every type of business enterprise imaginable, without limits, and businesses that he is involved in unsuspected to the general reader of Archie Comics can show up at any time that it makes an interesting story connection. Since we don't know what type of business office Fred Andrews works in, or what he really does there, why NOT say that the office he works for is one of Mr. Lodge's companies? It's an interesting wrinkle.


One thing that bugs me a little is that whenever there's some new take on ARCHIE, Mr. Lodge gets a crap deal as some kind of sinister manipulative power-monger, or at the very least, his motives and character are suspect and questionable. It's happened to one degree or another in To Riverdale and Back Again, The Married Life, and now the reboot. That's the complete reverse of classic Archie, in which Hiram Lodge is almost uniformly shown to be the type of millionaire business magnate who is smart but fair, honest and of unimpeachable character. He's a good father, gives back to the community, helps out the younger generation (even if he sometimes takes a dim view of some of them as individuals). Often the classic stories show some situation in which the kids point out some way his business is negatively impacting the community, and he always takes corrective action to resolve the problem once he's made aware of it, because he cares. He's not one of those cold unfeeling types who feels himself above everyone, despite the obvious gap in wealth. He's never shown as motivated by pure greed or underhanded in his dealings with anyone.


Most of the few stories that show Mr. Mantle seem to portray him as a journalist of integrity, as well as good character. It's a bit facile to turn him into a sly schemer in order to try to draw some parallels with his son's many character faults.