Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on May 10, 2016, 12:47:46 PM

Quote from: irishmoxie on May 10, 2016, 12:14:26 AM
Sounds like your library didn't purchase the Archie titles or maybe they're coming soon. I closed my library account because I'm moving to a new state. Anyone else try? @60BettyandReggie @BettyReggie. I know you guys like libraries.

I didn't even know about this Hoopla thing. I need more info. Is it free? How does it work?
I'll try it this afternoon when I get home. Hopefully our libraries have it.

It was mentioned in the Shout box, and by Jonathan on this week's Riverdale Podcast. You probably missed it.
Note that as @irishmoxie mentions, not all library systems may offer the titles published by ACP or it may be too soon for some libraries to have added them yet.

FIRST, go here and see if you have a library card with one their 950 participating library partners. Registration is free.
HOOPLA registration page -
https://www.hoopladigital.com/register

If you have a valid library card for one of the participating libraries, you'll need to complete the registration and download the appropriate app for your device (either Apple iOS, Google Android, or Amazon Kindle). The app download is also free. I'm not clear how, or even IF, it works for PC users (I suspect not... but I haven't really looked into it that much).

You can borrow Hoopla Digital titles that are available through your library for free, just as if you were borrowing a print title from the library, for up to 21 days. The number of titles you can borrow at one time will be determined by your local library system.

You can browse through the Archie Comics titles available through Hoopla in different ways on one of these links:

HOOPLADIGITAL search - "Archie Comics"
https://www.hoopladigital.com/search?search=&q=Archie+Comics&pageSize=400&offset=0&kind=#11628929

HOOPLADIGITAL collections - Archie Comics
https://www.hoopladigital.com/collections/1395

HOOPLADIGITAL titles with Archie Comics A-Z
https://www.hoopladigital.com/publisher/title?sortOption=AZ&publisherId=1669160968&publisherName=Archie+Comics

HOOPLADIGITAL titles from Archie Superstars
https://www.hoopladigital.com/artist/1669161135

HOOPLADIGITAL search - "PEP Digital"
https://www.hoopladigital.com/series/1669160969

HOOPLADIGITAL search - "Archie 75"
https://www.hoopladigital.com/search?q=archie+75

Quote from: irishmoxie on May 10, 2016, 09:27:57 AM
I also really like Rachel Rising which I believe is a horror comic. I probably like it because it reminds me of iZombie (tv show).

Have you read the Vertigo Comics (DC) iZombie? I don't know that I'd call that "horror" per se, although it's obviously having fun playing with horror genre tropes. Haven't seen the TV series, but I really like the comic.

Quote from: irishmoxie on May 10, 2016, 09:27:57 AM
Reading Afterlife didn't really stress me out but it did gross me out from time to time. I usually really like apocalypse stories but more in the vein of Alex and Ada.

It's funny to me that you mention Alex + Ada as an "apocalypse story", because that never would occur to me, and I don't see it that way. To me it's a science fiction story about 2 people (one of whom is an artificially-intelligent android) caught up in a political/social upheaval which hinges on changes brought about by advancing technology (most good science fiction is, one way or another, about social change being brought about by advancing technology). It also seems to explore some philosophical questions regarding how we define what it means to be "human". Humans are used to being in control as the sole sentient species that are masters of the earth, and in this story, most people seem to want to cling to that sense of superiority and not share their dominance with a new type of intelligent being. This is actually a pretty common theme of the particular subgenre of SF dealing with robots and artificial intelligences. In the Terminator franchise, the two intelligences are of different types and are in a state of war (John Connor is the leader of the organic intelligences, while Skynet is the leader of the cybernetic intelligences, and in fact those intelligences form a hive-mind). The Terminator future is one I'd consider post-Apocalyptic, because humanity is on the brink of extinction. In Alex + Ada, it's the new robot intelligences who are in danger of being hunted to extinction, but the robots are too few and have too little power to consider it a state of war. The difference between the two is that in the Terminator franchise, Skynet was created by humans for the specific purpose of waging war (and it does such a good job of it, that it simply decided to redefine the definition of "the enemy"), while in Alex + Ada, the robots were created for a different purpose altogether - to serve as companions to humanity (but what humans really want is obedient but intelligent servants, not a new free-thinking species to share the planet with). In Alex + Ada, it's human society that is the ultimate "villain" of the story. For the newly-emerging robot species, it's less of an apocalypse than a crib-death, but surprisingly, by the final issue some sort of state of compromise between humans and robots seems to be slowly emerging.

Quote from: invisifan on May 10, 2016, 05:49:38 AM
Finally started Millar's "Jupiter's Legacy" ... fairly typical Millar  (which is to say pretty good)

I liked the prequel, Jupiter's Circle, even better in terms of the writing, although it's not as consistent having more than one artist.

There's a weird crossover in a THAT WILKIN BOY story I just read, where the doorbell rings at Bingo Wilkin's house and he answers it, only to find a little girl selling Girl Scout cookies door to door, except that it's not just any little girl, it's Li'l Jinx. Not just a little blonde girl who looks like Li'l Jinx, because Bingo recognizes her and calls her by name. Now the way the story was written, the plot could have gone the same way even if the girl selling the cookies wasn't Li'l Jinx, but for whatever reason they chose to put her in this guest appearance in the story. Jinx next goes to the Smythes' house next door, and when Samson answers the door, Jinx announces that she's selling Girl Scout cookies, and asks what kinds he would like and how many? Samson is highly suspicious and says "Wait a minute! Slow down, I don't like a fast pitchman!" Li'l Jinx points out that she's not a man, she's just a little girl selling Girl Scout cookies, and then Samson, eyeing her narrowly, demands "Maybe. So YOU say. Do you have any identification papers or PROOF of who you claim to be?"


It's a small part in the story and Jinx only appears on the first 3 or 4 pages, I think. Still it was a surprise to see this story, because I don't think I've ever seen Jinx in any other stories outside her own, except maybe a tiny part in "Night At the Comic Shop", along with a whole bunch of other guest-stars.

Quote from: irishmoxie on May 09, 2016, 07:27:39 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on May 09, 2016, 06:30:35 PM

Quote from: BettyReggie on May 09, 2016, 03:38:01 PM
I bought a stress free coloring book which is called Calming Nature. I also order 7 of those free comics from Midtown Comics.

I just noticed THE WALKING DEAD COLORING BOOK (which is comics you color yourself) at the store last week. So apparently they are covering the people who like to color while simultaneously maintaining higher levels of stress as well.

The Walking Dead is stressful? Hmm. It's on my TBR list...so maybe not now.

By the yardstick of you not liking The Married Life or Afterlife With Archie as being too stressful, yes, absolutely. It's pretty much like AWA if it didn't have the Archie characters in it and was better written. (And came out on time every month and sold 100 times better...) Which was why I was surprised to see you were a fan of Harrow County (which I still haven't read... I flipped through it, but the art didn't attract me), as I pretty much thought that was a horror comic (but maybe I was mistaken, since I didn't actually read it).

If there were a way to do it without getting caught, I think I'd go with arson. Screw the insurance companies!

Quote from: BettyReggie on May 09, 2016, 03:38:01 PM
I bought a stress free coloring book which is called Calming Nature. I also order 7 of those free comics from Midtown Comics.

I just noticed THE WALKING DEAD COLORING BOOK (which is comics you color yourself) at the store last week. So apparently they are covering the people who like to color while simultaneously maintaining higher levels of stress as well.

Quote from: irishmoxie on May 09, 2016, 05:38:02 PM
I don't have the original Laugh series. It's on my to be bought list after I move. Mainly I'm just interested in potential Josie or Sabrina. FYI I'm moving 32 boxes of comics.

Hmm. I was just thinking about it in terms of contents, and even though Volume 2 of LAUGH came out immediately following #400 of Volume 1, in some ways the 2nd volume seems more like a replacement for Archie's T.V. LAUGH-OUT, since they both had Archie, Sabrina, and Josie stories. I've only read a few issues of Volume 1 but I don't remember Sabrina or Josie being in there. Or did they move to Volume 1 of LAUGH immediately after T.V. LAUGH-OUT ended in April 1986? I'll have to try to look into this.


Okay, checking GCD I find Sabrina in Laugh 394 (but not 395), and 399. Josie in 400. The others in between aren't indexed. I should probably check issues of PEP as well, anytime after 1984 when SABRINA and JOSIE ended. It seems like the featured characters in Laugh (Volume 1) and Pep were somewhat random, apart from Archie, but Sabrina or Josie could be in any of the un-indexed ones. As opposed to T.V. LAUGH-OUT and LAUGH (Volume 2) in which the features were pretty stable. Sabrina's in PEP 382 and 411.

Quote from: PTF on May 09, 2016, 03:04:07 PM
Yeah, there's a multiverse. Pretty much Ambrose and Fred Mirth are the only versions of themselves so they can travel between the universes.

Like the old Little Archie when they had these weird adventures that was thought to be their imagination. That was just a young Ambrose using his powers without knowing.

Don't forget there was the Bolling story where teenage Ambrose returns to Riverdale, too.


Sometimes I just think there's a Bollingverse-Archie that's different - which includes both Little Archie and whatever other regular Archie stories Bolling did, like that weird one where Fred Andrews gets mugged (his head is slammed against a concrete wall) and then he meets a ghost (or a hallucination brought on by his concussion). It's a pretty strange ending with a battered and bedraggled Fred who hauls himself out of the river and walks home (he took his car to the Veterans' reunion) with his clothes all torn and his head bruised and Mary barely says a thing about it. Probably any story Bolling wrote, regardless of who drew it. Those stories just seem to operate on a different logic than other Archie stories, for the most part.

Quote from: irishmoxie on May 09, 2016, 04:27:52 PM
The first one is probably that one from Reggie though I suppose they could've put one in TV Laugh Out or somewhere else that would've been earlier. I haven't been through all of TV Laugh Out. The Cleopatra one is from a Laugh issue vol 2.

Could it have been in LAUGH earlier than 1974? I mean the first volume, not the one from 1987. Come to think of it, some of those MAAP stories are retreads, like "Marcia the Mermaid" that was in the FCBD 2009 comic. The original "Marcia the Mermaid" story was in MADHOUSE, and they just retold it to make it fit the MAAP series. I'm pretty sure there was an earlier version of Cleopatra (it might even have been the one from the early 1960s, when the Elizabeth Taylor movie came out), but I don't have both stories to compare them.

You know what's funny? Just today I found a story (it's actually a Jughead story, but trust me, it's really an Archie VS Veronica story in which Jughead just happens to play a pivotal role) titled "Writing Wrongs". It was in JUGHEAD & FRIENDS DIGEST #18 (and was also reprinted in JUGHEAD DOUBLE DIGEST #179), another Craig Boldman/Rex Lindsey gem. I wish I could show it but I have no scanner. It is the exact reversal of the story "Cover Up" with the final panel showing Veronica looming over Archie, waving her arms at Archie threateningly, and Archie quivering in fear of attack. It's a funny story, but it shows that ACP was equal-opportunity when it came to who's on the receiving end of (as Daren would say) "assault". Of course there's no actual assault going on here, because it's a cartoon, but I guess if it were a real situation with real people acting that way, it would be considered assault by the 21st Century legal definition. As would the other story, "Cover Up", but then by the real world legal definition of the term, the Three Stooges would be considered guilty of both assault and battery in every film they ever made (as would Moose Mason in about 90% of his appearances.) Legally, it doesn't matter which sex is the assaulter and which is the assaultee. But that's only if it were the real world, instead of a comedy cartoon.


Anyway, I tried and tried to find some scans of it somewhere online, but with no luck. So I'll just summarize it. At the beginning of the story, Archie's at home writing a letter when Jughead shows up. He's hopping mad, furiously writing a poison pen letter to Veronica, telling her off in no uncertain terms, and exactly what he thinks of her. "Stuck-up - petty - vindictive - jealous - overbearing - snooty - demanding" - blah, blah, blah. She just pushed him too far once too often and he finally snapped on her, and they had a huge fight about it. Jughead listens to him rant about her for a couple of panels, then calmly offers to take the letter and deliver it himself. He persuades Archie that Veronica doesn't merit the price of a stamp, and Archie agrees, saying that he refuses to waste another penny on her. Jughead heads over to the Choklit Shoppe and has a conversation with Pop Tate, after Pop notices him hurriedly scribbling away on a piece of paper. Pop looks over his shoulder and reads what he wrote. Then he remarks that he didn't think Jughead had it in him. "When did YOU learn to write LOVE letters? That has to be the sweetest, sugariest, most sentimental, mushy, gushy, sappy love letter I ever saw! Who's the girl?" Jughead then replies "It's for Veronica." and Pop has the most confused and dazed look on his face. Then Jughead quickly explains that he's en route to deliver Archie's letter to Veronica's house. He explains about Archie's ill-considered temper fit and poison pen letter, and why he just decided to take it upon himself to re-write it. He's been through this all before, so he figures he'll save everyone from hurt feelings and getting all worked up and possible mayhem and weeks of cold-shouldering by just cutting to the makeup letter and Archie and Veronica getting back together again. By his logic, he knows the pattern that the fight is going to proceed so he's just saving everyone a lot of time and emotional wear-and-tear, and Veronica will never know the difference. Jughead takes Archie's poison pen letter out of the envelope (Archie was so mad, and Jughead was so casually persuasive, that Archie never even bothered to seal the envelope.) and replaces it with the one he wrote before sealing it. Jughead then heads over to the Lodge Mansion, knocks on the door, and it's opened by a still-steaming Veronica who angrily demands to know what he wants. "I promised Archie I'd deliver his letter to you." Veronica begins to protest, and expects the letter is full of Archie's vitriolic parting shots at her, but then she opens it and begins to read what he (actually Jughead) wrote, and it melts her heart. The little hearts start circling over her head, and she heads straight to the phone to call Archie, inviting Jughead to help himself to the fridge as a reward for delivering the letter. ("The fringe benefits aren't bad" thinks Jughead to himself.) Veronica seems overjoyed. Meanwhile, Archie at home is having second thoughts, ("What was I thinking?! She'll probably tear me into little pieces!") until he's informed by his Mom that he has a phone call from Veronica. Now Archie is really worried, wondering how bad it's going to be. "GULP! She might reach right through the phone and rip my guts out!" He stands there trembling, holding the phone at arm's length, as far away from his ear as possible, trying to brace himself for an icy blast. Then he hears Veronica's honeyed voice cooing in the phone, all lovey-dovey. "Oh Archiekins, I'm so sorry we had a fight! You're such a darling! What you wrote really made me change the way I look at you!" and Archie has this expression of delirious relief and confusion, all at once. After hanging up the phone, he spends a couple of panels just looking dazed and trying to figure out what happened. Eventually he decides "It must have been my firmness, my forceful nature! Girls like a guy who stands his ground, who's manly, and puts his foot down!" Now he's gotten over his fear and has gone the other way, becoming cocky and confident. "I'll head right over there now! Yes sir, it's about time I did something like this! Things are gonna be different between us from now on! A REAL MAN takes charge and shows a girl who's boss! Now I've got her respect!" Immediately after he gets to Veronica's, he's still charged up and launches into his cocky act -- "Listen baby, from now on, I give the orders!" Veronica looks a little confused at first, but by the next panel she lays into him with "Wait a minute! What's going on here?!? Who do you think you are, anyway?" AND Archie looks befuddled, then shocked as she turns on him and lays into him. In the last panel, Veronica is in a tantrum, flailing her arms at him in a rage as she looms over him, with stars, lighting bolts, and daggers radiating out of her face, while Archie shrinks back away in fear, trembling, as Jughead walks out off panel in the foreground saying "Oh well! Might as well get a snack! This could go on for a while!"

Quote from: irishmoxie on May 09, 2016, 12:27:26 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on May 09, 2016, 10:47:49 AM

Quote from: irishmoxie on May 09, 2016, 10:40:11 AM
Lots of parodies in The Mighty Archie Art Players stories from Laugh and of course TV Laugh Out.

Here's GCD's listing. You may have some of the others. That would make a great digital exclusive collection.

The Mighty Archie Art Players look like it's something that was started in the Laugh series. I haven't been through them all but it looks like it's in every issue. I'll continue to add them. I'm missing issue #17 though.

Cool. Have you identified the FIRST Mighty Archie Art Players story?  I think the LAST one may have been the FCBD issue from 2009.
The earliest one I could find is in REGGIE AND ME #68, Jan. 1974, "Gone With the Breeze" (a 14 page parody of Gone With the Wind).

Quote from: irishmoxie on May 09, 2016, 10:40:11 AM
Lots of parodies in The Mighty Archie Art Players stories from Laugh and of course TV Laugh Out.

Here's GCD's listing. You may have some of the others. That would make a great digital exclusive collection.

Quote from: BlueBomber2015 on May 09, 2016, 05:39:48 AM
I need to catch up on my Mega Man by hunting down the final issues they had, after completing The Ultimate Betrayal arc, I forgot to read the Worlds Unite arc, so I have to fish out for back issues.

You can just skip the crossover and go straight to the last 3 issues. I did and it doesn't feel like there's anything missing in between there.
I'd be shocked if MM ever actually came back. I don't think it'll happen. I doubt the last three issues will be collected in trade paperback, either.

They cancelled the MEGA MAN MASTER EDITION VOLUME 1 collection, which would have been in the Best of Archie Comics format.

Quote from: Fernando Ruiz on May 09, 2016, 10:25:50 AM

Quote from: BettyReggie on May 07, 2016, 11:14:21 PM
Are any comics that you had read that you have given up on?

I gave up reading Archie comics.

Can't say I blame you. You probably already read practically all the good one.