In what cannot possibly be a coincidence, I found this contest announced in an Archie Club News page from early in 1979... shortly after the "Riverdale 2001" series of stories had begun to appear in 1978. They appear to be fishing for ideas here to fuel future installments of this little sub-series.

Quote from: nuageo on April 11, 2016, 03:07:26 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 11, 2016, 04:39:11 AM
Boy did this go off the rails quickly. All I wanted to do was post one image of an imaginary crossover cover between an underground comic character inspired by Archie Comics (that was also the object of a lawsuit from ACP) and the original character that inspired that underground parody; but everyone seems to have had their own interpretation of what I was starting here. I figured my original post might generate a couple of likes, and maybe one or two comments along the lines of "I never heard of Cherry Poptart", and then fall off the "Recent Topics" within 12 hours or so... 

Who is she and what does she do? 

Who cares? Just look at her! And, everything!!

The story I want to see is Souphead Jones versus Leroy Lodge. Or maybe Sabrina's cousin Esmerelda versus Leroy.

Well, that and a story where Archie's identical cousin meets Jughead's identical cousin.

Quote from: old_jughead on April 11, 2016, 03:08:26 AM
Being compared to Desperate Housewives is promising, but the lack of trashiness is worrying.

Do you think it might benefit by a title change from "Riverdale" to "Desperate Comic Book Publishers"...? 

Boy did this go off the rails quickly. All I wanted to do was post one image of an imaginary crossover cover between an underground comic character inspired by Archie Comics (that was also the object of a lawsuit from ACP) and the original character that inspired that underground parody; but everyone seems to have had their own interpretation of what I was starting here. I figured my original post might generate a couple of likes, and maybe one or two comments along the lines of "I never heard of Cherry Poptart", and then fall off the "Recent Topics" within 12 hours or so... 

Quote from: stangoldberg4ever on April 10, 2016, 08:04:38 PM
Expand their Dark Circle superhero line with creator-owned titles.

As far as ACP is concerned, I'm pretty sure "The company is the creator of record" is Rule #1 under the articles of incorporation. If companies like Fantagraphics, Image and Dark Horse represent the most creator-friendly end of the comic book publishing industry spectrum, then Archie Comics occupies the far opposite side beyond even the corporate giants like DC and Marvel (even they have small creator-owned imprints, or had at one time). Archie Comics is probably one of THE least creator-friendly comics publishing companies ever.

But even if they were going to do creator-owned titles, superheroes as a genre should probably be the last thing they'd be thinking about. That option pretty much stopped being a viable one for success in the mid-1990s. Why, something like that would have about as much chance of succeeding as... Stan Lee's Mighty 7...

Quote from: Mr.Lodge on April 11, 2016, 01:58:32 AM

You want super-heroes? Oh, Dan Parent's got your super-heroes...

How'd you miss this one, Mr. Lodge?

Pencils by Bill Galvan.
Colored by (left) AyaBlue; (right) Glen Whitmore.  All former members of this forum; where are they now? (I salute you, gentlemen and lady!)

I was surprised to see (in an issue of Archie's Funhouse) a story illustrated by Kurt Schaffenberger. Schaffenberger was best known as the artist on various Silver Age and Bronze Age Superman related titles like LOIS LANE, and later drew both JIMMY OLSEN and SUPERGIRL when those three titles merged into the giant-sized SUPERMAN FAMILY comic book. He also drew the Captain Marvel Family in SHAZAM! in the late 1970s.

As soon as I looked at the first page, I was struck at the familiarity of the poses and immediately checked the credits. Of course...! Schaffenberger. He was so perfectly suited to drawing for Archie Comics, too -- I immediately wondered why I hadn't seen more Archie stories drawn by him. The story in question seemed to be from the very early 1970s, with all the characters wearing bell-bottoms and talking about "the new generation" and "peace & love" (the plot of this particular story being to get Moose to give up his violent ways as hearkening back to the "old generation's" way of thinking).

I'm guessing Schaffenberger was still getting plenty of work at DC at the time (so if they were treating him well, and it paid better, then why should he leave for a lower page rate at ACP?)  Still, there came a time 15 years later or so, when his work wasn't in such great demand at DC, so I wonder if he ever returned to ACP in the mid-1980s or later?  This was the case for people like Chic Stone and Gene Colan and Joe Staton, and a few others who escape my mind at the moment -- when newer, younger "hotter" artists displaced them on titles at Marvel and DC, they went to ACP and found work.

But as I mentioned, Kurt Shaffenberger's style needed only slight modification to fit in perfectly with the ACP house style. He could have been one of the GREAT Archie artists if he had done more work, since he was well known for his pretty girls (that's why he was the regular artist on LOIS LANE in the first place).

Another DC artist whose work I've never seen at ACP, but who strikes me as someone who'd have been a perfect fit at the company, is Ramona Fradon. She was known at DC primarily for her pencilling work on AQUAMAN, METAMORPHO, PLASTIC MAN, and SUPER FRIENDS, and as the artist on the long-running BRENDA STARR, REPORTER newspaper strip.

Quote from: Fernando Ruiz on April 10, 2016, 05:05:20 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 10, 2016, 04:32:05 PM

TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST, once I discovered it, turned out to be one of the most interesting digest titles (IMHO) that ACP ever published, along with JUGHEAD & FRIENDS DIGEST, both of which were published concurrently for nearly 40 issues -- a fact that I attribute largely to your involvement in contributing new stories to each issue (or most issues, at any rate -- I've yet to read all of them), and to the fact that you were throwing new characters in there, like Raj and Wendy Weatherbee (I need to find all the stories beyond those two digests where she had a co-starring, as opposed to merely a supporting role in the story), and occasionally even featuring Bingo Wilkin (a personal favorite) in new stories.

JUGHEAD & FRIENDS DIGEST is the best of all the various Jughead digests I've read, not only because of the inclusion of the regular Wilkin Boy reprints, but because nearly every issue had a perfect blend of Jughead stories by Samm Schwartz (classic era), Boldman & Lindsay (late 1990s-2000s), and you (the new story in each issue, plus some other reprints of yours that seemed fairly recent). I'm currently working my way through those, and enjoying the heck out of each one.

Thanks. To me, those two titles, Tales From Riverdale and Jughead & Friends, were the Golden Age of my work on the digests. I especially loved Tales From Riverdale where I really tried my best to experiment. Probably my favorite character of the ones that I created was Wendy Weatherbee. I thought she had a ton of potential and I was looking forward to developing her more. Alas...

I loved her character! A breath of fresh air... although I would have been curious to see how she'd wind up evolving beyond the roadblock of "The Bee"s long shadow hanging over her. Surely that situation couldn't have continued to fuel the plot of her every appearance as time went on?

Quote from: Fernando Ruiz on April 10, 2016, 05:05:20 PM
Sadly, it seems both Tales and J&F were the lowest selling digests of their time. This led Archie Comics to conclude that digests, other than the Betty & Veronica digests, HAD to have Archie's name in the title. This led to Jughead & Friends to be replaced by Jughead & Archie. Tales From Riverdale was replaced either by World Of Archie or Archie's Funhouse.

There was a very, very brief moment where ALL the digests were going to be replaced by "Super Digests." (I swear that's what they were going to be called! Very quickly, though, someone got cold feet about using the word "super" in a title so they were going to be called something else at one point.) These were going to be larger, bigger digests. It actually sounded like a bold idea, but as I said this was a very brief moment. For reasons I never learned, the "Super Digests" idea was scrapped and the digests remained the size they are.

"Super Digests"... I wonder if that's what later turned out to be called DOUBLE DOUBLE (ever so briefly) and currently are known as JUMBO COMICS digests? Or perhaps more logically at that point in time (2010), "Super Digests" was briefly considered as the name to replace "Double Digests" for branding purposes, since they were then on the verge of discontinuing all 96-page digests, and that made the word "double" somewhat irrelevant.

I'm glad you brought up what replaced what digest, as I actually spent some time researching that to figure out how the various different digest titles evolved. TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST replaced LAUGH DIGEST, which ended a couple of months before with #200 (Apr 2005). JUGHEAD & FRIENDS replaced the previous (96 page) JUGHEAD WITH ARCHIE DIGEST the following month, when it also ended with issue #200. I'm guessing the two earlier digest titles were among the lowest-selling to begin with, and they just chose to end them as long as they were reaching a nice round milestone number. When TALES and JUGHEAD & FRIENDS finally did end their runs with issues 38 and 39 respectively (July & Aug 2010), it was because ACP chose at that point to discontinue all the 96-page digests in the latter part of 2010, so those two titles weren't actually replaced by anything. Although sales may have been low, I doubt that they were any lower than they'd been when they were publishing LAUGH DIGEST or JUGHEAD WITH ARCHIE DIGEST, so don't blame yourself. Apparently consumers just overwhelmingly preferred the Double Digests at that point in time, so that was the end of the 96-pagers.

Around the same time, ARCHIE COMICS DIGEST was cancelled (with issue #267, Sept 2010) and replaced by WORLD OF ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST, followed by the long-running ARCHIE'S PALS 'n' GALS DOUBLE DIGEST (begun in 1992) ending with the Nov 2010 issue (#146) and being replaced by the new ARCHIE & FRIENDS DOUBLE DIGEST #1, while BETTY & VERONICA DIGEST #208 simply changed its name to B & V FRIENDS DOUBLE DIGEST, picking up the previous digest's numbering with issue #209 (Jan 2011, and continuing to present). ARCHIE & FRIENDS DOUBLE DIGEST ran 33 issues (Dec 2010 through Jan 2014) before being cancelled and replaced by ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE DOUBLE DIGEST #1 (Mar 2014). The current Jughead digest title, JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST, replaced JUGHEAD DOUBLE DIGEST (which had begun back in 1989); #200 (Feb 2014) was the last, as with LAUGH and JUGHEAD WITH ARCHIE digests. I guess ACP just liked cancelling things when they reached nice round numbers (the original LAUGH comic book was cancelled with issue #400).

Here's a spreadsheet showing the complete history of Archie's various digest titles (TMNT and SONIC excluded). Short run titles are in RED, while digest titles still ongoing today are in BOLD.

Quote from: PTF on April 10, 2016, 04:09:03 PM
How can I forget? Nick St. Clair the baddest of the bad.

Was he ever in any other stories beyond BBT and the one sequel story in B&V? I'd pretty much agree with this though. There may have been a few nastier one-shot characters, but Nick's the most substantial of the ones who made more than one appearance.

Quote from: The Bee on April 10, 2016, 09:51:39 AM
I am going with the nasty scheming Alexandra Cabot who always seems out for revenge

She just needs love. She NEVER gets to date anyone! She's just bitter, but it's kind of hard to blame her. Not only does she never get a date, she NEVER wins, either -- not even temporarily. She's nowhere near as bad in the comics as she is in the Hanna-Barbera cartoon. I know, she could be nicer to people. Actually, she doesn't seem as bad as Alex in some of the early stories.

Let's see...

Friday 04-08
ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE JUMBO COMICS #6 (finished)

Saturday 04-09
ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE DOUBLE DIGEST #8

Sunday 04-10
ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE DOUBLE DIGEST #9 & 10
ARCHIE'S FUNHOUSE DOUBLE DIGEST #9 & 10
(I'm done with Funhouse for now, and moving on to another title...)
JUGHEAD AND ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #1
(Plan to read #1-3, and 6-8; missing issues 4 & 5)