07-20-17:

IT CAME FROM... THE 50-CENT BIN !!
I'm always looking for interesting-looking and weird comics (or comix, as the case may be). All of these ones were in B&W (almost always an indicator of small circulation, for these older comics).

BLACK HOLE #1 [Kitchen Sink Press 1995] - Okay, so not particularly obscure. Pretty weird though, and difficult to describe. It got me interested enough in Charles Burns to put this on my reading list of things to pick up when I get the time. While no explanations were forthcoming in this issue for the somewhat hallucinogenic goings-on, it still felt complete enough in itself as a single issue, and managed to evoke a certain ambiance.

URBAN LEGENDS #1 [Dark Horse 1993] - Interesting collection of one- and two-page strips by a variety of creators, some well-known, some not, just as with the various legends (such as "Babysitter and the Psycho Caller", "Earwig", and "Baby in a Microwave" which are familiar, while others are lesser-known or more obscure or just totally invented). Well worth the time.

DINOSAUR BOP #1 [Fantagraphics/Monster Comics 1991] - Some kind of post-apocalyptic caveman story done in a Kirbyesque (but not slavishly so) style, with kind of a 1950s-greaser influence. It's a continued story. Too bad I didn't find any subsequent issues, as I sort of got into the story before it ended with "to be continued".

SPIDER BABY COMIX #1 [Steve Bissette/SpiderBaby Grafix 1996] - A self-published collection of some of Steve Bissette's older stories and collaborations, with about 1/4 of the comic at the back devoted to text pages (which were just as interesting, if not more so). Bissette's an iconoclastic and uncompromising creator with definite ideas about the comics biz and what's wrong with it, and he's not afraid to spell it out. More than a little self-indulgent, but I guess when you self-publish that's your right. The stories themselves were enjoyable, if somewhat unmemorable, as shorts often are.

Quote from: terrence12 on July 20, 2017, 06:15:40 AM
Sadly true.If only Sega will allow Archie to make one more issue of Sonic the hedgehog with a closure before they end production.But If sonic is adapted to IDW  then it will be a new continuity for the sonic the hedgehog comic book series with no mention of the old Archie continuity.

That's just the way these things go sometimes. No closure for those Sonic readers who were in the midst of reading a story arc -- and no trade collection for anyone who was reading the comic that way. I guess we can reflect on the fact that this was just the standard operating procedure for MOST cancelled comics for decades, before the rise in popularity of trade paperbacks led to discretely-planned multi-issue arcs -- stories would just END, with an implied "to be continued next issue" that was never fulfilled.

Too bad they couldn't get Amanda Connor to do the interior art (or better yet, Bruce Timm). Laura Braga's artwork on DC BOMBSHELLS didn't impress me. The original DC Direct merchandising concept was built around the idea of 1940s-style pinup/cheesecake/"good girl art" (sexy, yet still wholesome, not unlike Dan DeCarlo's early art) versions of the more popular DC superheroines, but Braga's comic book adaptation version of that concept was anything but.

The idea of a crossover between the 2 popular Batman villainesses and B&V would seem to be based on the same potential showcase for "good girl art", so the choice of Braga as interior artist is a disappointment, as is the fact that neither company is going with the "classic" (aka cartoon) versions of those characters. They seem to be willing to tease that GGA idea only so far as in having covers drawn by Amanda Conner and Adam Hughes, in order to insure better sales than a cover drawn by Laura Braga. I might buy it if they offer a blank sketch cover, which would allow me the potential of commissioning a drawing by a more appropriate artist.

You can probably expect to see a sales bump on the "Over the Edge" arc issues of ARCHIE due to retailer speculation, following in the same pattern as prior retailer speculation on VERONICA #202 (first appearance of Kevin Keller), and LIFE WITH ARCHIE #16 (The Marriage of Kevin Keller cover variant), #23 (Francavilla
"Afterlife With Archie" cover variant), and #36 & 37 (the "Death of Archie" issues).

The only observation I'll make here is that REGGIE AND ME and JOSIE had the same creative team for the length of their runs, and JUGHEAD had 2 different writers and 2 different artists. ARCHIE has had a single writer and a different artist for each story arc. You can hardly judge Adam Hughes B&V for comparative purposes due to the fact that it only ran 3 issues, the first issue of which was locked into retailers' preorder numbers.

My takeaway from that is that the people who continued to buy ARCHIE after the first story arc either liked Mark Waid's story a lot better than the stories of the other writers on the other New Riverdale titles, or they just want to buy a comic which features Archie and his supporting cast, and they care less about Reggie, Josie, and Jughead as main characters. Possibly a combination of the two factors, but if I had to bet which side sales were leaning more heavily on, I'd go with the fact that it's ARCHIE, rather than that it's written by Mark Waid, since I doubt the main consumers buying ARCHIE are followers of Waid's work on other comic books.

Quote from: terrence12 on July 19, 2017, 09:22:38 PM
Bad news sonic fans,As you all heard Archie's Sonic the hedgehog comic book series along with Sonic Universe is about to end because after many years Sega and Archie ended partnership http://www.cbr.com/sonic-the-hedgehog-archie-comics/   


Which means that in about few months this year , Sonic the Hedgehog Issue 291 and Sonic Universe 95 will be rewritten as the final issue similar to Megaman before reaching to hiatus later revealed to be cancelation.

Let's hope the series will go off with a bang with issue 291 (along with Sonic Universe 95) since the series is about to end after many years.

Looks like the Sonic universe (for Archie Comics, anyway) ended with a whimper, not a bang, according to the article cited:

QuoteWith the dissolution of the publishing partnership, no new Sonic comics will be produced by Archie Comics going forward.

The wording of Sega's announcement seemed to imply that a licensing deal with another comics publisher was in the offing (IDW or UDON seem the most likely candidates, IMO).

WEEK OF 07-19-17:
ASH VS. THE ARMY OF DARKNESS #1
INVINCIBLE #138 (of 144)
THE WILDSTORM #6 (of 24)
JIMMY'S BASTARDS #2
KILL THE MINOTAUR #2 (of 6)
BATMAN 66 MEETS THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #1 (one-shot)
BLUE MONDAY TP VOL 03: INBETWEEN DAYS
WALT DISNEY'S COMICS & STORIES #739
DUCKTALES #0
ROM VS TRANSFORMERS: SHINING ARMOR #1
THE FOREVER WAR #6 (of 6)
BETTIE PAGE #1
KAIJUMAX: SEASON 3 #1 (of 6)
THE SHAOLIN COWBOY: WHO'LL STOP THE REIGN #4 (of 4)
ALIENS: DEAD ORBIT #3 (of 4)
THE THREE STOOGES: TV TIME #1 (one-shot)
HOPELESS SAVAGES: GREATEST HITS 2000-2010 TP

It's probably more a question of what page rate an artist is willing to work for, and for how long. Without some explicit commitment denoted in a written contract, any artist is more likely to gravitate towards available work at a better rate, regardless of who's offering it. That's pretty much the definition of a freelancer.

Then again, there's never been any guarantee at ACP that the artist who drew the story in the previous issue would be the artist who drew the story in the next issue, even on titles where one particular artist might be more likely to draw it than any other. It just goes hand in hand with the philosophy that it's not the artists and writers who are important here, it's the names of the intellectual properties owned by the company that are selling the product.

There will be a shorter gap in publication between Adam Hughes' B&V #3 and Harley & Ivy Meet Betty & Veronica #1 than there was between #1 and #2 (or #2 and #3) of Adam Hughes' B&V, but just to maintain some continuity there's that variant cover of Harley & Ivy Meet Betty & Veronica #1 by Adam Hughes.

Quotewith art by Laura Braga (DC BOMBSHELLS)

Oh. That Laura Braga.  [...]

Quote from: fandemoniumnetwork on July 19, 2017, 03:04:56 AM
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From the same Networm that brought you "Pernicious Web-bots"!

Quote from: terrence12 on July 18, 2017, 01:26:19 PM
Yeah,But it was still light hearted though and if this series is part of Archie's madhouse brand then it will a black comedy light hearted kid horror comic similar to goosebumps.

That's assuming a lot of knowledge about the intended slant of a brand imprint that hasn't even published a single comic yet.

07/12 - 07/17:
TARANTULA HC [AdHouse Books]
SPACE RIDERS TP [Black Mask Comics]

ALL TIME COMICS: ATLAS #1 [Fantagraphics]
ALL TIME COMICS: CRIME DESTROYER #1 [Fantagraphics]

GUNWITCH: OUTSKIRTS OF DOOM TP [Oni Press]
NOCTURNALS: SINISTER PATH TP VOL 01 [Big WoW]

VELVET: DELUXE EDITION HC [Image, collects issues #1-15]

THE SLEEPER OMNIBUS HC [DC, collects POINT BLANK #1-5, SLEEPER #1-12, & SLEEPER: SEASON TWO #1-12] - Ed Brubaker is probably my favorite writer working in mainstream comics right now, and he has a perfectly suited artistic collaborator in Sean Phillips. SLEEPER was the breakout series that put these two on the map. Holden Carver is a metahuman espionage double agent under deep cover, infiltrating a metahuman terrorist syndicate. On a covert mission to recover alien tech from a crashed spacecraft, Carver's entire team was killed. Carver alone survived to find an alien artifact somehow fused to his nervous system, one that allows him to absorb and heal any amount of physical damage without feeling pain, and to release that pain multiplied, simply by touching someone -- this makes him practically unkillable, but the downside is he can no longer FEEL anything. Manipulated into the undercover assignment by Lynch, his hated boss at I.O., and with falsified evidence of treason to create a cover for his entree into the syndicate, he's left with no means of exfiltration and no evidence of the truth of his loyalty when an assassin's shot to the head puts Lynch into a coma. That's just where the story begins. That's a slight oversimplification of the setup, but it gets more interesting from there. Carver kills members of his own agency (formerly those earmarked as 'expendable' by I.O., but now without Lynch controlling operations, inculpable government agents) with impunity both to save his own skin and to maintain his cover (which amounts to the same thing), but surrounded by both those he's being manipulated by, and those he's manipulating, and with no one to trust, he begins to question his true purpose and identity, and whether he's actually become the very "bad guy" he's pretending to be... and who is the worse manipulator, his agency boss Lynch, or Tao, the head of the terrorist syndicate. Things are further complicated by his relationship to other metahuman members of the terrorist syndicate with whom he must work, all of whom are interesting characters with a fleshed-out backstory, and the mind games he must play against Tao to remain in his good graces, constantly on guard that his true status as a double agent will be uncovered. Setting the story in the Wildstorm Universe of costumed metahuman heroes and villains, most of whom are viewed from a distance and from the perspective of a seedy underbelly world filled with moral gray tones, gives this series a unique ambiance.

ELEPHANTMEN #33 & 56 [Image Comics 2011, 2014] - I read these two issues because they were both drawn by Shaky Kane, one of my favorite current artists.

DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES #1-6 (of 6)[IDW 2014] - Prequel to the 2014 film, which I also re-watched, before going to see War for the Planet of the Apes. The film was excellent, the comic merely okay.

FATMAN THE HUMAN FLYING SAUCER #3 [Lightning Comics 1967] - By Otto Binder & C.C. Beck. It did not catch on like their earlier work on Captain Marvel in the 1940s, and this was the final issue. Jughead would have liked this gourmand hero, who often has food-related plot devices in his stories, and a never-ending stream of food-based exclamatory phrases.

BETTY & VERONICA JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #255

Quote from: irishmoxie on July 17, 2017, 08:12:12 PM
No Boo the worlds cutest dog?

I never had much interest in comics where animals are the main character, unless they're anthropomorphic animals like Bugs Bunny or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who basically just talk and act like human beings. I guess there's a category where the animals are pets yet we know what they're thinking by reading their thoughts in balloons, like Hot Dog or Garfield, but I never had much interest in those, either. I guess the stories that might come closest that interested me were those with the Legion of Super-Pets or the Space Canine Patrol Agency, both of them teams of super-animals. But they all think and behave more or less like human minds with animal bodies, so I wonder if those even count. Then again, there is a hazy line between comics that are actually cute and those that are cloyingly/annoyingly cute. My saccharin advance-warning radar is certainly set off when they feel the need to TELL you it's cute. It might amount to an equal and opposite reaction to any perceived attempt at too-obviously manipulative marketing.

Quote from: terrence12 on July 17, 2017, 12:48:51 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on July 15, 2017, 12:47:27 PM
They should just do a Little Archie horror comic, since the original is probably the "classic Archie" title that arguably came closest to that genre in its original incarnation.

Um ,I don't think this should happen since it is aimed for younger audience and is considered lighter as shown with its revival few months ago.But if it is revived it will be similar to Goosebumps comics from IDW

Bob Bolling and Dexter Taylor got away with stuff when they were doing LITTLE ARCHIE that would be inconceivable in a comic marketed to young kids today. Some of those stories really WERE pretty horrific, at least by the standards of a "kids comic". Take a look at this cover for LA #37 (mildly altered here by me, but not the actual drawing), which is not TOO far off the kind of stuff EC Comics was publishing a decade earlier:

Quote from: Tokyo on July 16, 2017, 03:09:56 PM
If they're doing a superhero crossover, I'd like to see a gritty reboot of (Netflix) The Punisher Meets (WB) Archie 

More like The Punisher Meets Afterlife With Archie. I'm thinking lots of head shots. Quickest way to take down a zombie.