Excluding Archie and any of the Riverdale Gang, who are your favorite MLJ/Archie Comics characters from the 40s, 50s, and/or 60s?
Quote from: JonInIowaCity on August 04, 2016, 10:20:44 AM
Excluding Archie and any of the Riverdale Gang, who are your favorite MLJ/Archie Comics characters from the 40s, 50s, and/or 60s?
Jon, this is a tough question. I probably want to say Shield, but I'd rather read a Super Duck comic, so SD it is. It'd be nice to see this question as a poll with maybe ten choices and allowing for maybe three answers. I'm sure I'm forgetting a character.
I love Super Duck!
I enjoy reading through Golden Age comics on public domain sites so have lots of favorites. You have a good idea for polling, Steve. I may give that a try later today. :)
Ah...another Super Duck enthusiast. Good stuff for sure.
He would definitely be on the short list, but my namesake, Cosmo the Merry Martian would have to take my top spot. Great work by Bob White. Cosmo is the start, but has a great supporting cast with his buddy Orbi, Professor Thimk and love interest, Astra. Laughs and adventures....great combination!
And if want something different (and fun) in a seldom seen book....check out the Adventures of the Rover Boys...Archie's early fifties version of the Hardy Boys.
40s - Black Hood, Shield, Hangman, Steel Sterling, Mr. Justice, Web, Fox, Comet, Black Jack
50s - Sam Hill, Ginger, the new Wilbur, Cosmo the Merry Martian, the Fly, Lancelot Strong
60s - Sabrina, Josie & friends, Bingo Wilkin & friends, the Madhouse Glads, the Jaguar, the Shadow, the Mighty Crusaders
So, pretty much most of the main ones apart from Archie and the gang (except for a few long-running features like Super Duck, Katy Keene, and Suzie) -- and in most cases I would prefer to read any of these over Archie. They're all favorites. I'll admit a lot of this might have to do with the fact that stories of Archie and the gang are 'common as dirt' and thus easy to come by, where the others are (relatively speaking) scarce in terms of easy availability. They're like the desert that ACP only allows you to have after you've finished off your main course of Archie & the gang. Some are even harder to read than that, like the candy your parents only allowed you to have once in a great while.
BTW, strictly speaking, only the characters created from 1939-1945 are MLJ characters.
Do we count original version or updated versions? Because if we can count the update, The Fox.
Sabrina. :smitten:
Josie & Company.
Yeah Jon, we need a popularity poll. The last few days I've thought about Katy , Sabina, and Josie(!) in particular, and read a couple Pat The Brats yesterday. There's some great stuff out there. I think it's important to define the cutoff date for inclusion as an MLJ character, though.
Quote from: steveinthecity on August 11, 2016, 08:38:40 AM
Yeah Jon, we need a popularity poll. The last few days I've thought about Katy , Sabina, and Josie(!) in particular, and read a couple Pat The Brats yesterday. There's some great stuff out there. I think it's important to define the cutoff date for inclusion as an MLJ character, though.
Well, the topic heading does say MLJ, but in his original post Jon sort of leaves it open as "MLJ/Archie Comics", so I get the impression that what he really meant was any title (or character) that wasn't a direct spinoff of Archie. If we are strictly defining what an MLJ character is, that would be any character created before the company changed its name to Archie Comic Publications, Inc. in 1946 (which of course includes Archie and the gang, which Jon specifically meant to dis-include).
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 11, 2016, 10:33:06 AM
Quote from: steveinthecity on August 11, 2016, 08:38:40 AM
Yeah Jon, we need a popularity poll. The last few days I've thought about Katy , Sabina, and Josie(!) in particular, and read a couple Pat The Brats yesterday. There's some great stuff out there. I think it's important to define the cutoff date for inclusion as an MLJ character, though.
Well, the topic heading does say MLJ, but in his original post Jon sort of leaves it open as "MLJ/Archie Comics", so I get the impression that what he really meant was any title (or character) that wasn't a direct spinoff of Archie. If we are strictly defining what an MLJ character is, that would be any character created before the company changed its name to Archie Comic Publications, Inc. in 1946 (which of course includes Archie and the gang, which Jon specifically meant to dis-include).
Exactly why I'd want the question further defined in a poll. Josie was what '63?, and I'd pick her above any 40's-50's characters otherwise, even though not MLJ.
Jon's on vacation right now. I can write up a poll when I get home, but there's tons of old MLJ and Archie characters. I'm not so rigid that people can't answer in the way that feels right to them though. :)
Quote from: JonInIowaCity on August 11, 2016, 10:31:28 PM
Jon's on vacation right now. I can write up a poll when I get home, but there's tons of old MLJ and Archie characters. I'm not so rigid that people can't answer in the way that feels right to them though. :)
I totally get it. For me, it would just be nice to see the top three or four or more in any poll. On another forum we've done this to place the top SA, BA, or FF titles for example. In this sort of environment I'd rather polls always give multiple options. FF is my all time favorite comic, particularly from the 60's, but I'd hate for ASM, Action, or Lois Lane to be excluded from that list.
If we were to select a favorite Archie artist of all time and the votes went to DeCarlo we'd never know maybe Fernando or Lucey finished third (or whatever). I like the idea of "standings" if you will.
Enjoy your vacation. :D
I'll be home tomorrow night. I'll work on it off my desktop computer then or Sunday morning. :)
Quote from: steveinthecity on August 12, 2016, 08:46:24 AM
Quote from: JonInIowaCity on August 11, 2016, 10:31:28 PM
Jon's on vacation right now. I can write up a poll when I get home, but there's tons of old MLJ and Archie characters. I'm not so rigid that people can't answer in the way that feels right to them though. :)
I totally get it. For me, it would just be nice to see the top three or four or more in any poll. On another forum we've done this to place the top SA, BA, or FF titles for example. In this sort of environment I'd rather polls always give multiple options. FF is my all time favorite comic, particularly from the 60's, but I'd hate for ASM, Action, or Lois Lane to be excluded from that list.
If we were to select a favorite Archie artist of all time and the votes went to DeCarlo we'd never know maybe Fernando or Lucey finished third (or whatever). I like the idea of "standings" if you will.
Enjoy your vacation. :D
The thing is that there has to be some sort of winnowing process before you can even whittle it down to a list of manageable size for rankings. I don't think the forum polling allows for that large a number of multiple-choice responses. In the case of a favorite MLJ or ACP character apart from those appearing in the main long-running Archie-related titles, there are just too many of them to include in a multiple-choice poll, and that's equally true of the artists who worked at MLJ/ACP over the past 75+ years. I forget what the max number of voting buttons is for polling, but certainly it's only a fraction of the number of well-known artists or characters.
EDIT: I checked into this in the SMF Help section, and it does say:
QuoteTo offer more than five choices in a poll, users should simply select Add Option as many times as desired.
Is it really unlimited? Could someone running a poll add as many as 50 or 100 options, or just add as many options as posters happen to mention by name in their posts? I could probably list 50 different non-Archie MLJ/ACP characters just after thinking about it for 10-15 minutes. Even if you could add all those, it might seem a little impractical or wonky in actual use.
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 13, 2016, 02:07:09 PM
Quote from: steveinthecity on August 12, 2016, 08:46:24 AM
Quote from: JonInIowaCity on August 11, 2016, 10:31:28 PM
Jon's on vacation right now. I can write up a poll when I get home, but there's tons of old MLJ and Archie characters. I'm not so rigid that people can't answer in the way that feels right to them though. :)
I totally get it. For me, it would just be nice to see the top three or four or more in any poll. On another forum we've done this to place the top SA, BA, or FF titles for example. In this sort of environment I'd rather polls always give multiple options. FF is my all time favorite comic, particularly from the 60's, but I'd hate for ASM, Action, or Lois Lane to be excluded from that list.
If we were to select a favorite Archie artist of all time and the votes went to DeCarlo we'd never know maybe Fernando or Lucey finished third (or whatever). I like the idea of "standings" if you will.
Enjoy your vacation. :D
The thing is that there has to be some sort of winnowing process before you can even whittle it down to a list of manageable size for rankings. I don't think the forum polling allows for that large a number of multiple-choice responses. In the case of a favorite MLJ or ACP character apart from those appearing in the main long-running Archie-related titles, there are just too many of them to include in a multiple-choice poll, and that's equally true of the artists who worked at MLJ/ACP over the past 75+ years. I forget what the max number of voting buttons is for polling, but certainly it's only a fraction of the number of well-known artists or characters.
EDIT: I checked into this in the SMF Help section, and it does say:
QuoteTo offer more than five choices in a poll, users should simply select Add Option as many times as desired.
Is it really unlimited? Could someone running a poll add as many as 50 or 100 options, or just add as many options as posters happen to mention by name in their posts? I could probably list 50 different non-Archie MLJ/ACP characters just after thinking about it for 10-15 minutes. Even if you could add all those, it might seem a little impractical or wonky in actual use.
I visit another SMF forum where we select "best" issue or cover from a title. One I recall was best Weird War Tales cover where we would delete our ten least favorite several times, then, five, three, and finally winnowing down to one vote until the community's favorite cover was left standing. The thread starter has to do this in several rounds as choices get voted off, but it's pretty cool to watch the progress in the sense that a favorite gets voted off or continues into the next round(vote).