What's up, fellers? New guy here, and obviously I love Archie comics, especially those from what I'd consider to be the "classic era" of Archie, 1950s-early 90s. Favorite artists would be Samm Schwartz, Bob Bolling, Joe Edwards, Harry Lucey and Dan DeCarlo (senior), least favorites would be Gus LeMoine, Al Hartley and Dick Malmgren. Favorite writer is no contest, that would be the fab-tastic Frank Doyle, though I like Craig Boldman's and sometimes George Gladir's writing as well. Favorite character would be Jughead, and my favorite stories happen to star him, specifically "Son of Hercules" (JUGHEAD'S FANTASY #3) and JUGHEAD'S FOLLY (one-shot). I've also seen the Riverdale TV series, and it's a truly great show. Amazing how they were able to pull off a dark, suspenseful drama with these characters off so successfully.
Other than Archie, I also really like the old Harvey comics (specifically those with Casper, Wendy, Spooky, Sad Sack or Hot Stuff, not too crazy about the rich kid or the dot-obsessed chick) and the Disney ducks, especially drawn by Carl Barks. I also really like the old MAD stuff and Harvey Kurtzman's hilarious Hey Look! one-pagers. I even write me a little fan-fic about Casper and Wendy here 'n' there in my downtime, I can post the link to it here if you folks would like.
I also really like cartoons and "classic" television, some of my faves being the old Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, Gravity Falls, Rocko's Modern Life, SpongeBob SquarePants, Oggy and the Cockroaches and Animaniacs.
Don't expect me to be here often, I'll only be here very sporadically, I imagine. Still, I look forward to having a fun time here talking about some of my favorite comic characters.
I always liked Bolling better as a writer than as an artist. I'd rank Kathleen Webb right near the top echelon of writers, too. She was to B&V what Boldman was to Jughead, IMO. And Al Hartley's way under-rated as both a writer AND an artist, IMO. I agree with your choices of JUGHEAD'S FOLLY and JUGHEAD'S FANTASY, though -- ACP really ought to collect all of those in a trade paperback. Those are to the early Silver Age what JUGHEAD'S TIME POLICE was to the late '80s/early '90s.
I also like the Disney Ducks (and Mickey) comics and MAD and Looney Toons (and Spongebob and Ren & Stimpy), but totally drew a blank on Gravity Falls and Oggy and the Cockroaches (sounds like a good name for a band, though). My obsession with Harvey Comics is for the pre-Code ones (actually, the pre-horror ones, too) -- but for some perverse reason I find that Baby Huey and Hot Stuff appeal to me in a casual sort of way, while I can just skip Casper, Wendy and Richie Rich (and Sad Sack just creeps me out -- it's the drawing style).
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 18, 2019, 05:17:17 AMI always liked Bolling better as a writer than as an artist. I'd rank Kathleen Webb right near the top echelon of writers, too. She was to B&V what Boldman was to Jughead, IMO. And Al Hartley's way under-rated as both a writer AND an artist, IMO. I agree with your choices of JUGHEAD'S FOLLY and JUGHEAD'S FANTASY, though -- ACP really ought to collect all of those in a trade paperback. Those are to the early Silver Age what JUGHEAD'S TIME POLICE was to the late '80s/early '90s.
I also like the Disney Ducks (and Mickey) comics and MAD and Looney Toons (and Spongebob and Ren & Stimpy), but totally drew a blank on Gravity Falls and Oggy and the Cockroaches (sounds like a good name for a band, though). My obsession with Harvey Comics is for the pre-Code ones (actually, the pre-horror ones, too) -- but for some perverse reason I find that Baby Huey and Hot Stuff appeal to me in a casual sort of way, while I can just skip Casper, Wendy and Richie Rich (and Sad Sack just creeps me out -- it's the drawing style).
Yeah, Bolling was very good at writing, "Little Archie on Mars" being my favorite of his scripts. I totally agree with you that Archie should compile those Jughead stories into a TPB- I've got "Folly" and "Hercules" in a digest, but that'd be really cool.
Never really bothered to check out the pre-code Harvey's for the most part, maybe someday. Could be something I'd quite like, although I'll always have the soft spot for the ghosts, witches and devils the publisher eventually became famous for. I get that you're not crazy about the Sacks, I guess for some the drawing style might need some getting used to.
I also really like the Mickeys, too. A pity I don't have enough of Floyd Gottfredson, the guy was talented. He was what Barks was to the Disney ducks.
And because you're probably wondering,
Oggy is this French cartoon about a blue cat who has the misfortune of sharing his house with three pesky cockroaches (named after the Ramones!!).
Gravity Falls is a Disney show about these twins who spend the summer with their greedy, P.T. Barnum-esque uncle in a small town in Oregon (the titular
Gravity Falls) where all sorts of weird things happen. They're pretty good, worth checking out.
Quote from: Good Ole Samm on April 18, 2019, 08:34:20 PMYeah, Bolling was very good at writing, "Little Archie on Mars" being my favorite of his scripts. I totally agree with you that Archie should compile those Jughead stories into a TPB- I've got "Folly" and "Hercules" in a digest, but that'd be really cool.
Until about the late 1980s, when they stopped doing new Little Archie stories, and Bolling became one of the main writers on
Betty & Me, Bolling's stories seemed to exist in some weird alternate Archie-verse. On
Betty & Me, he began integrating his LA characters like Chic and Polly Cooper (and Betty's cat, Caramel) into the Betty stories. A Bolling story always tended to have a fantasy, supernatural, mystery or adventure element (like his series, "Betty Cooper, Super Sleuther" in
Betty). Towards the tail end of
Sabrina's original run, he took over and briefly turned it into more of an adventure-oriented title. He also really liked to do 'outdoorsman' stories (Mr. Weatherbee was obviously a favorite of his) about camping and fishing ("The Plight of the Perilous Pike"), and he loved drawing maps and always had his own unusual names for local landmarks in Riverdale (Like "Bongo Bay", and I believe it was Bolling who introduced "Pickens Park"). It's hard to mistake a Bolling-written story even in the absence of credits. In hindsight, it seems odd to me that Bolling wrote only a bare handful of stories (all of them relatively short) for
Life With Archie, which was the relatively permanent home of adventure-type stories at ACP. If I had to guess, Frank Doyle must really have enjoyed the change-of-pace those type of stories offered him, and wasn't willing to give up that assignment, even though Bolling would have been perfect for the job.
Quote from: Good Ole Samm on April 18, 2019, 08:34:20 PMNever really bothered to check out the pre-code Harvey's for the most part, maybe someday. Could be something I'd quite like, although I'll always have the soft spot for the ghosts, witches and devils the publisher eventually became famous for. I get that you're not crazy about the Sacks, I guess for some the drawing style might need some getting used to.
Harvey's biggest characters, prior to the horror-comics boom, were
The Black Cat (in
Speed Comics and especially in her own mag, as drawn by Lee Elias), and
The Green Hornet. The two big Harvey anthology titles were
Speed (which also starred Shock Gibson and Captain Freedom), and
Champ Comics (featuring Duke O'Dowd, the Human Meteor). Simon & Kirby seemed to be peripherally involved with Harvey off-and-on, at times editing and/or providing covers, and late in the Golden Age, after leaving DC, they tried to launch some new characters like
Stuntman,
Boy Explorers, and
Captain 3-D, that never really took off. Other than that, Harvey tended to lean heavily on reprinting popular newspaper strips like
Joe Palooka,
Dick Tracy and
The Phantom.
Quote from: Good Ole Samm on April 18, 2019, 08:34:20 PMI also really like the Mickeys, too. A pity I don't have enough of Floyd Gottfredson, the guy was talented. He was what Barks was to the Disney ducks.
Fortunately, Fantagraphics has reprinted all of the early Mickey Mouse newspaper strip adventure continuities from the '30s and '40s in a series of hardcovers. Cheaper and easy to find are the old Gladstone Comics from the late 1980s, many of which reprinted Gottfredson Mickey strips.
Yeah, I'd imagine Doyle really liked doing the "change-of-pace" stuff a lot. Probably why they assigned him to the unfortunately short-lived Chilling Adventures of Sorcery with Sabrina title and the "Betty Cooper, Betty Cooper" stories in Betty and Me.
And about those Gottfredson volumes- I actually have one of those! Same with a few of the Gladstones, unfortunately I only have a couple complete Gladstone reprints.
Welcome! 8)