Showing posts with label Archie Comics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Archie Comics. Show all posts
Monday, March 23, 2026
Friday, February 21, 2025
Sunday, August 8, 2021
Recently Read: Archie: the Best of Harry Lucey, Vol. 1
This fine collection of stories (centering on the early '60s) drawn by the multi-talented Harry Lucey is a great addition to IDW's Best Of Archie cartoonists series. Lucey was a master of frenetic body language, particularly pratfalls and deep kisses resulting in legs and feet propelled high in the air.
One 1961 story, "Dog's Best Friend", plays with the medium in a meta way, with characters commenting on and pulling at word balloons. The stories are funny and the reproduction of the art impeccable. The volume is topped off with an introduction by cartoonist Jaime Hernandez and an afterward by Lucey co-worker Victor Gorelick.
Recommended for a fun, carefree afternoon.
Friday, September 4, 2020
Recently Read: Twelve Cent Archie, by Bart Beaty
As research for this book, English Professor Bart Beaty read every Archie comic book published by the company during the twelve cent era (from 1961 to 1969) and describes what he consumed in short chapters akin to Archie's six-page stories.
Beaty's thoughts on the company's output is smart, insightful, opinionated, fairly comprehensive, and imminently readable (especially if the reader, like me, has read much of the material he analyzes). Starting with the proposition that much academic appreciation and criticism of comics has slanted towards those works which exhibit the most literary qualities, Beaty rightly argues that more commonplace, workaday, comics-grounded work is just as ripe for, and deserving of, commentary. Topics covered include the no-continuity formula of the stories, their story-serving contradictions, the differing styles of cartoonists Harry Lucey, Samm Schwartz and Dan DeCarlo, the daily newspaper strip, the series' fantasy elements, '60s fads the company pursued, the series' gender politics, and much more.
The content is so comprehensive, it's a shame other Archie decades couldn't have also been covered (Samm Schwartz' best and most sustained work was in the '70s, for example), but that would make the volume too unwieldy and concentrating on one specific decade does allow Beaty to illuminate the era in which, he reports, Archie comics sold the most (it's also the era he was first exposed to as a child). Twelve Cent Archie is highly recommended to casual fans of the world of Riverdale and its denizens.
Monday, December 9, 2019
Saturday, March 23, 2019
Jughead's Folly
Sunday, January 6, 2019
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Recently Read: The Secret History of Marvel Comics
Blake Bell and Dr. Michael Vassallo's exhaustively researched and meticulously compiled record of the transition between Martin Goodman's publishing of pulp magazines and what were (for all intents and purposes) the earliest Marvel comics makes for fascinating reading and is an important document.
For those like me interested in the history of 20th century magazine publishing, pulp magazines and the earliest comic books, The Secret History of Marvel Comics is pure gold. It details the complex and convoluted relationships between the earliest publishers of what became DC Comics, Archie Comics and Marvel, and breaks down Goodman's cynical but effective business strategies publishing books and magazines of all stripes, of which comics were only a part.
Goodman's lack of interest, bordering on contempt, of most of his creative teams had echoes which still reverberate today (such as in the Jack Kirby heir's recent legal battle with Disney over Kirby's creations for Marvel).
Half the book is given over to illustrations drawn by Goodman's employees for his pulp magazines, including much work by Kirby, Joe Simon, Alex Schomburg, Bill Everett, Syd Shores and many more.
A few anecdotes and facts are given too many times, and I wish the book had given more information on Goodman's later days (especially his involvement in the '70s Atlas comics). I understand that, given the title of the book, that was probably out of the scope of the project. And yet, how many books are written about Martin Goodman? This would have been a perfect opportunity for that.
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Lone Star Comics' Buddy Saunders in The Fly
A letter to an early '60s issue of Archie Comics' The Fly, from Buddy Saunders, founder of the current Lone Star Comics chain of stores (called My Comic Shop online).
I've ordered from Lone Star and recommend them: http://www.mycomicshop.com/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)