"Thoughts on Sunday"

Today the local flea markets yielded a bit better, finding 24 misc. Archie Comic Digests (Archie, Betty & Veronica, Jughead, etc.) for a dime each, and all from the 1990-2000's save for one from 1988 which actually had a DeCarlo cover. Pretty decent find considering that I got the lot for less than the cost of one new issue off the stands these days.

It's difficult not being an Archie fan of some sorts if you collect comics at all over the years, since they're probably some of the first ones your parents ever let you read (along with Harvey Comics). One thing I can say about Archie Comics is that they always tried to reflect current trends and keep up with the times. One of the covers on these had "Mr. Lodge" using a digital camera, and another had Archie trying to snow-board. It's always amazed me the number of one-line gags their writers have come up with over the years, or how many times they could have the Archie Gang get into some sort of fix. I sincerely hope that the company will stick with the classic "Archie look" and not eventually update all of their stories as they did here recently in a few issues of the Betty & Veronica DBL Digest.

Of course, it hasn't always been the "Archie" comic company since back in the early to mid 1940's it was rather "MLJ", which produced a good number of superhero titles with characters such as The Shield and Dusty and The Black Hood. Archie comics had superheroes really off and on well up until the late 1960's save for a few years producing such classics as the Simon & Kirby "Adventures of The Fly", The Jaguar, The Mighty Crusaders, The Double Life of Pvt. Strong, plus romance books, etc., even a romance-doctor title called :"Young Dr. Masters", and even reintroduced "The Shadow" in a super-hero series for a while. They also had misc. titles such as "Madhouse", and "Sabrina the Teenage Witch", and "Cosmo the Merry Martian", plus they gave us a simplier version of the "Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles" (which pretty much set "the norm" for those character from there on out).

Their stories got very camp in the mid 60's with the popularity of the Batman t.v. show, and they changed their superhero line logo to "Mighty Comics", much the tried imitation of Marvel Comics. (My favorite story from that time still remains "Too Many Superheroes" from The Mighty Crusaders V1 #4 where dozens of their 1940's super characters were all re-introduced in a single comic!)

We've had these various MLJ heroes around in some format or another off and on since, with the Red Circle titles featuring them, and then DC Comics with their new versions under the !mpact banner. And we've seen a lot of great artists such as Grey Morrow, Alex Toth and Steve Ditko work on these various strips. Archie even turned their own humor characters into superheroes for a while in the mid 60's with Archie as "Pureheart the Powerful", or Betty as "Super Teen", and Jughead as "Captain hero". In the 1990's they reprinted (as well as did new material) with those characters in a short-lived series which was fun.

It's about time again that the classic MLJ-Archie heroes were reborn by some company to the statis they had in the 1940's before the Archie characters finally pushed them out of their own titles and dominated the company. (I'd certainly buy them.)

And today I've been watching "Comicon Live" on G4. Was happy to hear that the "Jonah Hex" flick will be out fairly soon. Never could figure why that flick would be so difficult to make, I mean, it's a western using make-up techniques that have been around for 100 years??? Any way, let's hope "they" don't screw it up.

And as well, it was stated that the actors have been chosen for the upcoming "Watchman" film. (Once again, let's hope "they" don't flub it up!)

A new flick I'll be wanting to see is: "The Simpson's", who after 20 years and 400+ episodes definately have earned the right for the Big Screen. In fact, those who have seen it report quite positive on it and that it's a very funny flick! Then there's to be the yet to be released, "Iron Man", "Hulk 2", "Indiana Jones 4" and "Batman:The Dark Knight Returns", plus even a spin-off of the FF flicks with one on "The Silver Surfer". All of these are of interest to me.

The sci-fic channel's putting on a new series based on "Flash Gordon", using (obviously) the old Queen music from the 80's flick. Sure hope this isn't as "camp".