I’m heartbroken over the loss of Batton Lash.
Bat created the delightful series Wolff and Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre, later known as Supernatural Law. Bat’s wife and collaborator Jackie Estrada announced
his passing in January at 65 after a battle with brain cancer, and Facebook was immediately flooded with tributes. I didn’t share thoughts here at the time for a variety of reasons, but I want to post more in general and this can’t go unsaid. His nattily attired figure was a highlight of any convention; American comics in the ’90s, let alone my personal world of comics, would’ve been much the poorer without him.
Heidi MacDonald, a longtime journalist and editor who runs comics site The Beat, coined a great phrase several years ago: “satisfying chunk”. More than ever that’s what I’m after when reading new material, with issues costing 3 to 4 bucks
a pop — not just a steep price on the face of it but one that suffers in comparison to copious collections of recent material that easily best the per-chapter price of single issues and usually throw in extras to boot. There’s also a wealth of archival material now available nearly impossible to even imagine a couple of decades ago.
I greatly appreciate series that compel me to reread often, too, and reward my doing
so in different ways:
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News came on Friday that comics giants DC and Archie will release their very first actual crossover in October when the Little Archie gang meets the cast of Tiny Titans.
I don’t usually blog about press releases or topical stuff, but this announcement is
way cool. The 3-issue project is the work of Tiny Titans regulars Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani, whose consistently delightful efforts have won the title an Eisner Award in the category Best Publication for Kids.
Cover to Archie #606 © 2010 Archie. Pencils, Inks, Colors: Dan Parent.
You may have seen the news reports a few months back that Archie, the World’s Oldest Teenager, was — after nearly 70 years of flirting, dating, and relatively chaste farcical girl-chasing in general, among other misadventures — going to choose between rivals and best friends Betty and Veronica. In a six-part storyline that began in Archie #600, he and Veronica would marry.
Cover to The Archies: Greatest Hits © 2008 Archie Comic Publications.
Pencils, Inks: Dan DeCarlo. Colors: Tito Peña.
I never read Archie comics regularly, but my sister did, and there were plenty of
times where out of curiosity or lack of new reading material they made their way into my hands. As we got older and she largely dropped the habit, I’d still get her the occasional issue as a pick-me-up or when a special project came out. I’ve recently brought home five issues straight for myself, Archie #587-591, relating the eternal teenager’s “Freshman Year” at Riverdale High — with Betty and Veronica, et al., naturally along for the ride.
