Saturday, June 18, 2005

Betty and Veronica

In 1986 for really lame reasons, Archie Publications decided to start over a lot of their titles with #1 issues. The thinking was that now kids could collect their series from #1 on. At the time "Archie's Girls, Betty and Veronica" became "Betty and Veronica"; "Archie's Pal, Jughead" became "Jughead" and "Laugh Comics" became "Laugh". "Laugh" was soon canceled and "Betty and Veronica" and "Jughead" have racked up suck numbers that the second series is almost as long as the original. What's really odd is that Archie never renumbered its flagship title "Archie Comics" which is now almost 600 issues old. Had "B&V" or "J" kept their original numbering, they would have joined the ranks of "Archie". And since not too many comic book titles have reached that magical number of 600 or more, it would have been more impressive. For your information, the ones that have exceeded or are near 600 issues or more at this point of consecutive numbering are "Action Comics", "Detective Comics", "Journey Into Mystery", "Walt Disney's Comics and Stories", and soon "Archie Comics" and even "Adventures of the Big Boy"!

Oh well, my point is, for those interested, I am selling #1-155 of the SECOND series of "Betty and Veronica" on my Mark's Rare Comics website. Just click on the link to the left of this column.

-Mark.

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