Halloween 2014: Afterlife with Archie

This year, to celebrate one of my favorite holidays, I decided to create a large display in my yard based on my favorite comic book, AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE. To this end, I created a graveyard complete with tombstones for all the members of The Archies, and even created a life-sized figure of Jughead as the King of the Zombies!

Here it is by the light of day...
It is roped off with purple lights. The backdrop is painted plywood.
Since I took this photo, I have added a shelf to the back of the
wall so I can rest two pumpkins on it.

And at night it comes alive with black light.

Not even poor Betty could escape.

The two pumpkins up front rest on a small "brick" wall.

Looks like our boy's been eating ribs... but whose?

There are four black lights used to illuminate the scene.

And Jughead is lit from within

I got the Jughead mask as Halloween Express for about $20.
The rest of the pieces came from a Dollar Store, including the hands,
lights inside the hands (just strings of orange mini lights)
and the night light inside Juggie's head.

My Wife carved these "Funkins" a few years ago. Slowly but surely, we add
a new on each year. I'll actually pull out a lot more tonight when the
Trick-or-Treaters start making their rounds.

The tombstones are made of two flat Coke cartons that are duct taped
together and then painted with black paint for daylight, and
highlighted with glow-in-the-dark paint for night.

Almost everything here is custom made I did buy the Jughead mask (and, of course, all the paints, lights and plastic body parts), but the rest were created by me. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the display, although there are a few additional touches I'd like to add. But, the boils and ghouls will be here this evening, so the Riverdale sign and other touches will have to wait until next year.

Comics: Archie & the Gang as Superheroes

I was browsing through my Archie comics the other day and came across some fun reprints of the 1960s SUPERHERO versions of the Archie Characters. These were created back when superheroes were finally coming back into the mainstream consciousness after the drought of the 1950s.

For those of you who don't know, superheroes all but vanished during that decade: only the BIG THREE maintained constant publication from their halcyon days of the Golden Era that was the 1940s: Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Other heroes did pop up here and there, but the magic was gone. Even Captain Marvel (who once outsold Superman and moved a million comics a month) had hung up his cape (mostly due to a lawsuit from DC, but even if not for that, his glory days were also gone).

But 1956 changed that. The new version of THE FLASH revived interest by updating an old hero for a new age. Within 10 years, superhero mania swept the nation, especially when the Batman TV show became a monster hit in 1966.

Even the Archie gang was swept up in this super fever.

In October 1965, both Archie and Betty gained super powers: Archie got them in Life With Archie #44 and the girl next door acquired hers in Betty & Veronica #118. I personally didn't read these until the 1970s when they started reprinting these stories in their digest comics. I loved them, especially the Pureheart stories because they toyed around with the idea that they could actually be happening in the major continuity; every time Archie called on the "PH Factor" to activate his powers, it scrambled the memories of everyone around him, including himself, so he wasn't sure if these were real adventures or just daydreams.

The first Pureheart issue was illustrated by one of the underrated Archie artists, Bob White. Bob didn't acquire the following of Dan DeCarlo or Samm Schwartz, but he definitely captured the zany villains and absurd fun of these stories.

Copyright 1965 Archie Comics

I'm showing Super Teen's first appearance here, drawn by the incomparable Dan DeCarlo, but I'm actually showing the second appearance of PH because it's a better cover, AND it introduces his nemesis, EVILHEART (who is none other than Reggie Mantle). Of course, Jughead would soon follow with CAPTAIN HERO. It would actually take until 1995 before Veronica would get in on the game and get her own super identity as... Miss Vanity.

Ultra Update: The project in a nutshell

I realize that I haven't been exactly clear about what's going on here. So here it is:

• About 30 years ago (among other things), I created a superhero called ULTRA.
• I sent rough sketches to Steve Addlesee, who refined my initial costume ideas and did some concept art for me (check the last post for two of the images from the character design phase).
• I then wrote a 20-page story and Steve penciled and lettered it. I may or may not have done some layouts/breakdowns for this story.
• I then had some trouble finding someone to ink it. Ken Holden, Jr. inked the first 5 pages, then dropped the project due to other commitments.
• Andrew Peopy (who was a teenager at the time and has since gone on to become an award-winning artist) inked the first 11 pages before dropping it (it's also possible that he never got the second half of the story -- I'm not sure).
• I then got distracted with other things -- being the president of the Collectors' Club, going to college, dating, etc. All the usual things encountered by guys in their early 20s.
• So I dropped the project. It's been sitting in my files, unfinished and unseen for about 30 years.
• I recently went through my files and found a LOT of cool stuff.
• So, I've decided to reactivate my old fanzine label, MELEE PUBLICATIONS, and print/reprint some of this old material.
• I've contacted both Steve and Andrew, and they both gave me their blessings on this project. And they will receive royalties from each issue sold.

In future updates, I'll fill you in on the clean-up process for the artwork, and some of the other zines I'll be printing.