DeMatteis, Cavallaro Prep "The Shield" for Deployment

This should make several of you board members happy! Click on the picture for the full story.

deja vu!

six issues of The Fox, with The Shield as a backup?

I hope this is a marketing decision, designed to capitalise on DC Comics' last few issues of The Shield, with The Fox as a backup! Let's hope that plus Mark Waid gets this title some real reader figures, and that they somehow put the hard sell on the (hopefully large) pool of new readers to shift some future copies of New Crusaders...

yEAH!! This is GREAT NEWS..!!

Thanks, Captain.

Hope begins to stir.

This is the BEST news I could have gotten today!!

Hope these "teams" continue to come and play in the Red Circle sandbox.!!

I hope Mark Waid's THE FOX pulls in a lot of readers to Red Circle.

With QUALITY story-telling(with both writing and art), this could be a wonderful place.

AND...(this excites me)... they are telling a story from the '40's.... which is a fine place to start. (Even if it is a flashback.)

that's one thing i really like about Archie Red Circle that they have never gone back on is their commitment to their characters' history (and oh my gods, that word again: legacy). That's something DC really did not do either of the times it got hold of these characters (and it really suffered the most recent time, since DC was having a real cataclysm of continuity reboot crisises all at once for a while there)

But no, Archie have said they would not deny all the past continuity and they haven't, with Legacy they've really put their money where their mouth is (and i'd like to know what was in the Lost Crusade tbh, i wonder if there are any pages that have not been available in print?). Glad to see they are doing a forties story. The flashback Fox stories in Black Hood 2 and 3 were incredible, while the two parter set in the 1980s in Blue Ribbon 6-7 was a bit lacklustre i thought, so i am glad they are taking Alex Toth's stuff (and presumably the original forties stories, only one of which i have actually read, but it was really good) as the starting point. The Fox really does have the potential to be very entertaining indeed.

PS - looks like the Wikipedia page for this character needs a little bit of updating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_%28comics%29

PPS - i clicked through the links at the bottom of that page, and they took me to the mightycrusaders.net pages about The Fox I and II, however the first Fox is mentioned being the one appearing in Blue Ribbon vol 1 #4-22 and Black Hood vol 2 #2-3, and the second Fox is mentioned as first appearing in Blue Ribbon vol 2 #6, with The Gasser's first appearance (and Delilah Monaco's) being their first appearances in that same issue! No mention seems to be made that all three of these characters have appeared in Mighty Comics. I must be the most pedantic comics fan ever to have noticed that tiny detail (i wonder if Mighty Comics featured characters from some similar alternate universe, perhaps one of the other Archie ones, that would solve a LOT of Red Circle continuity issues)

An Alternate Universe would be a genius solution out of some of those bad Mighty Comics stories.

It might be best if Legacy and what comes from now on ... is canon.

well yes, but that isn't really a satisfying answer.

One thing Archie have always proudly said (or Ian Flynn at any rate*) is that the past stories are all canon, and they are not going to do continuity reboots to fix things they have changed their mind about, and this is one of the things i find very appealing about Archie Red Circle, because i do think it's weak to say "none of what went before actually happened, but keep buying all our books and we'll have endless flashbacks to the same old stories with a few differences, to establish the new canon" and it's especially weak when you know that the publisher will be doing another reboot in two or three more years and everything you've "learned" will be dumped in the toilet yet again.

I personally don't think an alternate universe falls into this category, if it's done Julius Schwartz style, ie: the old stories (in this case the Mighty Comics stories, all (especially Fox, Web, and Black Hood, the others do not have conflicting details in their stories that i can remember)) are said to have happened in another universe, and as an added bonus, sometimes (when the cosmos is in alignment) it is possible for heroes like Green Lantern or Flash to breach that gap. Sabrina #30 already showed us The Jaguar traversing from one similar universe to another, so we know it can happen, and that there are at least two universes on the go already.

Schwartz did this so he could have the golden age versions of revamped superheroes set on another world, but in our case we simply want it to explain all the continuity flubs that haven't been answered yet. Ironically, we would be keeping the golden age stories and the eighties ones on "our" world, and only setting the Mighty Comics stories on another world (we would have to keep Adventures of the Fly 1-4, Double Life of Private Strong 1-2, Fly-Man 31-39, Mighty Crusaders 1-6 (but not necessarily 7) and Adventures of the Jaguar 1-17 on "our" world, so that the eighties Mighty Crusaders makes sense.

Adventures of the Fly 4-30 still present a small problem. They all show an older Thomas Troy (i'd say about 25 years older than in issues 1-4) but issue 8-9 show Lance Strong, apparently the same age as in his own title from 1959, and both characters seem to be inhabiting a '50s-'60s environment, though in The Fly (1983) Tommy Troy doesn't seem to have aged much since the sixties. I prefer to believe that all the contents of AotF 4-30 and DLoPS 1-2 "happened" some time in the late seventies, on "our" world.

So this leaves Mighty Comics 40-50 inclusive, and Mighty Crusaders vol 1 #7 all happening on another world. We could probably bring some of the Fox stories from Mighty Comics up to the seventies as well, and say they "happened" later than they were published, so we could keep them on "our" world as well, but there's such a thing as getting too involved with these things ;-)

--
* i am paraphrasing him to the best of my understanding and i wish it to be known i am not attempting to represent his views, or to give any of Mr Flynn's actual comments an unwarranted spin.

Good discussion, gentlemen. The Captain, however, thinks comic book history/continuity has bogged down the genre for decades. In the early 1960s, Marvel's issue-to-issue continuity vs. DC's 8-page, 3-stories per magazine format was a unique & exciting premise. Now, not so much. The Captain's current preferences are "Elseworlds"-type books; no ties to anything, just great stories. (Although The Captain respects what Archie is doing with the Red Circle project.)

i can't disagree with you captain, but i have noticed my tastes seem weirdly polarised.

I have never (and still don't) liked "imaginary stories" or "what if" stories, because they are a cop out and a waste of time, and usually don't make sense. However i love Elseworlds, especially multiple book ones (like JSA: Liberty Files, John Byrne's Superman/Batman Generations vol 1-3, or Batman: Gotham By Gaslight/Master of the Future) - i don't really know why i love one and dislike the other so much, since the concepts are very similar.

And i still love the Julius Schwartz multiverse idea (introducing one new world every now and again for each pantheon of heroes that DC inherited from some other publisher) and yet DC's new concept of multiverses, which only exists to explain an uncountable number of continuity revisions, leaves me colder than an iced penguin in winter.

So yes, it makes sense that an idea that was new in the 1980s is a bit tired and uninteresting now. LUCKILY Archie Red Circle has not published too many issues, even counting back to 1959 it's less than 200 issues in total i think, so it's actually possible to resolve the continuity in only a few paragraphs, to me that's part of the fun, is seeing writers genuinely making things that didn't work before make sense now, i think it's disrespectful to the character when a writer just dismisses everything that came before, it removes the foundation of that character's life (hence why i could never enjoy a story about Helena Bertellini as The Huntress, after they erased the golden age Batman from continuity).

So i'm not disagreeing with you, but i am saying if the back continuity can be made to work, i believe it makes the current stories much stronger, and provides lots of springboards for future story arcs, and i genuinely think that something like this is what is planned.

Whether this creative ideal will survive today's harsh economic environment long enough to see full fruition in print is another matter though.

Mr. Calum wrote:

...but I am saying if the back continuity can be made to work, I believe it makes the current stories much stronger, and provides lots of springboards for future story arcs, and I genuinely think that something like this is what is planned.

Another well-written commentary, Mr. Calum. At least this Red Circle Universe approach by the Archie creators is unique, fresh & exciting. Kudos to them for stepping out & trying something different.

On the news about the Shield back-ups, well I am very pleasantly surprised. Thank you Archie Comics.

Calum wrote:

well yes, but that isn't really a satisfying answer.

One thing Archie have always proudly said (or Ian Flynn at any rate*) is that the past stories are all canon, and they are not going to do continuity reboots to fix things they have changed their mind about, and this is one of the things i find very appealing about Archie Red Circle, because i do think it's weak to say "none of what went before actually happened, but keep buying all our books and we'll have endless flashbacks to the same old stories with a few differences, to establish the new canon" and it's especially weak when you know that the publisher will be doing another reboot in two or three more years and everything you've "learned" will be dumped in the toilet yet again.

I personally don't think an alternate universe falls into this category, if it's done Julius Schwartz style, ie: the old stories (in this case the Mighty Comics stories, all (especially Fox, Web, and Black Hood, the others do not have conflicting details in their stories that i can remember)) are said to have happened in another universe, and as an added bonus, sometimes (when the cosmos is in alignment) it is possible for heroes like Green Lantern or Flash to breach that gap. Sabrina #30 already showed us The Jaguar traversing from one similar universe to another, so we know it can happen, and that there are at least two universes on the go already.

Schwartz did this so he could have the golden age versions of revamped superheroes set on another world, but in our case we simply want it to explain all the continuity flubs that haven't been answered yet. Ironically, we would be keeping the golden age stories and the eighties ones on "our" world, and only setting the Mighty Comics stories on another world (we would have to keep Adventures of the Fly 1-4, Double Life of Private Strong 1-2, Fly-Man 31-39, Mighty Crusaders 1-6 (but not necessarily 7) and Adventures of the Jaguar 1-17 on "our" world, so that the eighties Mighty Crusaders makes sense.

Adventures of the Fly 4-30 still present a small problem. They all show an older Thomas Troy (i'd say about 25 years older than in issues 1-4) but issue 8-9 show Lance Strong, apparently the same age as in his own title from 1959, and both characters seem to be inhabiting a '50s-'60s environment, though in The Fly (1983) Tommy Troy doesn't seem to have aged much since the sixties. I prefer to believe that all the contents of AotF 4-30 and DLoPS 1-2 "happened" some time in the late seventies, on "our" world.

So this leaves Mighty Comics 40-50 inclusive, and Mighty Crusaders vol 1 #7 all happening on another world. We could probably bring some of the Fox stories from Mighty Comics up to the seventies as well, and say they "happened" later than they were published, so we could keep them on "our" world as well, but there's such a thing as getting too involved with these things ;-)

--
* i am paraphrasing him to the best of my understanding and i wish it to be known i am not attempting to represent his views, or to give any of Mr Flynn's actual comments an unwarranted spin.

Yep. You've broken it down exceptionally well. And I agree.

I do hope Red Circle gives us a coherent (as coherent as possible) Universe... and maybe that is to continue straight ahead.

I'm against re-boots, too.

Schwartz had a Great idea about Earth-2 and we got to see the return of the Original JSA. When I picked that issue off the stands (#123) I thought it was the Best Flash issue ever. It opened many doors and many possibilities. DC messed it up after a while, but it was wonderful for about 4 or 5 years. ( For me.)

Right now, I can't see how Red Circle could straighten out and untangle their past .... but your take is "right on" target.
Their "flubs" will be hard to straighten out....whatever they do.

To do a coherent base line .... of the 1940's ... and move the heroes and their world to the present will be difficult as far as I'm concerned.

This first story of THE SHIELD ---which will harken back to the past--- is probably a good start for the new readers that may not know anything about the Golden Age of the MLJ.

I wished there was a way to tell the GOLDEN AGE MLJ story in some sort of manageable way so the readers know of the heroes beginning. Maybe they (RC) are trying to get some of that done in the back of THE NEW CRUSADERS.

That picture of THE BLACK HOOD, THE COMET, STEEL STERLING, AND THE HANGMAN (that appeared in the Comic Shop News) makes me think they can get some of it done there.

Too bad the reprint of many of those stories wouldn't probably sell.
Ya got to really love those MLJ heroes to get through some of those reprints. (Yes, I do.)

can you imagine if a second volume of Legacy were released, but this time using reprints from the 1940s rather than the 1980s?

Two words: Awe. Some.

Calum wrote:

can you imagine if a second volume of Legacy were released, but this time using reprints from the 1940s rather than the 1980s?

Two words: Awe. Some.

You, sir, are right!! Awe. Some.

One reprint "Legacy-like" ...retelling of the 1940's MLJ history could "do it."