Archie The Married Life: Volume 1

It's here at last...Archie The Married Life: Volume 1, collecting the first six issues of the Life With Archie: The Married Life Magazine. That's six stories (the first issues of Archie Loves Veronica and Archie Loves Betty were written by Michael Uslan; the rest is all me) of what's been called "the most critically acclaimed storyline in Archie Comics history," 320 big pages of art by Norm Breyfogle, Joe Rubinstein, and Andrew Pepoy, a few introductory pieces by Michael and myself, all for $19.99!

Also hitting comic shops is Betty & Veronica #255, which features a short story I wrote, "Beach Blanket Bash-Up," with art by Jeff Shultz and Jim Amash. Betty versus Veronica in a secret beach Olympics with Archie as the prize! 

Behind the Scenes: Veronica and Jughead, the Real Story!

It's all revealed in the hard-hitting "B.F.F....Not!" in Jughead Double Digest #173, in comic shops tomorrow. I wrote it, my old friend and Vigilante colleague Tod Smith penciled it, another old friend and colleague (he inked one of the first half dozen stories I wrote for DC Comics many, many moons ago), Al Milgrom inked it.

All you've got to do is read it.

Please.

Village Voice sez...

According to Topless Robot, the pop culture website of the Village Voice:

"...If you aren't reading Life with Archie you are truly missing out on some serious insanity. For my money it's the most consistently entertaining comic being written right now. Archie fans old and new would be doing themselves a favor by checking it out."

Who am I to argue with the Voice?

What a Twit!

Yeah, I've gone social media. You can now follow me on Twitter at @PaulKupperberg.

Not that I have much to say, but it doesn't seem to stop everybody else. (Does Alec Baldwin do anything else but Tweet all day???)

Before I killed Miss Grundy, Before I Killed Adrian Chase...

 I killed Aquababy!

I just received in the mail my comp copies of the new Aquaman: Death of a Prince trade paperback from DC Comics. It features the entire saga of the birth and death of Arthur Curry Jr., aka Aquababy between 1974 and 1978.

I was assigned to write Aquaman after having written two different back-up features, one starring Aqualad (Adventure Comics #453 - 455), and another featuring Mera's search for the missing baby in Aquaman #57 - 59. My first issue was Aquaman #62 (June-July 1978). My last was #63 (Sept.-Oct. 1978), whereupon the title was cancelled. But that issue did wrap up the whole storyline and I did get to rack up my first comic book fatality. Plus write the character for a few more stories when the Aquaman featured jumped over to the new, giant-sized Dollar Comics format.

Aquaman: Death of a Prince reprints the entire saga, 336 pages of great 1970s comics by writers Paul Levitz, Gerry Conway, Steve Skeates, David Michelinie, Martin Pasko, and me, as well as art by Jim Aparo, Mike Grell, Carl Potts. Joe Rubinstein, Dick Giordano, Juan Ortiz, Vince Ciolletta, Don Newton, John Celardo, Bob McLeod, and Dave Hunt.

Sunday, June 12: Scranton, PA Here I Come!

I'll be a guest at the Scranton Comic Book Convention in (where else?) Scranton, PA this coming Sunday, June 12! This will be my first time attending, but it look to be a good old-fashioned one-day local show and I'm looking forward to it.

Also appearing are Archie artist Dan Parent, Marvel artist Dave Hoover, artist Rudy Nebres, DC writer C.J. Henderson, and about a dozen more writers and artists from all over.

I'll have a table from which I'll be talking, selling, and signing! Admission is $3.00, hours are 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M., and the location is Johnson College, 3427 North Main Avenue, Scranton PA 18508 (exit 190 off of I-81). If you're in the neighborhood, I hope to see you there!

Buy My Books On Amazon.com...Pretty Please?!?

Click on the Amazon links to the right to order!

I've just put my three eBooks up on Amazon.com at new, lower prices. Check 'em out, buy a book (or three) if you're so inclined by clicking on the Amazon links to the right, and support a starving writer.

Well, okay, not exactly starving. But I am feeling rather peckish...

$4.99

$3.99

$2.99

He Loves Peace So Much, He's Willing to Kill For It...And He's Downloadable, Too!

Waaay back in 1988 I wrote a miniseries for DC Comics starring the Joe Gill/Pat Boyette-created character, Peacemaker. Peacemaker was originally published by Charlton Comics in 1966 as part of editor Dick Giordano's "Action Hero Line" and lasted only a couple of years. Years later, DC acquired the rights to the Charlton Comics heroes (nearly losing them to Alan Moore's whim in the 1980s, had his Watchmen gone as originally conceived), and I have managed, happily, to be involved with many of these characters over the year as both writer and editor.


I got my shot at Peacemaker in the pages of Vigilante, where he was portrayed as a dangerous psycho who listened to the voices of the people he had killed who spoke to him via his helmet. In 1988, I spun him off in the aforementioned miniseries (with artists Tod Smith and Pablo Marcos), which was a total psychotic, blood-spattered romp against international terrorism. The voice in his head/helmet now belonged to his deceased and unrepentant Nazi father, and my editor's marching orders to me had been to push the envelope on crazy and violent.

DC has just posted the entire 4-issue Peacemaker miniseries online for download at .99¢ each via it's DC Comics app for the iPhone and Android devices, as well as at Comixology.com.

It was, someone in DC Digital told me the other day, sick enough that it was "a book that had to wait for the market sensibility to catch up with it."

Not shabby for a guy who writes Archie and Scooby Doo, huh?

On Sale 6/1...Life With Archie #10

The adventures continue...

Just Released! The Same Old Story

The new novel by the author of Two Tales of Atlantis and In My Shorts: Hitler's Bellhop and Other Stories.

 Click on the cover image to order The Same Old Story from Smashwords.com!

eBook Price: $4.99 USD. 78,290 words. Fiction by Paul Kupperberg, published by Buffalo Avenue Books on Smashwords.com on May 18, 2011.  

 

It's 1951 and the comic book industry is undergoing a recession that's sent half the writers and artists in New York to the streets scrambling for the work that remains. Among that number is writer Max Wiser, former pulp scribe and son of a legendary N.Y.P.D. homicide cop, on whose life Wiser based his bestselling pulp stories. When the industry's top writer dies in an accidental drunken tumble from a subway train that proves to have been murder, Max is plunged into a world of lies and conspiracy...discovering that there is often a fine line between real life and the pulp fiction around which he has built his life. Especially after the beautiful blonde mistress of the murdered man works her way into his life...and as the death toll mounts, Max Wiser learns that even in the cliche-ridden world of comics and the pulps, there's really no such thing as The Same Old Story...