Monday afternoon 9/21/98 I had to fly into White Plains, NY as part of
yet 
another mostly politically driven field trip; on a previous trip I had 
noted that Archie Publications' home town of Mamaroneck was nearby, but 
didn't have time to swing by.  This trip I did.

Getting to the Mamaroneck exit on Route 95 was easy enough, but once
off of 
it I turned off a little too quickly and ended up on some back roads
(one 
not much more than a one-way alley) before I ended up on Fenimore Road 
heading north; the portion of Fayette Avenue east of Fenimore is a
dead-end 
street in what I wouldn't quite call the wrong side of the tracks, but 
didn't seem far from it...

Archie itself at 325 Fayette is part of a couple other companies in one 
building; there's a sign with Archie Andrews on the outside, but not
much 
else.  I later took a picture of the outside of the building with Paul
C. 
and once I get the pics developed, I'll probably send them to somebody
with 
a scanner and/or a web site to put them on...

Going inside the building, the lower floor appeared to be a warehouse
area.
I saw several Archie comics posters in the stairwell; the second floor
landing 
had a high-school locker in the corner.  I buzzed the receptionist and
asked 
if Paul was in, she wanted to know if he was expecting me, and I
replied 
"I think so" :^) (based on some e-mail we had traded about my being in
the 
area that day).

Once inside, I saw a lot more Archie props, award plaques, newpaper 
articles, etc. on the wall and on various displays in the offices.  
Paul came out to meet me; not surprisingly, he looked like his picture 
on Ken's web site :^) http://www.kenpenders.com/paul.jpg, 
as did Pat Spaziante  http://www.kenpenders.com/spaz.jpg

I don't think I acted like a drooling fanboy around Spaz (I almost 
sensed a fear on his part of that, maybe due to the actions of a
certain 
ex-list-member who tracked him down at work (turns out Spaz is the only 
Knuckles/Sonic artist who's on the staff full-time at Archie - the rest
are 
all free-lance (not to be offensive towards Ken et al, but whenever I
see 
a "My Turn" column in "Newsweek" by somebody described as a "free lance 
writer", I can't help but think that's a euphemism for "lacking a
steady 
job", but I digress...))).  Now if Art Mawhinney had been there, I
might've 
gushed a bit... :^)

I met editor Justin Gabrie, who didn't quite fit my conception of him 
(no pics of him on Ken's page...) - I don't know if it was his age 
(not much more than Paul's, maybe even less), or his shaved-head 
(but not recently) hairstyle :^)  I met several other staffers, 
but their names escape me :^(  Everybody was quite friendly.

Paul gave me a quick tour of the offices, which are about a dozen or so
for 
the 30 staffers, all on the second floor of this building (compared, as 
Paul or Justin put it, to the "4 floors plus penthouse for Marvel",
though 
I expect that to change soon with the bankruptcy re-organization...)
(We also talked about comic sales between Archie and other businesses,
and 
Paul also said that it didn't look good for Nights to continue past #6.)

Spaz was coloring some fan art on a computer outside Justin's office 
(so Dan can blame him and the other staffer who don't get it right :^))
I saw Spaz's office, but didn't try to snoop around in it :^)

Justin showed me the "series bible" for Sonic Underground - character
pics 
included Sonic's sister and brother (the former looking a bit like an
older 
Amy Rose from what I remember).  Sat. AM Robotnik was in there, along
with 
some other somewhat lame characters, including one named "Dingo" - IMHO
a 
poor version of General Buzzcutt, er. Stryker, but apparently not based
on him.
They said the backgrounds were originally done for the Sat. AM series...

Justin and Paul both said they were fighting any attempts to merge 
Underground into the comics continuity, though there will be a one-shot 
comic dealing with it (my advice, treat it as a alternate
universe/Comics 
Interstate story...).  We all worried that maybe the worst thing that
could 
happen would be for Underground to become a hit, in which case the
pressure 
to modify the comic might become too much to resist, but they said that
if 
that happened they'd spin off a separate Underground comic (it'd be
ironic 
if that failed but the original comic kept going strong :^)).

Other areas in the office included an area to make corrections to
comics 
between when they came in from the artists and when they went out to
the 
printer.  A drawer here contained stuff for Super Specials 8 and 9, the 
latter being another Sonic Kids issue, the former being a sort of
"catch all" 
issue (i.e., they have an inventory of completed stories that don't
quite 
fit into the current continuity (at least one of which was a parody of
a 
certain show also done in a short fan-fic by Warp, which I just now
read - 
hopefully the comic will be as funny :^) (I only caught a glimpse of
the 
artwork along with Paul's confirmation of the story theme, but I'll say 
no more till it comes out))).  Paul himself didn't know what some of
the 
upcoming stuff was - talk about being too busy... :^(

Well, that was about it - I had to get going to beat rush-hour traffic,
so I 
took my pictures of the front of the building and the Archie poster and
left.

BTW and FWIW, the pronunciation of Mamaroneck is "meh-MEH-ro-nek"; my 
version was "mah-mah-RON-ek", which the staff found amusing (i.e., the 
"moronic" part, which led to one of them commenting about Mamaroneck
being 
the "armpit of the country" (I thought that was Toledo myself, but I
guess 
two are allowed... :^))

I then took several wrong turns trying to get to Croton-on-Hudson
(thanks 
mainly to the poor Hertz road map) and ended up in Yonkers, NY before 
turning around and heading north.  I then spent from 7-11:30 PM waiting
for 
Metro North to get a crew together for the test train I was to ride and 
get it set up to run, then spent till 5:00 AM running to Grand Central 
Terminal (not Station, BTW...) and back - the first time we got out and 
walked inside - first time I'd been there - impressive.  Overall though
it 
was a long night and the test results were inconclusive, but I suppose
it was 
worth it to get a chance to see some of the process behind the creation
of 
Sonic/Knuckles comics.  Thanks again to Paul and the rest of the staff
for 
the tour!

Ron Bauerle