I can't say I'm surprised, although I've really enjoyed the book.  It's probably weak sales that's ending it (I haven't looked up the sales), but it also could be because after they got The Monkees and Blondie, they weren't able to get any more well known "guest" bands to appear in the book. 


I can't imagine what the future is for the RIVERDALE comic title because while I've actually been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the stories, Thomas Pitilli's art is horrible in that book in my opinion. 


https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/02/tegan-and-sara-join-the-archies-in-this-exclusive.html

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on February 16, 2018, 12:31:14 PM
I can't say I'm surprised, although I've really enjoyed the book.  It's probably weak sales that's ending it (I haven't looked up the sales), but it also could be because after they got The Monkees and Blondie, they weren't able to get any more well known "guest" bands to appear in the book. 


I can't imagine what the future is for the RIVERDALE comic title because while I've actually been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the stories, Thomas Pitilli's art is horrible in that book in my opinion.

Enough to compile into a trade paperback, which is the usual performance of any new floppy title. That goes for the ones I like as well as the ones I don't. JUGHEAD managed to get three, so for ACP it did much better than average.

Only two titles seem to have escaped that fate (so far): ARCHIE and RIVERDALE. Since Riverdale is still on TV and popular, I guess it'll last a little longer than most of the others.

I agree with you about Pitilli, but Eisma isn't much better, and there really hasn't been a new Archie artist except for Derek Charm that I thought was outstanding. Adam Hughes and Audrey Mok are both good artists, but it'll never matter to me if I don't care for the way the stories are written, because I'm never going to buy it just to flip through and look at the drawings. Apart from Derek Charm's issues of JUGHEAD, I haven't bought a single one (except for a few cover variants I really liked by Gisele, Dan Parent, and Mike Allred -- JOSIE #1, RIVERDALE #1, and The ARCHIES #4). Either I don't like the artwork, or I don't like the writing, or both. The ARCHIES might not have been too bad (judging by #4) if Charm or Mok drew it, because it's not horribly written (except for the one-shot). It just needed to be a little funnier... and the artist could have helped out with that, too.

The obvious and smart thing to do here if ACP would like to have 3 other comic books every month that sell as well as ARCHIE, is to publish ARCHIE every week instead of every month. Not another Archie spinoff title... ARCHIE. They just have to hire 3 more artists to do it, but it would seem not to matter since the artist drawing the book isn't what's selling it, and those people who like it will buy it regardless of whether that artist is Fiona Staples, Thomas Pitilli, Joe Eisma, or Audrey Mok. It should be a snap for Waid to write it, because he can easily write 4 scripts a month, particularly simple ones where there isn't a lot happening in any one particular issue, like ARCHIE. The problem is that for Waid to do that, he'd have to stop writing his other titles for other publishers. He's not going to be giving up a paycheck from Marvel for AVENGERS, which is one of Marvel's Top Two selling titles right now, for "Archie money".

They squandered the potential with this one. I wish they would've brought The Veronicas back (who aren't super kiddie pop anymore) but they could've done some other pop artists.

I think my basic problem with most of the new Archie Comics is that I really don't understand the mindset of the approach to the characters at all. I would make the single exception of JUGHEAD to that statement, because it seems like someone rightly acknowledged that you just CAN'T approach Jughead as a realistic character or try to interpret him seriously, because his basic defining characteristics absolutely defy that. So what you got instead was a re-interpretion using a different type of approach to humor (as opposed to the classic, slapstick/situation comedy approach).

When I look at the other new Archie Comics (not talking about the superheroes or Cosmo here), I just have... no response. No emotional reaction or connection with it in any way. To me they just seem like oddities that I don't know what to make of. I mean, they attempt to present some sort of functional continuity that can be followed in the usual way of sequential storytelling, but I constantly feel like I just walked into a party where I was told all my old friends would be there -- but looking all around me, all I see is a room full of strangers wearing these stickers that say "HELLO My Name Is ARCHIE" or "HELLO My Name Is Betty", "HELLO My Name Is Veronica", etc. and I'm just staring at them and thinking "Who the heck ARE these people, really?" It's this weird unsettling place where there are bits and parts where they seem to confirm who they claim to be, yet there are just as many strange, unfamiliar things about them making every moment I spend in this room an analytical guessing game. So there's no emotional reaction to what's going on here, it's just me watching stuff happen from the distant POV of a very detached observer.

And what pops into my head is the thought "Is this what non-comics reading people see when you show them a comic book?" Sure, they can read the text and understand it, and know that those lines on the page represent people going about, doing things and moving through space over time. But in the end, they hand it back to you with this blank expression of "Yeah, I understood it I suppose... but so what?"

The other thing that pops into my head is the impression that if I hadn't read comics in years and years, and didn't know stuff about how they're created, who the creators are, and how the industry works and so forth, but was familiar with the older icons of comic books, and you handed me a copy of ARCHIE, my first reaction would probably be something like "Marvel Comics publishes ARCHIE now??" That's what they look like upon seeing them for the first time, as if somehow Marvel (or DC) had licensed Archie -- how they'd approach it and reinterpret it from their perspective. And to be sure, a lot of Marvel and DC's iconic characters now strike me almost the same way, as far as how they're being interpreted currently, and I have the same strange feeling of detachment towards characters which once excited me. Hello, do I know you? But at least the Marvel and DC characters have evolved away from from their familiar selves over years and years of change, and not literally overnight.

In the end, the things I would be expecting and looking to get out of reading an Archie comic book are just nowhere to be found in the new ones.

I wish it didn't end. I'm going miss it.

Most of the New Riverdale artists aren't bad in the sense of where you can point to some specific thing like poor anatomy or bad composition. It's just, on average, that the artists they pick tend to be kind of bland and ho-hum, middle-of-the-road, plain-vanilla. They can draw, but there are a hundred other artists who can do so just as well or better. There's just nothing specific, nothing particularly interesting or appealing about them that stands out or is notable in any way. The New Riverdale comics aren't the 'action genre' type, so I don't expect the artwork to impress me in terms of being dynamic or powerful or especially dramatic, but I guess what it needs is to be more expressive in terms of the faces and body language, or the storytelling aspect (page layout and pacing) needs to be more interesting or more nuanced somehow.

Has the series been cancelled after #5? That's the last issue that I saw on Amazon, and it seems like the entire series was removed around a week or two ago.

Quote from: Tuxedo Mark on March 17, 2018, 07:20:00 PM
Has the series been cancelled after #5? That's the last issue that I saw on Amazon, and it seems like the entire series was removed around a week or two ago.

Issue #7 was the last to be solicited through Diamond Comics. Whether #6 or 7 will actually see print NOWseems iffy at best. Sounds like ACP may have run into some legal difficulties having to do with licensing rights to the musicians appearing in the series. That probably means no trade paperback collection, either. Or at least, no COMPLETE trade paperback collection.

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 18, 2018, 12:48:29 AM

Quote from: Tuxedo Mark on March 17, 2018, 07:20:00 PM
Has the series been cancelled after #5? That's the last issue that I saw on Amazon, and it seems like the entire series was removed around a week or two ago.

Issue #7 was the last to be solicited through Diamond Comics. Whether #6 or 7 will actually see print NOWseems iffy at best. Sounds like ACP may have run into some legal difficulties having to do with licensing rights to the musicians appearing in the series. That probably means no trade paperback collection, either. Or at least, no COMPLETE trade paperback collection.

I hope that's not the case.  I can't imagine the disappointment of Alex Segura and Dan Parent if the Blondie issue doesn't happen.  They both LOVE Blondie and of course Dan has a variant cover on that issue. 

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on March 18, 2018, 01:08:26 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 18, 2018, 12:48:29 AM

Quote from: Tuxedo Mark on March 17, 2018, 07:20:00 PM
Has the series been cancelled after #5? That's the last issue that I saw on Amazon, and it seems like the entire series was removed around a week or two ago.

Issue #7 was the last to be solicited through Diamond Comics. Whether #6 or 7 will actually see print NOWseems iffy at best. Sounds like ACP may have run into some legal difficulties having to do with licensing rights to the musicians appearing in the series. That probably means no trade paperback collection, either. Or at least, no COMPLETE trade paperback collection.

I hope that's not the case.  I can't imagine the disappointment of Alex Segura and Dan Parent if the Blondie issue doesn't happen.  They both LOVE Blondie and of course Dan has a variant cover on that issue.

I know! I ordered #6 specifically for Dan's variant cover. Still, I'm at a loss for any other explanation that would account for the sudden withdrawal of already-published issues of The Archies. It's like when you suddenly see some product removed from retail sale... nobody wants the loss of revenue, so you can only assume that there exists some greater danger to the company that produced the product if they continue to sell it.

I will allow that perhaps the legal kerfluffle pertains only to the digital licensing rights... that would allow for the existing material written and drawn for print publication to go ahead as planned. The lost revenue from digital sales might have so impacted the title's profitability as to account for its sudden discontinuation as of #7.

Now, what I am imagining here is that there is some dispute over exactly what intellectual property rights were being granted under the contract which the musicians (or their legal representatives) signed, granting rights to use their likenesses (which are their "intellectual property") to Archie Comic Publications.

In the day-to-day world of comic book publishing, most creators (like Alex Segura, comic book writer, or Joe Eisma, comic book artist) are creating intellectual property for the publisher under a "work for hire" contract. What that means is that they are in effect assigning all future intellectual property rights in the work they are creating to the publisher, and the publisher then becomes the creator of record for all purposes going forward. That means that Archie Comic Publications can continue to exploit the work created by Alex Segura or Joe Eisma for ACP under contract for any future profit they might derive from it, in reprints and whatever formats they choose to exploit.

In the wider publishing world, "work for hire" isn't a standard contract agreement. If Stephen King writes a novel for say, Random House, he does not sign away all future interest in his work to the publisher. By the same principle, if Capcom licenses the rights to ACP to publish a MEGA MAN comic book, they are only granting those rights to ACP in a limited fashion for a limited time, which may either expire or be revoked after "first use" or "first publication", or for a specific period of time stated in the contract. They are not granting the rights to ACP to use Mega Man in its comic books (or reprint those comic books later or in different formats) in perpetuity. The same goes for musicians who are granting ACP use of their likenesses for the purposes of creating comic books designed to generate profit for the publisher.

I would venture to guess that the legal dispute has something to do with how "first use" or "first publication" (unless otherwise defined as a specific time period in the legal contract binding the musicians) relates to digital comics. Unlike traditional publishing, in digital comics their are no "second printings" or "reprints", because the original "first publication" never exhausts itself. Unlike print publishing, there is no finite number of copies being initially printed, so that digital comic can in fact remain "on sale now" and be delivered on demand to any customers who choose to purchase it at any time after it first becomes available. Is a digital comic a "reprint" of the print publication? Not exactly, but then again, after a certain time has passed all original first printing copies of a comic book may become unavailable for purchase by any retailer choosing to stock the product -- this will never happen to a digital comic. Perhaps one of the musical groups took issue with this, arguing that they did not grant ACP the rights to use their likeness in digital comic books that could potentially continue to sell forever, or as long as any consumer interest remains.

One other possibility just occurred to me, which... if it turned out to be true, I'd find REALLY funny and ironic. What if one of the musical artists (The Monkees, Tegan & Sarah, Blondie, or whomever...) ONLY signed the contract with ACP to allow use of their likeness(es) under the mistaken impression that they'd be appearing in a comic book story with "The Archies"? Which is to say, what if they'd grown up with and been a fan of (the CLASSIC) Archie comic books, and were expecting to get "Archiefied" in a story with... THESE guys?



And then were SO disappointed to discover what the finished product looked like, that they felt that they'd been deceived and tricked??

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on March 18, 2018, 03:58:05 PM
One other possibility just occurred to me, which... if it turned out to be true, I'd find REALLY funny and ironic. What if one of the musical artists (The Monkees, Tegan & Sarah, Blondie, or whomever...) ONLY signed the contract with ACP to allow use of their likeness(es) under the mistaken impression that they'd be appearing in a comic book story with "The Archies"? Which is to say, what if they'd grown up with and been a fan of (the CLASSIC) Archie comic books, and were expecting to get "Archiefied" in a story with... THESE guys?



And then were SO disappointed to discover what the finished product looked like, that they felt that they'd been deceived and tricked??

That would be funny but somehow I doubt that's the case.  Ha ha.

oy vey,If this keeps up archie comics will be out of business 

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on February 17, 2018, 04:21:47 PMI think my basic problem with most of the new Archie Comics is that I really don't understand the mindset of the approach to the characters at all. I would make the single exception of JUGHEAD to that statement, because it seems like someone rightly acknowledged that you just CAN'T approach Jughead as a realistic character or try to interpret him seriously, because his basic defining characteristics absolutely defy that. So what you got instead was a re-interpretion using a different type of approach to humor (as opposed to the classic, slapstick/situation comedy approach).When I look at the other new Archie Comics (not talking about the superheroes or Cosmo here), I just have... no response. No emotional reaction or connection with it in any way. To me they just seem like oddities that I don't know what to make of. I mean, they attempt to present some sort of functional continuity that can be followed in the usual way of sequential storytelling, but I constantly feel like I just walked into a party where I was told all my old friends would be there -- but looking all around me, all I see is a room full of strangers wearing these stickers that say "HELLO My Name Is ARCHIE" or "HELLO My Name Is Betty", "HELLO My Name Is Veronica", etc. and I'm just staring at them and thinking "Who the heck ARE these people, really?" It's this weird unsettling place where there are bits and parts where they seem to confirm who they claim to be, yet there are just as many strange, unfamiliar things about them making every moment I spend in this room an analytical guessing game. So there's no emotional reaction to what's going on here, it's just me watching stuff happen from the distant POV of a very detached observer.And what pops into my head is the thought "Is this what non-comics reading people see when you show them a comic book?" Sure, they can read the text and understand it, and know that those lines on the page represent people going about, doing things and moving through space over time. But in the end, they hand it back to you with this blank expression of "Yeah, I understood it I suppose... but so what?"The other thing that pops into my head is the impression that if I hadn't read comics in years and years, and didn't know stuff about how they're created, who the creators are, and how the industry works and so forth, but was familiar with the older icons of comic books, and you handed me a copy of ARCHIE, my first reaction would probably be something like "Marvel Comics publishes ARCHIE now??" That's what they look like upon seeing them for the first time, as if somehow Marvel (or DC) had licensed Archie -- how they'd approach it and reinterpret it from their perspective. And to be sure, a lot of Marvel and DC's iconic characters now strike me almost the same way, as far as how they're being interpreted currently, and I have the same strange feeling of detachment towards characters which once excited me. Hello, do I know you? But at least the Marvel and DC characters have evolved away from from their familiar selves over years and years of change, and not literally overnight.In the end, the things I would be expecting and looking to get out of reading an Archie comic book are just nowhere to be found in the new ones.

Wow tough times and I agree if things get worse for Archie then they will have no choice but to be sold to Marvel or dc comics  and let them reprint the old stories instead.

The Archies is back up on Amazon with #6 available for pre-order.

...Let me get this straight - the standard paper version of THE ARCHIES was available do a while - through bricks and mortar shops and thru Amazon - And,  I assume,  other Internet dealers who sell paper stuff? - but was WITHDRAWN FROM SALE for a while ? But now is available again? Ay Yi yi !