Archie comics has gained a renaissance after going through low sales throughout the 80's,90s and 2000s all thanks to the  the leadership of current CEO  Jon Goldwater.
It introduce a gay character named Kevin Keller,It introduce mature storytelling with Life with Archie: The Married Life that focus on Archie's married relationship with Betty and Veronica of both worlds.It introduce a horror series for teen readers called Afterlife with Archie which give a dark and grimmy  take on the archie characters while facing monsters and zombies.It with CW introduce a teen drama television version of the Archie characters called Riverdale which like Afterlife with Archie  is dark but with mystery elements.
And gave a reboot of the Archie universe with Archie #1 aiming for the teen demographic after ending the main classic line and speaking of the classic line,have you wondered that 3 years after the classic line ended.There isn't a single new classic lineup story in the main comic book lineup except the Digest because they are still running with new stories in classic line up  but there are mostly reprint and less new material.
Now even though the modern reboot stays faithful to the classic with its humour and drama. Archie comics attempted to revive the classic lineup with Your pal Archie which is a redesigned version of the archie classic with  new material, Archie vs predator which is black comedy crossover between archie characters and the predator painted in classic style but with gore and blood  and then the upcoming Betty and Veronica Friends forever ,
The classic style still has new material in the digest  since they are still available in the magazine racks that you see in your local supermarket but only less as they mostly reprints of various stories and will continue in various newspaper strips under creators syndicate as shown here : https://www.creators.com/read/archie and even co-CEO Nancy Silberkleit which Jon Goldwater made a personal feud with her over the property distributing her own archie comics one of them focus on Autism awareness with a character named Scarlet as shown here :https://www.bleedingcool.com/2018/01/19/nancy-silberkleit-archie-comic-scarlet/

But this is what we need to discuss in this topic,Will Archie main comic book line will one day return to it's classic style?

They will probably start a "Classic Archie" title published along side the current flagship title and if it sells as well or better, they'll discontinue the current one.


I will point out that "Your Pal Archie" was close to classic style and didn't sell.  And it was a great book in my opinion. 

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on May 16, 2018, 12:19:06 PM
They will probably start a "Classic Archie" title published along side the current flagship title and if it sells as well or better, they'll discontinue the current one.


I will point out that "Your Pal Archie" was close to classic style and didn't sell.  And it was a great book in my opinion.

You have a good point there

Quote from: terrence12 on May 16, 2018, 11:05:10 AM
Archie comics has gained a renaissance after going through low sales throughout the 80's,90s and 2000s all thanks to the  the leadership of current CEO  Jon Goldwater.

Archie Comics' average monthly sales are still lower than they were in the '80s, '90s, and from 2000-2009.
So if you want to spin those statistics under the heading of "renaissance", then yeah whatever, I guess.

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on May 23, 2018, 01:51:18 PM

Quote from: terrence12 on May 16, 2018, 11:05:10 AM
Archie comics has gained a renaissance after going through low sales throughout the 80's,90s and 2000s all thanks to the  the leadership of current CEO  Jon Goldwater.

Archie Comics' average monthly sales are still lower than they were in the '80s, '90s, and from 2000-2009.
So if you want to spin those statistics under the heading of "renaissance", then yeah whatever, I guess.

ALL comic sales are much lower than the past decades.
For instance, there was a time when Marvel comics selling 150,000 issues in a month would be cancelled.  Now, that would be the #1 or #2 selling title across all companies.


So you can't really compare numbers to those time periods, you'd have to look at how they did vs all the other companies - where did they rank in sales for the month, and if those relative numbers improved.

Quote from: DakotaArchieFan on May 23, 2018, 08:16:03 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on May 23, 2018, 01:51:18 PM

Quote from: terrence12 on May 16, 2018, 11:05:10 AM
Archie comics has gained a renaissance after going through low sales throughout the 80's,90s and 2000s all thanks to the  the leadership of current CEO  Jon Goldwater.

Archie Comics' average monthly sales are still lower than they were in the '80s, '90s, and from 2000-2009.
So if you want to spin those statistics under the heading of "renaissance", then yeah whatever, I guess.

So you can't really compare numbers to those time periods, you'd have to look at how they did vs all the other companies - where did they rank in sales for the month, and if those relative numbers improved.

I don't know where you'd find accurate comparative sales statistics, because the only sales available are those for the direct (comic shop) market -- and we all know Archie does terrible in that market, both then and now. Perhaps a little less terrible in that market than they did 5 years ago, but on the other hand, ACP's newsstand sales continue to slide, and I hardly imagine a couple of blips like the Death of Archie, new ARCHIE #1, and Adam Hughes' B&V #1 were able to counterbalance the overall downward trend. It's easy for ACP to spin the hype, because it's all a magician's game of misdirection -- getting you to look only at what they want you to look at. Yeah, look at those amazing sales on ARCHIE #1... but don't ask about all the "ongoing" titles we launched in the last three years, and then cancelled. Don't ask what our sales are like outside the direct market; ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies.

But you have to wonder how, if ACP had half-a-dozen ongoing floppy comics in the 2000s, they can only have a couple now in the 2010s  (ARCHIE and RIVERDALE). You can't count titles that are as new as VIXENS, THE HUNGER, or VAMPIRONICA, or "supposedly" ongoing ones like AFTERLIFE and SABRINA, which have no actual publication schedule. I read that as, if ACP was doing relatively as well as they were in the 2000s, they'd still have half-a-dozen stable ongoing floppy titles, even if (on average) they were selling less copies overall.

I can't really see returning to classic style helping all that much. It wasn't selling which is why the reboots happened to begin with.


I think to most people, Archie Comics are an anachronism.  Not sure there's much they can do except continue the gimmicks like horror, the tv show, and crossovers (Batman '66) until they run out of ideas. 

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on May 24, 2018, 12:17:43 PM
I can't really see returning to classic style helping all that much. It wasn't selling which is why the reboots happened to begin with.


I think to most people, Archie Comics are an anachronism.  Not sure there's much they can do except continue the gimmicks like horror, the tv show, and crossovers (Batman '66) until they run out of ideas.

That's pretty much the size of it, Vegan. I can see something like, once RIVERDALE has run its course, it getting an animated spinoff that's more comedy oriented, and then there being a floppy comic book based on that, but I think that's about as close as we'll get, apart from the occasional crossover miniseries or one-shot. The crossovers are all aimed at an older, nostalgic audience of comic book collectors, as proven by the properties chosen: Kiss, Predator, The Ramones, and Batman '66 (even Harley & Ivy, arguably most familiar to the audience that watched Batman the Animated Series in the early 1990s). Still hoping to see one with Scooby-Doo.

The fact that ACP doesn't want to invest in more new pages of classic Archie stories to keep feeding the source material for ongoing digest reprints indicates that they don't see those digests having much longer of a future.

I really think in pushing hard for television adaptations like Riverdale and Sabrina, Jon Goldwater's true goal is to raise Archie's cultural awareness just high enough to attract a big media conglomerate as a buyer for ACP.

I would imagine he's got something like a hundred-million figure in mind for the sale of all ACP's intellectual property, but I bet if he got a serious offer about a third of that size, he'd sign on the dotted line and bail out next month -- if Nancy Silberkleit is willing to take her cut and walk.

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on May 25, 2018, 04:55:36 PM
I really think in pushing hard for television adaptations like Riverdale and Sabrina, Jon Goldwater's true goal is to raise Archie's cultural awareness just high enough to attract a big media conglomerate as a buyer for ACP.

I would imagine he's got something like a hundred-million figure in mind for the sale of all ACP's intellectual property, but I bet if he got a serious offer about a third of that size, he'd sign on the dotted line and bail out next month -- if Nancy Silberkleit is willing to take her cut and walk.

Nancy might just block it for spite depending on her financial condition.

Quote from: Vegan Jughead on May 26, 2018, 08:40:11 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on May 25, 2018, 04:55:36 PM
I really think in pushing hard for television adaptations like Riverdale and Sabrina, Jon Goldwater's true goal is to raise Archie's cultural awareness just high enough to attract a big media conglomerate as a buyer for ACP.

I would imagine he's got something like a hundred-million figure in mind for the sale of all ACP's intellectual property, but I bet if he got a serious offer about a third of that size, he'd sign on the dotted line and bail out next month -- if Nancy Silberkleit is willing to take her cut and walk.

Nancy might just block it for spite depending on her financial condition.

This is all just my subjective impressions, but the general vibe I got from Nancy is that she wanted to keep Archie in the traditional mode, for the traditional audience (pre-teens and young kids, girls especially), whereas the impression I get from JG is that he doesn't give a fig about comics as a medium, the characters, OR the audience -- he just wants to make money. If the newsstand market is evaporating, he's probably correct in the assessment that ACP can only try to cater to the smaller (but fairly stable and dedicated) audience of comic shop consumers if he wants to continue in publishing. Not that he actually "wants" to continue as a publisher per se, just that he wants to build a small heap of material suitable to attract the attentions of media adaptations, which is hopefully raising the coin of ACP's intellectual property holdings to the extent that some corporation might see some potential in owning those characters as exploitable, marketable, pre-sold audience material. He's just looking to cash out and retire in ease. On the other hand, Nancy Silberkleit has demonstrated in the past that she does care about some things, at least -- kids with disabilities, literacy, and so forth, and wants to use the characters' familiarity to help those causes. That's my read on the situation, anyway.

Not that I'm implying that makes Jonboy G out to be something like the Antichrist of the comic book industry or anything. In my opinion, it just makes him... well, pretty much the same as any of the folks making the business management decisions at Marvel or DC, or... most comic book publishers, medium-sized or even small. Like any other line of work, there are people who are in the comic book business because they love the work and can't imagine doing anything else, and people... who are not. Hey, the way I look at it, most people think about a lot of the same things in their jobs. "I'd like to keep my job. I'd like to make my boss happy, and not have him breathing down my neck. I'd like to get a promotion and do less of the grunt work, have more responsibility. I'd like to make more money so I don't have to worry about current bills, or my future. I've worked long enough; I'd like to retire now comfortably and just relax for a while." Had I entered the biz via the same route JG did, I can't say with any assurance that I'd do things any differently than he is. My only real gripe with the guy is both an aesthetic and practical one -- that he's putting out fewer and fewer pages of new material of the kind of Archie Comics I enjoy reading. And I guess I can't even really be an objective judge of whether or not someone "loves comics" or doesn't, because they might just have polar opposite tastes in what's good than I do -- just like anyone involved in any aspect, not only of the comic book industry, but ANY media that employs characters originating in comics. I can absolutely love something like Cartoon Network's JUSTICE LEAGUE ACTION cartoon, while looking at the trailer for Warner Brothers' JUSTICE LEAGUE movie with a blank-faced "What the what?" and shrugging, "Doesn't have anything to do with me; sorry, no interest." I can love the idea of ARCHIE MEETS BATMAN '66, or the DC characters appearing in SCOOBY-DOO TEAM-UP, while not giving two beans about what's going on in the regular ongoing DC universe BATMAN or SUPERMAN comic books. Same with Archie comic books; same with RIVERDALE. There will always be something else to read (or watch), I guess, whether new or old.

...The link here for the Bleeding Cool story about Nancy and the autistic character did't work,  but I found it or similar. It talked about Nancy sending the comic with the character if you asked.  In pdf? E-mail? Paper? Any-all other.? I followed a link in the story,  which was from January,  and sent a request to her ACP business address - Is she still sending.them out? I suppose I win't find out till Tuesday at the earliest...

...I received an E back,  she is selling S LDR via PayPal for 1 dollar 99. I don't't object to buying it -thiugh I'd like to avoid PayPal if I could - but I'd like to get a preview,  a taste,  if the story first.  Even see what the character looks like.  And how long a comic is it-how many pages ?

The story, Kindness Works, was ten pages. There are a number of previews of it out there if you google "Archie Comics autism, Scarlet" The story has received a good amount of coverage from various circles.


You can also check out my pencils to a few of the pages over on my website:


http://fernandoruizeverybody.com/kindness-works-a-new-archie-story/

...Thank you,  Fernando.