Marvel and DC Comics must have easily exceeded that number since the late 1930s, when they both began publishing stories which would eventually become part of their respective universes. That's even discounting the many licensed titles they have published over the years featuring characters which they don't own (just as ACP's figure of 25000 doesn't include the Archie Adventure/Archie Action titles like TMNT and SONIC). That's because the number of new (discounting reprint) comic book story pages that those other comic companies publish in any given month in their history has always exceeded the number published by ACP by factors of 2 to 50 times as many, so it more than balances against the fact that the majority of comics published by those companies since the 1980s have featured only a single story, instead of the 3 or more you'd find in a typical Archie Comic.

That estimate of 25000 they're giving isn't just for stories featuring Archie, because the title of the book is "The Best of Archie Comics" not "The Best of Archie" (the character). If Marvel or DC Comics were to publish a similar book series featuring the best of the company-owned stories from their 75+ years' history, they'd both have a lot more stories to choose from.

What was RHS's school guidance counselor's name again?  I know there have been a couple, but I'm talking about the one they had for a few years where they'd have a story where he meets with a student, and after the student leaves he's all stressed out and thinking about quitting because the students are driving him bonkers...

Quote from: Great Gazoo on April 09, 2016, 09:51:24 AM

Quote from: spazaru on April 09, 2016, 09:18:03 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 08, 2016, 01:44:50 PM

Quote from: spazaru on April 08, 2016, 11:34:12 AM

Quote from: Great Gazoo on April 08, 2016, 10:15:58 AM
The #'s listed above for the two reboots have to be a real disappointment for ACP. That is a huge decline from the first issue of Archie, but I imagine they were expecting that. I don't know if they would have expected it to be down to just over 18,000 just after issue #6 though. The Jughead reboot didn't even really start off that great and is also on a huge decline just after 3 issues. If these fail or even just the Jughead reboot fails what impact will this have on the Betty and Veronica Reboot?

18,000?  that's still 5 times what the old title was selling the last couple of years

2 things: It's TWICE, not 5 times what the average issue sold in 2014. Sales fell from the first issue to the second more than 70%, and from the 2nd issue to the 6th another 40%. That's only in the space of 7 months! So how many copies will it be selling a year from now? Two years from now? Because that's about as long as you can expect it to last.

OK, sorry, I could swear I remember issues that were reported selling 3500.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Either way, I won't be surprised if the reboots run their course quickly.  Going back to the classic style probably won't work though.  There's a reason they tried the reboot in the first place.

I don't think they will go back to the Classic Style either. As you have seen with the numbers on the other chart over the decades when they were doing the Classic style the numbers have drastically dropped. I have no idea what they will try next.

Here's the basic problem. There are enough "people out there" who like Classic Style Archie... and when I say "people out there" I don't mean 'people in there' -- i.e. the people 'inside the comic book hobby' who read the kind of comic books that comic book shop customers prefer to read. The intersection of those two sets is marginally small (...and when I say "people" I'm talking about a large percentage of them being kids). Probably a large enough chunk of the adult comic hobbyists are already here on this board, or blogging about Archie on various websites.

So the problem is to get classic Archie out where it's within arm's reach of the average potential customers (who aren't going to make a trip to the comic book store), AND to make it available at price point and in a format that's palatable to those consumers (and what I'm strongly hinting here is that to those consumers, $3-4 for a 20-page floppy comic is NOT palatable, even could you put those kind of comics within their reach... and you can't even do that, really). So, something like a digest, that has more pages and is more substantial than a floppy, but also more new material as well, to keep a contemporary connection to the world inhabited by kids.

Those adult comic hobbyists (like myself) need to be marketed to, also... if the material is choice, the toll will be paid for upscale formats.

In-between those two extremes are the digital people, both younger and older. If you had every Archie story from the last 60 years digitized, indexed and archived with full credits and original sources cited, you could sell individual stories (a typical 5 or 6-pager) for as little as 50 cents each, or let people pick stories ala carte for a set price (cheaper the more stories you buy), and then just track what's selling, looking for trends and categories to group them into. Then start publishing collections according to which characters, artists, eras, or themes are proving popular. Let every digital customer preview the first two pages of story (except for those that are that short to begin with), then decide to buy it, pass, or add to their basket for a bundle rate after they're done picking. The problem with digital now is there's too much duplication of stories in different collections, and most of those collections don't have contents listed, writers and artists or dates of original publication listed. Everything should be linked so you could find stories according to characters, writers, or artists. Since ACP is not, for the most part, selling graphic novels composed of a lot of longer, continued stories that make up some natural collection, they need to get it all sorted and indexed, so they can see what is actually attractive to customers and what isn't.

I'm listening to some of the oldest episodes of The Riverdale Podcast beginning from back in March 2012, over at http://riverdalepodcast.com/archive. The news segment is dated, of course, but otherwise these are still very entertaining and well worth listening to.

For some reason the links for Episode #2 and #3 are broken, or got moved, so unfortunately I missed those episodes, but the rest of the early ones seem to be still there. On Episode #6, which I'm listening to now, Jonathan briefly mentions a SABRINA movie "now in production at Sony". Another one of those media adaptations that never came to fruition...

I plan on listening to a few of these at a time, whenever I get the chance, until I catch up to where I first came in.

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on April 08, 2016, 01:42:48 PM
I've noticed that a lot of the AC are not on their catalog anymore. I guess, someone is stealing them?

Could be that, because ACP is letting their older TPBs go out of print and not reprinting them (except for maybe a few, like Best of Archie Comics and The Married Life). That makes the older TPBs harder to find, and copies for sale begin to have "collectible" prices when you can.

Quote from: irishmoxie on April 08, 2016, 05:28:53 PM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 08, 2016, 09:51:46 AM

Quote from: Mr.Lodge on April 08, 2016, 09:31:43 AM
I would love to see the "Freshman Year" for her they were going to do but never did 

Batton Lash seemed to be off in his own little pocket dimension of the Archie Multiverse, and nothing he devised for the mythos seems to have been taken to heart by any of the other Archie writers and acknowledged or incorporated in any way. "The Missing Chapters" seems to have been the last of his work for Archie, as well. In fact, as far as I can tell, Archie Meets The Punisher, "House of Riverdale" (a.k.a. Archie's Haunted House), and "Freshman Year" and its sequel "The Missing Chapters" seem to comprise the entirety of his work for ACP.

I suspect Lash's main connection with ACP was through a previous editor who is no longer employed by the company.

Where can I read this: Cheryl Blossom's Freshman year?

In your dreams, or perhaps somewhere in Batton Lash's notebooks from 2010. Mr. Lodge was right when he said:

QuoteI would love to see the "Freshman Year" for her they were going to do but never did

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on April 08, 2016, 05:26:30 PM
But I am one of those hopeless romantics that likes to think that Betty can definitely change Reggie (don't laugh, don't roll your eyes) from a creep to prince charming, haha, oh boy!

You know something, I never spent a great deal of time trying to figure out the whole shipping thing. All of a sudden today something dawned on me that made me see where it's coming from (in relation to the Archie characters, anyway). I just realized in a flash of understanding that it's mostly female fans who comprise the Betty/Reggie shippers, and mostly male fans who comprise the the Jughead/Veronica shippers. Now to me, these two pairings as couples seem to have absolutely nothing in common, but it suddenly occurred to me that there's more to it than just some sort of perverseness of opposites attracting or wanting to see two characters together who "shouldn't", by all surface observations of their behavior, be together.

It's that the ladies like Betty and identify strongly with her, while they feel most strongly attracted TO Reggie among the male characters, for the most obvious reasons -- he's clearly supposed to be (despite the fact that the male characters on average are drawn more "cartoony" than the female characters) the most handsome of all the regular male cast members; he's athletic, confident, dresses well, always drives a nice car, always has spending money (despite not having to have a part-time job). In short, Reggie's the most obvious male type that women would be attracted to, despite his being a rat, a creep, a fink, and an all-around rotter. This, in spite the fact that they should know better because of the severe character flaws he displays in almost every single story (unless it's a Christmas story or something like that). It's pretty true to life that a lot of women would ignore those flaws in favor of his undeniable good looks and self-confidence, figuring that deep down, there's a good guy inside that just needs nurturing and the love of a good woman to be brought to the surface. And let's face it -- there really aren't any regular cast members that can compete with him. Jughead isn't drawn to be especially good-looking, and neither is Archie, and both of them have some very serious quirks, even if they're mostly well-meaning 'nice guys'. Dilton's too nerdy and short (and maybe Chuck is nerdy too, with his comics obsession), and Moose is as dumb as a rock, so what real competition does Reggie have?  They should have kept Adam Chisholm around. He was actually perfect for Betty -- a good looking guy who was sincere and always treated her right (in fact, just like Betty, he had no real flaws). The ideal couple, really (although some would just say 'boring', I'm sure).

The same goes for the Jughead/Veronica shippers -- those guys (mostly guys) identify themselves most strongly with Jughead among the regular male cast, and are most strongly attracted TO Veronica (over Betty). Since they identify with Jughead and find Veronica more desirable than Betty, they're sure that the surface bickering between the two represents nothing more than them both fighting an obvious (perhaps deep subconscious) attraction to each other. Having the character you're most attracted to pair up with the one you most identify with fulfills a secret longing to involve yourself in the story more deeply by having one of the characters as your own alter ego.

At least I'm pretty sure that's what Trula Twyst would have to say about it.

At first I was gonna say, "Yeah, you're right, having Betty fall for Nick would have made a better story after all", but nah... Betty's just too sensible, and in terms of what Nick does early on in the story, her Betty-Sense would be tingling like a four-alarm fire.

Still, it's interesting that if you read this in the original novel form (with illustrations by Stan Goldberg), you'd probably have bought into it as a more 'realistic' take on the Archie gang. With the more naturalist style art of Steven Butler, it becomes apparent that it's pretty forced. But the sometimes ridiculously unrealistic behavior of the characters is just something we accept as a matter of course along with the usually comical traditional art style.
Taken in contrast with the new rebooted Archie, though, I'd have to upgrade this from a C+ to at least a B-, if not a B.

Quote from: 60sBettyandReggie on April 08, 2016, 01:52:01 PM
My favorite female character is Betty. My favorite male character is Reggie. I love the idea of the two of them together, they would be good for each other. And my favorite Archie era was in the 1960s. So that's why I chose 60sBettyandReggie 

Betty would be good for anybody. Isn't it bad enough she's set her sights low enough to fall for Archie? Reggie may be better-looking, and a better athlete, but he's got 10 times the character flaws that Archie does. Archie's merely a dweeb, while Reggie is a genuine creep. Unfortunately, Betty's kind of a pushover (unlike Harper, she's just too darn sweet and forgiving for her own good) who would soon be getting the very short end of that relationship.

Quote from: JonInIowaCity on April 08, 2016, 02:05:40 PM
How about Mike Norton? He did this great Pughead commission for me back in 2014!

Well, I'm sure if there's another issue where Salem turns the whole gang into animals again, he'll be first in line as the fill-in artist to draw it.

Quote from: HarryLuceyFan on April 08, 2016, 01:20:52 PM
I used to be a huge Adam Hughes fan when he first started out at DC. I thought at the time he was an amazing pin-up girl artist. I'm only somewhat interested in seeing what he'll be doing on Betty and Veronica.

I'm still an Adam Hughes fan... just not for B&V. Nail on the head, HLF, nail on the head.

Quote from: HarryLuceyFan on April 08, 2016, 11:23:41 AM
Anyhow, to my point, the writing on Jughead reminds me a lot of classic Jughead. Classic Jughead found himself in a lot of surreal fantasy situations, as he is now. Chip's take on the character is basically rooted in tradition, and I imagine if Rex Lindsey or Frenando Ruiz was illustrating this title instead of Erica, people would like it a lot.
On the other hand, I find Archie's book moving along way too slowly. I don't really find the characters are being developed much. Can you imagine people reading this without any previous knowledge of Archie whatsoever? We're seven isues in (about 150 pages!) and what's happened? Not much. It's not fun or funny. It's not entertaining. The art is prettier than that on Jughead, but to me it's just the lesser of two evils.

Well, I'm glad someone besides me recognized this. Took the words right outta my mouth.

Quote from: HarryLuceyFan on April 08, 2016, 01:31:35 PM
Aside from the obvious Fernando, Dan etc, which current artists would you like to see working on new Archie material?

I think Bruce Timm and Darwyn Cooke could output some awesome Archie material in their own styles that wouldn't stray too far from the classic house style.

Well, how about J. Bone then? Wait... that would really happen if they actually decided to publish KEVIN IN THE CITY. I guess we can probably rule it out then, along with those other sensible suggestions. Up at ACP they seem to believe that the more idiotic the idea, the more likely ONE of those has got to be some kind of monster hit, and anything that seems the least bit sensible is not only dicey, but probably not affordable either.

Quote from: spazaru on April 08, 2016, 11:34:12 AM

Quote from: Great Gazoo on April 08, 2016, 10:15:58 AM
The #'s listed above for the two reboots have to be a real disappointment for ACP. That is a huge decline from the first issue of Archie, but I imagine they were expecting that. I don't know if they would have expected it to be down to just over 18,000 just after issue #6 though. The Jughead reboot didn't even really start off that great and is also on a huge decline just after 3 issues. If these fail or even just the Jughead reboot fails what impact will this have on the Betty and Veronica Reboot?

18,000?  that's still 5 times what the old title was selling the last couple of years

2 things: It's TWICE, not 5 times what the average issue sold in 2014. Sales fell from the first issue to the second more than 70%, and from the 2nd issue to the 6th another 40%. That's only in the space of 7 months! So how many copies will it be selling a year from now? Two years from now? Because that's about as long as you can expect it to last.

Quote from: irishmoxie on April 08, 2016, 09:58:35 AM
It would be interesting to see how much each issue of the Archie reboot is costing ACP factoring in production costs and artist and writer salaries versus the old Archie floppies. Like Fernando alluded to, I'm willing to bet they are spending a lot more per issue/copy.

Another thing which is interesting, if 75% of Archie fans prefer the old Archie why aren't sales reflecting that? Were these fans only buying digests and not the floppies? Why wasn't this enough to keep the old Archie alive even though they were probably making more money paying the artists less?

Also I'm not sure why they bother with the trade paperbacks when sales of those are less than the individual issues. Although they do cost more per unit.

To answer your last question first... with rare exceptions, they don't, anymore. Although, in the past, certain individual TPB titles did fairly well, notably The Death of Archie, The Married Life (six books), The Best of Archie Comics (4 books, 5 if you count "75 Years 75 Stories"), B&V Storybooks (2 books), Freshman Year (2 books), Afterlife With Archie: Escape From Riverdale. Some others... did not so well, and the only ones that appear at this point in 2016 to be still economically viable are the omnibus digest reprints (1000 Page & Giant Comics).

Regarding this specific poll... you can hardly call this a random or scientific sampling, and the number of respondents wouldn't be large enough even if it were. So that 75% is hardly likely to be some kind of accurate figure. At best it represents an average opinion among those interested enough in Archie to seek out a message forum on that specific topic.

Regarding the productions costs, you must realize that ARCHIE #1 sold more comic books than ACP had sold in the entire previous year combined -- even if they did need to pay about 50 artists to do alternate cover artwork. Even without factoring in the cost of the advertising associated, it still turns out to be (averaging the cost over the four issues published in 2015) a sound return on investment.


How long it will continue to be, remains to be seen.