Quote from: irishmoxie on April 07, 2016, 08:54:11 PM
Well this poll speaks for itself. I wonder why ACP doesn't go back to the old style.

In one of my last conversations with Archie (a couple of months ago now) I was told that Archie doesn't believe there is enough retailer interest to support a regular Classic Archie title. This excludes digests.


Now the rebooted Archie title is hemorrhaging readers every single month. Issue 6 sold around 18K copies which is down an insane 82% from Issue #1 in only FIVE issues! Of course there are a few factors that artificially inflate #1's 100K sales but that 82% drop is still there. All that having been said, even at 18K copies, the current Archie book is still selling better than the Classic Archie title. Keep in mind though that the Rebooted Archie book is a more expensive book to put out than the classic Archie. Mark Waid don't come cheap and as far as the art goes, all of the reboot artists are being paid far better than I was.


All this means is that Archie Comics... right NOW... is probably happier with the current Archie title than they were with the previous one. The new title is still doing better than the old one and it gets them some "buzz." At the very least, they have the illusion of being a "hip, happening" company. If sales continue to ebb on that book though, some realities are going to have to be faced very soon.

I know I'm not exactly objective here, but there's no question. Classic Archie all the way.


The Reboot could've co-existed alongside the Classic Material much like the Married Life did, but to completely displace the classic material the way it has is one of the biggest mistakes this company has ever committed. It is absolutely suicidal.

Quote from: old_jughead on April 05, 2016, 09:43:46 PM


The point is Archie Comics has always been diverse right from the get-go and everyone was accepted for who they are. There were old people, young people, fat people, skinny people, ugly people, beautiful people, nerds, jocks, freckled people etc. Then over the years they added more diversity like having black characters such as Chuck as the look of America started to change and now we have a gay person with Kevin Kellar. Diversity isn't new with Archie, it's just been updated to include more diversity in races to represent today. If the show was set in the 50s, that would be a different story, but it isn't.

A couple of years ago, Archie made the internal declaration that "little kids don't find old people funny." This was almost a direct quote from one of Archie's key higher-ups. The "old people" label covered adults, fat people, nerds and anyone other than young hot model types. We were told that "kids want to read about attractive people." I don't know what sort of scientific survey Archie conducted to arrive at these conclusions but this is what we were told.


As a consequence of this decree, anytime we had any sort of background person in a story... like a shop owner, passer-by, etc... they all had to be young hot people. Sometimes I'd be drawing pages in the office and this certain higher-up would look over my shoulder. If I'd drawn a fat old guy in the background of the streets of Riverdale, this person would say, "Can't you make that a cute girl instead?" Ultimately this started to undermine the little Samm Schwartz style background gags I liked to include in my stories. Let's face it a young girl slipping on a banana peel just isn't going to be as funny as a fat guy slipping on a banana peel. Eventually, unless directly ordered to make a change or a specific inclusion, I just ignored this mandate and just drew whatever I wanted.


The same higher-up also had a similar obsession with race and diversity. Riverdale, we were told, was too "lily white." (That's the actual term used.) Thus we were encouraged to use Chuck as much as possible. This isn't really a problem and usually an easy enough request to accommodate but eventually, this grew into shoe-horning Chuck into every possible situation... especially on covers. This is where this became a pain. You just don't have a whole lot of room on covers (especially those digests covers!) Often I'd submit cover ideas and the feedback I'd receive would be "Could you add Chuck?" Or Nancy. If I included both, I knew I'd hit a home run. There were more than a few covers I did where Chuck has nothing to do with the gag and he's just there smiling (Another Archie mandate: "Everyone HAS to smile on covers ALL THE TIME!")


At some point, we were suddenly told to ease off on Chuck. I guess Chuck didn't prove to be Archie's "Wolverine" or "Punisher" after all. The word came down all of a sudden that "Chuck was boring." This led directly to the creation of Trey and one of our favorite recurring gags among us artists on the inside, Toni Topaz. I don't know much about Trey, but I was in the Archie offices when Toni Topaz was created literally by the entire office staff! They wanted a hip black chick and that sat around throwing out ideas and off-beat name ideas. I don't remember the rejected names, but I remember Toni Topaz was really the best of the bunch. They wanted a colorful catchy name, but everything made her sound like a stripper. Since I was there, I was asked to make some initial Toni Topaz sketches. I had a magazine with me that had a picture of Rhiannon in a pink hat so that's what I drew and that's what became Toni Topaz.


Toni appeared in about two stories before one of the massive cutbacks in the new material came down. Archie Comics still, however, insisted that she appear on as many covers as possible. I have no idea if they're still demanding this.

My understanding, as of the last time I was at Archie which was a couple of months ago, was that the plan going forward would be that there would be ONE new digest a week and that digest would contain ONE new FIVE page story. (No more of those luxurious six-pagers, Folks!) These stories will ALL be written by Dan Parent. You might see an occasional story written or drawn by someone else, but this might just be an old "inventory" story.


Keep in mind that at the end of last year, a number of digests were put together but at the last minute... for "reasons"... they were pulled and never saw the light of day. Those new stories intended for those books, since they were technically never used, are being filtered into the new digests now. This is why you might still see a "new" story by me from time to time even though I haven't done anything for Archie in months now.


As for the story in this book, I couldn't tell you if it really is new or not.

Thanks to everyone who's been supporting us so far.


If anyone else is interested in picking up Die Kitty Die #'s 1 & 2, both are available digitally from Gumroad.


You can also still pre-order the deluxe hardcover edition which will have exclusive material such as an exclusive cover by the awesome Darwyn Cooke and a Kitty & Friends story drawn by the incredible Gisele Lagace! You can order yours from my website FernandoRuizeverybody.com.

Quote from: Archiver123 on April 03, 2016, 02:25:16 PM
I wonder wha will happen if the TV SHOW doesn't pan out.

Archie Comics is wondering this too.