These are most likely all corporate decisions to shelve some characters in favor of others. But I wonder how much influence do fans have in either the company doing away with a particular character/storyline, or, even bringing them back. For instance, as I said earlier, Trula Twyst is making a comeback. For the longest time, there were no Trula stories. But she's been brought back and the explanation was she was in school overseas. Of course, the first person she wants to see when she gets back is Jughead!! I'll take Jughead/Trula over Jughead/Ethel every time. She's much more interesting. But I wonder if the was solely a corporate decision to bring her back, or did the readers have also something to do with her return?

Well, maybe Archie listens to at least one reader. I like Trula Twyst and I like Bingo Wilkin. So, um...let's try bringing back Regina Mantle!

And yeah,  I like Trula better than Ethel. But I do like the old time Ethel stories and I like the character. I mean, she has the misfortune of not being pretty and living in a town where everyone is at least a nine or ten. Plus she decided to fall in love with the only guy in town who doesn't care about romance and is pretty much the Bugs Bunny of the Archieverse. And I really like how she always took everything in stride. It's pretty admirable to keep going when the entire universe seems out to get you.

And that's one thing I don't like about today's world. It's kind of hard to do those Ethel stories now, given the social climate. And I understand why. But for Ethel you really are losing alot of what made the character fun and memorable. The most I can think of now is "Well, maybe later on she's successful and gets revenge." And I don't like that that's my idea because I watched a Netflix show like that and I did not like it. Had the actress who played Disney's Jessie as the star.

And corporate, yeah. Like we have Jake Chang in a few digest stories and he's going to be getting his own show on the CW. I'm kind of surprised that he doesn't get his own ongoing. It just looks like Archie Comics is banking on their tv shows, which does make sense. And it's always been like that. Cartoon doesn't sell toys or merch, it's gone; comic doesn't get some sort of tv or movie deal...unless it's selling well, goodbye.

The only thing I can question is why, in a world where super hero movies rule, that we haven't seen any of the Archie heroes like The Shield get some sort of movie or tv. That seems like an lay up shot to me.

And I guess characters getting new stories could be AC way of seeing "maybe this character can be used more or be in a show" Just to see if anything sticks. I don't know if that's the case with Trula. Honestly, I thought, given Riverdale, she would make a great villain but instead--she was a pussycat and a totally different character.

But again that's the world we live in. You have old properties being brought back or you have companies just making new shows or toons where only the likeness is the same and everything is--it's making new characters, but giving them old character skins. Still so upset about Jellystone.

Quote from: PTF on July 11, 2022, 10:48:56 PMWell, maybe Archie listens to at least one reader. I like Trula Twyst and I like Bingo Wilkin. So, um...let's try bringing back Regina Mantle!

Hey, they're doing a return visit to Mirrordale, so can Reversedale be that far behind? That one (ARCHIE 636) was written by Tania Del Rio, and they've gotten her to write a couple of new ones recently... it would be neat if they could get Giselle Lagace to draw a new story.

Quote from: PTF on July 11, 2022, 10:48:56 PMWell, maybe Archie listens to at least one reader. I like Trula Twyst and I like Bingo Wilkin. So, um...let's try bringing back Regina Mantle!

And yeah,  I like Trula better than Ethel. But I do like the old time Ethel stories and I like the character. I mean, she has the misfortune of not being pretty and living in a town where everyone is at least a nine or ten. Plus she decided to fall in love with the only guy in town who doesn't care about romance and is pretty much the Bugs Bunny of the Archieverse. And I really like how she always took everything in stride. It's pretty admirable to keep going when the entire universe seems out to get you.

And that's one thing I don't like about today's world. It's kind of hard to do those Ethel stories now, given the social climate. And I understand why. But for Ethel you really are losing alot of what made the character fun and memorable. The most I can think of now is "Well, maybe later on she's successful and gets revenge." And I don't like that that's my idea because I watched a Netflix show like that and I did not like it. Had the actress who played Disney's Jessie as the star.

And corporate, yeah. Like we have Jake Chang in a few digest stories and he's going to be getting his own show on the CW. I'm kind of surprised that he doesn't get his own ongoing. It just looks like Archie Comics is banking on their tv shows, which does make sense. And it's always been like that. Cartoon doesn't sell toys or merch, it's gone; comic doesn't get some sort of tv or movie deal...unless it's selling well, goodbye.

The only thing I can question is why, in a world where super hero movies rule, that we haven't seen any of the Archie heroes like The Shield get some sort of movie or tv. That seems like an lay up shot to me.

And I guess characters getting new stories could be AC way of seeing "maybe this character can be used more or be in a show" Just to see if anything sticks. I don't know if that's the case with Trula. Honestly, I thought, given Riverdale, she would make a great villain but instead--she was a pussycat and a totally different character.

But again that's the world we live in. You have old properties being brought back or you have companies just making new shows or toons where only the likeness is the same and everything is--it's making new characters, but giving them old character skins. Still so upset about Jellystone.

You can't have a character like the old Ethel anymore in this political climate. There would be some group trying to get her banned as a sex offender because of her unwanted advances on Jughead. Remember they tried cancelling Pepe Le Pew. Yeah, she acted like an kindergartener trying to kiss a boy which I thought was made for laughs. And Jughead usually got away from her in most stories. And I do feel that the characters have to grow. Ethel, over the years, became more attractive, hair is longer, she is given curves and is less obsessed with Jughead. But, I hope that her progression was simply made to help grow the character who, before, was mostly a one trick pony. 

So are the Three Stooges, but I still laugh my head off on MEtv reruns.

But yeah, can't do things like the good old day. Heck, we can't even get the good old style comics.


I remember Pepe, he couldn't be in Space Jam 2 but the gang from Clockwork Orange and Pennywise...they're okay to be in a PG movie.

And Pepe is super easy to fix. Just have him as a guy looking for love, only he doesn't realize he's a skunk and thus...stinks. Have the cat... Penelope I think is her name, to actually like him--because he is super charming, but can't stand the smell.

I think Jughead's lack of appeal to modern readers is more linked to Archie's current fanbase, of which a huge portion is female. They typically went over that audience above all others... this means that Betty & Veronica typically does the best, and then Archie (the flagship) does the rest. Jughead kind of loses out among the Big Four, as he ends up with the most male-centric book (since Archie's book also involves Betty & Veronica inherently).

Add to that things others have mentioned, like Jughead losing a lot of his "edge". As much as I liked a lot of the Boldman-Lindsey era, things tended to be a lot less antagonistic or snarky. You'd still see bits of it, like the arc where Jughead kept moving in to various people's houses and then being kicked out, but it wasn't as prominent.

The "Jughead outsmarts everyone" stories had kinda stopped happening, too. Instead of being as laid-back, he was more manic- DeCarlo Rules mentions him suddenly jumping onto various obsessions and fads. 

Quote from: Jabroniville on November 27, 2022, 03:13:57 AMI think Jughead's lack of appeal to modern readers is more linked to Archie's current fanbase, of which a huge portion is female. They typically went over that audience above all others... this means that Betty & Veronica typically does the best, and then Archie (the flagship) does the rest. Jughead kind of loses out among the Big Four, as he ends up with the most male-centric book (since Archie's book also involves Betty & Veronica inherently).

But there hasn't been a regular B&V title (unless you count those quarterly one-shots that are 75% reprint) since 2015 when their classic ongoing title ended. Only two miniseries, VIXENS and the Adam Hughes one, while ARCHIE had an ongoing title that ran for 47 issues, plus a number of miniseries. JUGHEAD's ongoing title at least managed 16 issues -- while what would presumably have been the start of an ongoing "New Riverdale" series (Adam Hughes') for B&V managed a mere 3 issues (released over a span of one-and-a-half years!)

Have you not kept track of what titles ACP has released as trade paperbacks? True enough that JUGHEAD comes in dead last of the Big Three with a bare few, but B&V trail, far, far, far behind the numerous trade collections released for ARCHIE.

That should debunk the theory that B&V is still ACP's biggest cash cow. It hasn't been for at least 10-15 years now.

I've never liked Jughead. I found him rather one-note and annoying.

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 10, 2023, 02:12:32 PMBut there hasn't been a regular B&V title (unless you count those quarterly one-shots that are 75% reprint) since 2015 when their classic ongoing title ended. Only two miniseries, VIXENS and the Adam Hughes one, while ARCHIE had an ongoing title that ran for 47 issues, plus a number of miniseries. JUGHEAD's ongoing title at least managed 16 issues -- while what would presumably have been the start of an ongoing "New Riverdale" series (Adam Hughes') for B&V managed a mere 3 issues (released over a span of one-and-a-half years!)

You forgot the five-issue Senior Year that came after Vixens.

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 10, 2023, 02:12:32 PMHave you not kept track of what titles ACP has released as trade paperbacks? True enough that JUGHEAD comes in dead last of the Big Three with a bare few, but B&V trail, far, far, far behind the numerous trade collections released for ARCHIE.

That should debunk the theory that B&V is still ACP's biggest cash cow. It hasn't been for at least 10-15 years now.

You're making an assumption based on very little evidence (considering we have absolutely no sales data regarding digests).

According to Brian Hibbs' Bookscan column about comic sales in the bookstore market (including Amazon) in 2022, the biggest-selling Archie book in 2022 was 80 Years of Christmas, which sold a whopping 1,500 copies in the entire year. Obviously, this doesn't include digital comics, orders directly from Archie Comics, comic shop sales, etc. Still, that's pathetic.

Back in 2012 (the last year that we have circulation figures for the digests), the average sales for each title were:

Betty and Veronica Double Digest: 47600
Archie Double Digest: 45641
World of Archie Double Digest: 39936
Archie and Friends Double Digest: 38855
B&V Friends Double Digest: 38278
Jughead Double Digest: 37812
Archie: 15292
Betty and Veronica: 9095
Kevin Keller: 7274

Fast forward to 2023. All of the floppies are gone. Not only has Jughead lost his only digest title, but Archie has lost one as well. We have no idea whose digests are selling more nor, more importantly, at what level. No one is releasing sales figures. Not publishers, not distributors, not stores. Even the direct market has lacked all sales figures since the last ones were released for April of 2022. The general public is in the dark about the sales of the entire comics industry - except for what's revealed in Hibbs' Bookscan article (in which Archie Comics doesn't even garner a mention; I had to ask him for info).

What it reveals:

1) Manga rules.

2) Among Western comics, Dav Pilkey and his Dogman franchse rules.

3) You have to go far down the chart before you come to a Western title that's aimed at adults (and it's not from DC or Marvel).

4) DC sells better than Marvel.

5) Nearly every publisher that licenses and adapts Marvel characters sells better than Marvel.

6) Marvel managed to place only one book in the Top 750.

7) The comics business is hit-driven. 10% of all sales come from around two-dozen books.

So, in the comics market as a whole, kids' stuff rules. That's very different than the direct market, which caters to aging, superhero-gobbling fanboys.

And yet Archie Comics' trades sell horribly. Let's be super, super generous and say each trade copy of 80 Years of Christmas sold for $20 (yeah, an obvious overestimation, but it'll balance out a bit under the assumption that Archie Comics sold other trade collections last year, however few). That's $30,000 gross income for the year from the North American bookstore market. They couldn't afford to keep the lights on with that money. So the digests must be selling well enough for Archie Comics to survive, right?

Well, these days, with the price of digests being so high (and with the new stories being available to read for free), I find it hard to believe they would be selling anywhere near 2012 levels.

But let's say they are. Let's say the four remaining digests haven't dipped below 2012 sales levels in the ten years since. Again, it's an overestimation, but there are also two additional, more sporadic digest titles that I'm not accounting for. If each of these four digests published ten issues per year and sold at full retail price, Archie Comics is looking at, at best, $17,128,354.50 in gross annual income from the digests. There's no way that they're pulling in that much money. If they were, they could afford to publish much more than the sporadic reprint floppies and occasional horror one-shots. There hasn't been a new licensed novel since 2020, and there hasn't been an OGN since 2021. There has been zero expansion of the brand.

Riverdale, long since a punching bag, still in the beginning of its highly divisive final season, managed to pull in 220,000 live viewers for its latest episode, not much less than the entirety of the digest line did in monthly sales back in 2012 (and almost certainly more than the digests are selling monthly now).

Didn't Fernando say in another thread that Jughead's titles were selling the worst back when he was at the company, despite claims that he was people's favorite character?

Well, here's some trivia for you that bears this out a little. In the direct market only, with a handful of exceptions between the floppy and digest, Cheryl Blossom routinely outsold Jughead's titles during the entirety of its run. No idea if this was true for all sales across all channels, but there ya go.

I do see Archie Comics chart in some specific sales categories on Amazon. Mostly romance comics and licensed teen TV and movie comics. Mostly it's the digests, but sometimes a floppy will chart. It doesn't take much sales to chart in a specific sales category on Amazon, though, since those charts are updated hourly, I think.

None of the above explains what is obvious on the face of things... that the title logo ARCHIE (not BETTY & VERONICA) by far dominates the number of trade collections (in GIANT or 1000-PAGE, or any other formats) that ACP releases. Which makes absolutely no sense if ACP's major seller is B&V, as opposed to ARCHIE. If B&V are the top attraction for consumers, shouldn't the number of trade collections with BETTY AND VERONICA in the title far outnumber those with ARCHIE in the title? Yet it's exactly the opposite. What other conclusion is there to draw?

And why are there four Archie digests (Archie Jumbo Comics, World of Archie Jumbo Comics, Archie Milestones, Archie Showcase) to B&V's two (B&V Jumbo Comics, World of B&V Jumbo Comics)?

I mean, they could easily repackage/recycle the same stories from B&V Jumbo Comics and World of B&V Jumbo Comics in 1000-PAGE and GIANT formats, yet there's never been a single one yet. I'll leave you to count all those ARCHIE 1000-PAGE and GIANT COMICS releases on your own.

Archie's name is on more of the titles, because the company is named after him. And two of those digests that you mentioned are reprint-only and published less often than the main digests. They exist to spotlight a particular character or past storyline.

I just combed through a bunch of Top 100 charts on Amazon. I could find only five charts on which Archie Comics appears at all. Of those five, Archie-titled books dominated on only one of them: School Life Manga. Betty and Veronica dominated on Humorous Graphic Novels, Contemporary Women Graphic Novels (Kindle), Contemporary Women Graphic Novels (all), and Romance Graphic Novels. In some cases, the girls are charting eleven times as many titles as Archie is (and at a higher overall placement).

You can arrange to categorize comics (or manga) by sub-genres however you like -- it tells you nothing about the relative popularity of the sub-genre described, so it really tells you absolutely nothing about actual sales.

What I'm suggesting here is that IF, theoretically, Betty & Veronica ARE in actuality, ACP's most popular and best-selling characters, ACP is shooting themselves in the foot by choosing to market trade collections under the ARCHIE logo, rather than the BETTY & VERONICA logo. If it is indeed true, then their own marketing practices are hampering the sales potential of trade collections that feature reprints of BETTY & VERONICA stories by labeling those collections as "ARCHIE". I don't see what you fail to understand about this -- if B&V are the main attractions, then products marketed under the name B&V should sell better than those that aren't. So if it's true, then ACP is failing to take advantage by selling more trade collections marketed with the B&V logo.

And I don't believe that for a minute. If the ARCHIE logo appears on the cover far more often, it's not because it's the company's name, it's because books marketed with the ARCHIE logo sell better than those that aren't.

Is ARCHIE MILESTONES DIGEST turning into the newest incarnation of JUGHEAD DIGEST?