Archie Comics Inexplicably Turns to Kickstarter to Fund Three New Series

May 12, 2015

Yesterday Archie Comics launched a Kickstarter project aiming to fund three new titles aimed at hitting about the same time as the rebooted Archie series. Over the next year and a half the company looks to roll out Jughead, Betty and Veronica, and Life With Kevin with the help of a proposed $350k project goal.

I have to say I’ve been very supportive of the direction Archie Comics has taken over the past couple of years, as the company has looked to bring their characters into the 21st century and aimed at modern audiences, but to turn to Kickstarter to fund their reboot is utterly ridiculous. The crowdfunding platform was created to aid small businesses and startups in bringing dream projects to fruition not simply for established companies to use in order to feather their nests.

To make matters worse, if you look at the pledge rewards, you won’t even receive a single physical comic book for anything less than $10. Yep, ten bucks for a comic you’ll eventually pick up on the stands for about four. Let’s be honest here… Archie Comics is lucky if any of their titles crack 8,000 issues sold (and the sorry fact is their biggest seller has been based on Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog and NOT any of their core characters) in a given month and, more often than not, they hover around 3-5k or even fewer. Are you trying to tell me the company needs over of a quarter of a million dollars to fund those sorts of print runs?

Maybe if the company wasn’t fractured by constant infighting of the principles, plagued by near nonexistent publishing schedules of titles that boosted interest in the imprint such as Afterlife With Archie and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, or had a clue as to how to do business as an independent in a dog eat dog market there wouldn’t be a need for a crowdfunding project. Then again the deal Archie Comics signed with Target/Walmart would have led me to believe the company wouldn’t need to dip into the pockets of the fans either.

There’s an especially rank funk about this whole thing. Personally, I have no beef if Archie Comics wants to try to cut the distributors and direct sales specialty stores out of the equation; it’s their company and they can continue to ruin it however they’d like. Yet I have a strong suspicion the company coffers are pretty bare so they don’t have the capital to push forward with their Riverdale Reboot. So in essence Archie Comics is asking for a handout from their fans in order to print the books to fill that shiny new rack space at Target and Walmart, while those same fans will then have to turn around and plunk down some ducats for comics they’ve effectively already paid for through Kickstarter.

That’s pretty skeevy business practice in my book.

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Jeff McAleer

Founder/Editor-in-chief of The Gaming Gang website and host of The Gaming Gang Dispatch and other TGG media, Jeff tackles any and all sorts of games but has a special fondness for strategy, conflict sims, and roleplaying games. Plus, he's certainly never at a loss for an opinion...