Francesco Francavilla Draws Archie Back From The Dead

These have been floating around for a while now, more than a week I think, but they're so great that they're worth sharing anyway:

Here's the solicitation: 

AFTER LIFE WITH ARCHIE #1
WRITTEN BY: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
ART BY: Francesco Francavilla, Jack Morelli
COVER: Francesco Francavilla
PRICE: $2.99
RELEASE: 10/9
NEW ONGOING SERIES! “Escape From Riverdale”—This is how the end of the world begins… Harvey Award-winning writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Stephen King’s Carrie, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark) and Eisner-winning artist Francesco Francavilla (Batman, Black Beetle) take Archie and the gang where they’ve never been before—to the grave and back! A horrific accident sets off a series of grim events and Sabrina the Teenage Witch must try to repair the unspeakable evil her spell has unleashed. Gasp in horror as Riverdale faces an impending zombie Arch-pocalypse in this brand-new, spine-tingling ongoing series—but be warned, kiddies, this one’s not for the faint of heart! For TEEN+ readers.

I think that this is an absolutely fabulous idea. Archie may be just a little late to the most recent, Walking Dead catalyzed, zombie game (the undead are eternal, I guess) but something like this must be a good way into a couple of demographics who tend to stay out of Riverdale. There's the eternally hungry zombie folk, obviously, the people attracted by the sheer absurdity of an Archie zombie comic (what could that be, even?!), and those people (I count myself among this group and also the previous one) who are so impressed by Francesco Francavilla that they'll buy an Archie zombie comic. While the first group probably intersects pretty well with bookstore buyers, therefore also intersects with the group of people who tend to see Archie comics on an at least somewhat general basis, I wonder how often the other two groups (and those in the first group who pull The Walking Dead every month) encounter those comics, or Jughead, or Betty & Veronica, or Sabrina the Teenage Witch, outside of their local drugstore. 

The last time I encountered an Archie comic in my natural habitat, I was in Austin, at a comic book store of considerable size (everything really is bigger in Texas). Noticing a book of significant girth on the new collections shelf, and thinking about the then-new Lone Wolf & Cub omnibus I had shelved (and then thought about buying and passed on, something I have since done two more times, both in Colorado Springs this past week) at Jon's Carmine Street Comics, in Manhattan, a couple of days earlier. When I walked over and picked it up, intending, apparently, to think about buying Lone Wolf & Cub and put it back down, I realized that it was, in fact, a six-hundred page Archie triple digest, which I did indeed put back down. In hindsight, I think that it's not only the last time I've met Archie in a comic shop, it's also the only time. I don't even think I've ever actually read one, which seems like a real shame, and I don't think I know anyone who reads them regularly. I don't even really have a good idea of who buys Archie comics-- my initial impulse is that kids by it, or that parents buy them for their kids, but I'm not really sure that that's true.

Surely, the company knows this; looking over their September solicitations (which, tellingly, are most readily available at Major Spoilers and not CBR or Newsarama), you'll see a second book with a little bit of crossover appeal, Archie #648: "The Clod of Thunder," written by Tom DeFalco. Notice also that Afterlife With Archie is written by a veteran of the television show Glee for TEEN+ readers, and it becomes clear that their are two separate target demographics for all of the Archie books; teens and nostalgia readers (for whom a DeFalco written Thor parody with a Walt Simonson variant cover is probably doubly appealing, or which, perhaps instead, is appealing to two different kinds of nostalgics). The question, of course, is how readily do those folks buy Archie comics? How readily are they even available to those people? And is it possible to get other people interested? In this context, series like Afterlife With Archie, and the company's recent turn towards archival 'Best Of' trade paperbacks for bookstore distribution, which, again, should be appealing to the casual drug store buyer, the Archie faithful, and comics people of other sorts, make complete sense, and, moreover, seem like instant winners. They've certainly managed to get me, snobby snit that I am, interested. 

DC to Begin Simultaneous Digital Release for Major Titles

Today may be a big day in the history of the American comics industry. Just a few hours ago, DC Comics announced on their blog DC: The Source (and through their Twitter account @DC_NATION) that starting Wednesday, August 31st of this year the publisher will release "all of its superhero comic book titles digitally the same day as in print".

That is to say that anybody who doesn't live near a comic-book store (or anybody who doesn't want to bother WALKING to a comic-book store) will be able to download to an iPad or similar digital reading device the last issue of the "Flashpoint" mini-series and the first issue of the new volume of "Justice League" the day they are available in print. (This will be the beginning of a slow relaunch with new volumes of all of DC's major titles. A new series will be relaunched with a new #1 issue every week for a calendar year afterwards. [CORRECTION 6/2/11: All fifty-two new volume #1 issues will be released in FIVE WEEKS.])

[via @f_francavilla via @DC_NATION via DC: The Source blog]

My friend David Brustlin (@davidbrustlin) was just marveling last night at the fact that a prose novel he's pre-ordered will be available for him to read on his Kindle the second it goes on the market. The same is now true of DC's comics as it already is of publisher Archie Comics' titles.

When interviewed by Newsarama.com after Archie's similar announcement in January, Mike Wellman, co-owner of Manhattan Beach, California's store The Comic Bug said "If it was Marvel, DC or any of the other bread-and-butter companies, I'd be much more concerned."

Today's post from DC ends with the sentence: "This year, make history with us."

But, tellingly, the comments for the entire blog are closed and have been for the month of May. Could the company have done so in advance consideration of backlash from this major announcement? Certainly the brick-and-mortar comics retailers are not going to be very happy to hear this news. Marvel's and DC's weekly superhero releases form a large portion of their income and the approximate six-month-delay both companies held up has been perceived as the major barrier to the complete cannibalization of their print sales. That combined with the retailers' (and my own shared) belief that a great number of readers enjoy the tactile feeling of print too much to read more than a very few new titles in e-book form.

The next few months will tell us how true those perceptions are.

~ @JonGorga

Archie Comics Embraces Digital As Immediate Delivery System

In the world we are slowly creeping towards, print will be a niche market for alternative communication seekers, collectors, and history buffs. All mainstream media will be provided digitally.

Well, at least that's a distinct possibility. But if it is a possibility, and it is, the print publishers of the world would do well to branch out now and branch out bravely. One comics publisher is, and has been for several years now.

Quite honestly, this is some remarkable recent news we missed:

"Beginning in April, Archie Comics will offer digital versions of its comics on the same day that the print editions arrive on newsstands. The company will be starting with six monthly titles: Archie, Archie & Friends, Betty, Veronica, Betty and Veronica, and Jughead.

“We have a very exciting little business here,” said Jon Goldwater, the co-chief executive of Archie Comics. “We have to keep figuring out ways of pushing it forward.” ... “The more I thought about it, and the more I saw the sales, I realized these formats aren't competitive, they are supportive,” Mr. Goldwater said."

~ from The New York Times Arts Beat blog, George Gene Gustines, January 12, 2011

And the digital edition's price will be a full dollar less per issue. $1.99 instead of $2.99.

Those six titles are the series the company itself described later as "its 6 core titles" in the recent press release wherein it announced that the same material will be offered through the third-party digital comics publisher Graphic.ly as well as in Archie's own downloadable iPad app. ("Archie continues to lead the comics industry in embracing the digital medium, as well as making it easier than ever for our fans to get their favorite Archie comics." (ArchieComics.com blog, February 16, 2011.) Yeah. Pretty much. Couldn't have said it better.

The move to place their most popular titles in a digital format represents a seriousness in the purpose of this initiative. The fact that Archie Comics, among the oldest publishers of comic-books in America as well as the most often derided, has been the first in America to step up and accept digital is nothing short of remarkable.

That said, will there be a backlash from comics shops fearing a cannibalization of their sales? Probably not. Why? Because comic shops no longer sell many Archie comic-books. Archie has long been a mainstay of the newsstand, itself a shrinking market for the past twenty years. It was pointed out to me by a friend and manager of a NYC comics shop: 'Of course Archie has gone digital before everyone else. They had the least to lose.' This is probably partially true.

In his interview with Ron Richards of iFanboy, Co-CEO Goldwater said: "We value our partners in the direct market [i.e. the non-newsstand, comics retail shops market] ... We see the print and digital reader as two different groups, with some overlap. Some people enjoy going to the shop each week and picking up the hard copies of their titles. Others enjoy the convenience of downloading titles via their mobile devices or tablets." This is probably partially true.

I say: Remarkable nonetheless.

~@JonGorga

P.S. ~ By the way, again we had a big digital move forward announced on a New Comic-Book Wednesday, i.e. the day of the week new comics arrive at comic shops. I'm beginning to realize that's more than coincidence. Drive a few curious people into comics retail shops to see the physical copies on the day you announce your digital move? Very smart comics publishing world. Very smart.

DC Slips Off the Chains of the CCA!

In a country like America, where the right to 'free speech', i.e. expression restricted only by hateful intent, was legally established in the very first amendment to our government's founding constitution, the fact that any art, mode of communication, or media could be censored because of fear of a nebulous 'corruption of the youth' is horrible. That this system of censorship has operated from the 195os into the 21st Century is stupefying. And the final defeat of that is something to be celebrated.

Today, DC Entertainment finally announced its rejection of the approval system of the nearly six-decade-old Comics Code Authority in favor of their own rating system.

[via @Newsarama via DC Source blog]

The Comics Code Authority was formed in 1954 to stem the tide of fear in the US population, mainly engendered by Dr. Fredric Wertham, that comic-books (mostly Horror comics, but others as well) were psychologically dangerous. The good doctor wrote a book titled "Seduction of the Innocent" which treated comic-books as powerful and dangerous tools aimed at children. (Which in a sense is very true.) The other half of the Big Two, Marvel Comics, put out the first mainstream comic-books without the Code's stamp of approval in 1971 and stopped making use of the Code entirely a decade ago in 2oo1.

According to Wikipedia.org with DC pulling out, only Archie Comics and Matt Groening's Bongo Comics will continue to send their comic-books to the CCA for approval.

Hopefully, Archie will follow the series of daring choices they made in 2oo9 and last year and reject the Code as well. Leaving Groening to make a pretty clear decision between being the only publisher still utilizing a sixty-year-old structure of censorship or keeping some shreds of the revolutionary reputation he once had for creating Television's "The Simpsons".

It won't be long now.

~@JonGorga

UPDATE 1/25/2o11:
It escaped my notice until today that the day after DC announced this news, and I wrote this post, Archie followed suit and announced that in this next month of February they too will discontinue their use of the Code's seal. And that Bongo hasn't utilized the Code or its seal for something like a year.

This was revealed to me by this excellent piece of reporting on Newsarama.com by Vaneta Rogers which posits that, in fact, the CCA is defunct in all but name and has been for a year or more!

[via @mattfraction via Newsarama]

Free speech survives. Censorship was defeated. The good guys win in the end.

Digital Comics Part 3: Threat or Menace?

Okay. So I've talked about comics made FOR the internet put on the internet, i.e. webcomics, and the creativity they display in Part 1.

I've talked about comics made for print delivered THROUGH the internet by official channels: Digital Comics Unlimited, Wowio, Eagle Media and so on as well as the aesthetics of their presentation in Part 2.

But let's talk about pirates. (Arrr.) Then we'll talk about the positive implications of all this.

For quite a few years, people all over the world have been spending some of their free time scanning printed comics page-by-page into their computers with an optical scanner and then combining those image files into one 'zipped' file which merely retains the images and their correct reading order. Those files can in turn be read by specially designed programs that present two images at a time to imitate the recto-verso page-turn of printed comic-books and graphic novels. If you access any large P2P sharing network with one of the programs designed to do so like DC++ or Shakespeer and do a search for any popular comic-book series by name, you will most likely find a surprising number of these files. Then if you download one of the programs designed to read them like ComicBookLover or CDisplay all you've got to do is drag one of those zipped CBR files into one of these reader programs and you are bada-bing reading what is probably an illegally scanned-and-uploaded print comic for free. Nothing about the program is illegal, it functions just like iTunes used to (i.e. with no internet-ready iTunes Store function).

There is also a legal source of scanned print comics files. Marvel Comics and a few other companies (including Archie Comics!) released CD-ROM and DVD-ROM packages with a company called Graphic Imaging Technology INC. with tons and tons of scanned comics in PDF format. (Wikipedia has a list of these CD-ROMs.)

The most exciting of those, to me, were the ones which collected all the comics in a particular crossover 'event'. If you've read my old rant about the way these stories are collected, you'd understand. Marvel produced a "House of M" The Complete Collection Collector's Edition CD-ROM as well as "Civil War" The Complete Collection DVD-ROM. I'd try these out if they weren't so bloody expensive. Especially since Marvel unveiled Digital Comics Unlimited and discontinued these sets in 2007. This might actually be the best way to experience these highly splintered stories. Buying something in the neighborhood of 100+ comics to fully understand one big story is a pain in the neck!

This is why we most need an 'iTunes for comics.' I did receive one of these type of sets as a Christmas present. I'd like to be able to read those files on whatever I'm reading my comics on.

(The question that leaves is: Where the hell is DC Comics in all of this? Archie Comics can be bought digitally in two formats and DC/Warner Bros. does nothing? Perhaps the company that brought us the first comic-book with new material, the first superhero, and the first corporate webcomics site is biding its time to wait for the right solution to the entire digital conundrum and slap all the competition upside the head. Who knows?)

Of course like I said in Part 2, Marvel doesn't put out its brand new comics in digital form either in their old boxed DVD-ROM sets or on Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited or on Panelfly/the Marvel Comics app. They seem to have an unwritten six-months-or-older-only rule. They're protecting their interests. But that will only last as long as there is a sizable interest to protect. And the digital pirates get an entire new-comics-Wednesday's material worth of comics on the net for illegal download in a matter of hours anyway. Anyone in the world can read pretty nearly every single comic ever published for free. Illegally.

So will digital comics replace print comics?

The short answer is: Yes they will, but not anytime soon.

It was pointed out that I wasn't very specific in Part 2 of this article series. I should have written: as academics and creators, we should be prepared because comics will be largely digital within our lifetimes. As artforms move into the digital format, the relationship of dependence between the art-concept and the art-object (vinyl/plastic, paper/vellum) changes. A huge amount of music is available for download on iTunes. Prose of all kinds is available on the Kindle. And newspapers are moving digital, of course they really, really should as there's very little about their product that is dependent on visuals and even less that is dependent on layout. But a newspaper has images and a layout. A comic is images and layout. It may be a 'book layout' instead of a 'page layout', but it's still about organizing visuals into a sequence.

Comics = Sequential Art
Sequential Art = Art + Sequence

Comics = Images + Layout

You take away either of those elements? You no longer have comics. Moving comics into digital files is very problematic for this reason, among others. But these are formal concerns and not financial ones.

Let's talk about money.

Clare's father K. J. pointed this out to me: consider music. Only sixty years ago music first became available for affordable mass-consumption on Long Playing records, i.e. LPs. Forty years ago music became available on 8-Track. Wasn't a disaster, but didn't last. Lower quality and slightly higher convenience. Twenty years ago came the Compact Disc, i.e. CDs. Lower quality (compared to LP), but higher convenience. Ten years ago music became illegally available on Napster and the Recording Industry had a conniption in their general direction. Today music is available for download from various sources legally. Again at lower quality (when compared to LP), but with extreme convenience. Now iTunes is the #1 source of music, but CDs are slipping from the #2 spot. Vinyl outsells CDs in some markets, collectors and audiophiles want them more than ever. It's a niche market. I buy very, very little music: but I pretty much buy only vinyl. There are many collector edition LPs. There is an annual Record Store Day. Convenience and quality, right?

I can see a world that wouldn't be so horrible:

My comic arrives in my digital device. Maybe it is a 'comic-book' with multiple 'pages'. Maybe it is a 'comic-strip' with a single 'page' that I scroll smoothly through for a good hour. I read it on the same device I used to buy it with a credit card number, on which I can buy comics made by people from all over the world. I review and discuss it online when I'm done. I have a digital 'subscription' with a list of preferences which can be changed instantaneously. ('Would you like to subscribe to the new upcoming superhero crossover event: only the main title, all the tie-ins, or continue with your subscriptions as they are, sir?' 'Would you like to be alerted about new comics by this artist, sir?') I can read old files. Maybe I have pre-sets as to how I want to see panels, pages, splash-pages, balloons and in what order. Maybe if I really, really loved seven random issues, I follow a few links and pay again to buy a nicely printed trade-paperback collection to MY specifications. Maybe if I really liked a mini-series I wait a few months and then shell out big-bucks for the glossy hardcover at a bi-annual 'Comic-Book Store Day' where I meet some real people and have a nice time.

There is, in fact, already an annual Free Comic Book Day to be held this very Saturday May 1st! Its main goal is to drive people into comic-book stores. Go take advantage of the fact that many, many publishers will be putting out a free non-digital old-school print comic on Saturday!

There will still be people who will buy books and comic-books and vinyl for a long, long time. People will probably buy the things they want to keep forever in physical form. In the words of my friend Aaron LeBow: "a book can't get a virus". But we as a culture read/hear/watch a huge amount of stuff every day! In a complimenting sort of counter-point my friend David Bustlin is planning to go digital with his comics as soon as possible for very practical reasons: freeing-up closet space and reducing paper waste.

If we combine the physical promotion of Free Comic Book Day with: ComicBookLover

(Which is like iTunes, the program. Easy, flexible, and compatible with all kinds of image files.)

and with: Panelfly

(Which is like iTunes, the online store. Simple, inexpensive, and compatible with all kinds of publishers.)

Get it on ALL your digital devices, make it CUSTOMIZABLE...

And maybe we've really got something exciting there.

There is only one thing that can be said with definitiveness: Print comics will continue to be made as long as publishers continue to perceive it as a solvent business and as long as individuals continue to find comics challenging and exciting to work in. And digital comics (of all kinds) will continue to be produced/made available as long as publishers continue to percieve it as a solvent business and as long as individuals continue to find comics challenging and exciting to work in.

Like J. Jonah Jameson, the long-time persecutor of Spider-Man, you can choose to frame the question as: "Threat or Menace?" or you can choose to ask: "What can digital comics do for me?"

Simple as that.

UPDATE 5/7/2o1o: Apparently the days of the comics scanning pirate may one day come to a close: A press release can be read here about the recent joint effort of the F.B.I., a law firm specializing in intellectual property, the U.S. Department of Justice, and a coalition of comics publishers including Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Bongo Comics, Archie Comics, Conan Properties LLC, and Mirage Studios Inc. in the seizure of the servers propping up htmlcomics.com, one of the websites hosting scanned-and-uploaded comics.

Be wary pirates. Be wary.

UPDATE 5/8/2o1o: Marvel publicized here a long while ago about the various formats and devices its comics were becoming available on. The problem is all three of these devices use separate formats meaning none of these programs can swap files. Not very convenient.

Archie Comics introduces its first gay character!

Wow.

I mean, seriously: Wow. Okay, I know I'm a couple days behind on the news but wow. Check the information out here, the official Archie site. This is one thing that I really never expected to see from Archie comics.

The character's name is Kevin. He gets introduced when he catches Veronica's eye, and she pursues him. He has absolutely no interest in her, to her chagrin. Eventually, he confides in Jughead that the reason he doesn't like Veronica is not because she's insane (my reason for not liking either Betty or Veronica) but because he's gay. I was impressed in how that reveal is handed. No big shocker, nothing outrageous, Jughead just realizes that he can mess with Veronica but there is absolutely NO negative reaction in any way.

There's been several times at the store where I've gone through old Archie comics, going back to the 50s. One of the things that I've noticed is that Archie often reflects the attitudes of the times in regards to American culture: fashion, politics, dating habits, whatever is socially acceptable. The fact that Archie's newest cast member is gay (and how acceptable it is to the characters) gives me hope that the general view on sexual orientation is starting to really change in America.

An "Arch" of Progress

Two weeks ago I had the honor of attending opening night of the latest MoCCA exhibit:

, an exhibit on the history and 'Arch' of evolution of the never-aging Archie Andrews and the company named for him, Archie Comics. It will run from November 19th of '09 until February 28th of 2010.

Check out my fantastically awkward video of the festivities!

(Somehow tilting my iPhone entirely to the side seemed like a good idea at the time...)

Like all of the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art's exhibits and festivals, I highly recommend going. If you're in the NYC area, or will be sometime before the end of February, you should mosey on down to 594 Broadway and check this out!

The exhibit moves through each decade of Archie's existence and points out the ways in which he changed to suit the times. The original art for the Eighties cover depicting old-school-Dan DeCarlo/Archie-style drawings of high school kids in punk fashions is amazing. The best delight is the few pages of art from an unpublished Archie story in which Archie reads a letter from his adult cousin Andy Andrews aloud in class, and everyone enjoys a rousing (and probably bogus) spy-story by proxy.

Finally, the exhibit also includes some material from other Archie Comics creations like Josie and the Pussycats (which was adapted to film) and Sabrina the Teenage Witch (which was adapted to an animated TV series, a TV movie, a very successful live-action TV series, and then... another animated TV series).

To say that Archie Comics is just the little brother to the Marvels and the DCs isn't... well honestly, it's just not as true as I thought it was. Are they putting out the same quality as Marvel and DC? I would say no, but that's really an opinion anyway, isn't it? I think they're making a good step in the right direction with this ongoing "Archie Gets Married" story-line structured around the famous Robert Frost poem, "The Road Not Taken". The idea is that as Archie reads the poem, he receives visions of his possible futures: three issues depicting what it would be like if he married Betty, three issues depicting what it would be like if he married Veronica. Whether all this really constitutes strong art is, again, purely opinion.

Original art from the currently ongoing story is on display at the exhibit. Me thinks you should go to MoCCA and decide for yourself!

Free for MoCCA members, $5 admission for non-members.