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Yay!

Double YAY!!

Ongoing as in maybe three issues total! Over a period of about 5 years. Yay!

Hi there to all, the contents existing at this website are actually remarkable for people experience,
well, keep up the good work fellows.

I love Afterlife, but can’t get past the art on Sabrina. Fans of Sabrina, tell me, is it a good read despite that??

@Al@ Well I actually DO enjoy the art on Sabrina but I also think the story is killer. This is easily in my top three monthlies. Glad to hear these books are getting back on track and I hope they STAY there!

So glad to hear Sabrina is back. I have been waiting for ages for issue 5. Let’s just make it a bimonthly title and then we will have a regular flow. My retaile rnever received issue #3 so resolliciting the previous ones would also be a nice move.

From an article published in May 2015

““I could give you a dozen excuses, and none of them are really good. We really really wanted to launch the book at New York Comic-Con because it was close to Halloween. In retrospect, we should’ve delayed the launch to get a few issues in the can,” says Aguirre-Sacasa. “there’s no excuse, and there will never be a delay like there was been between Sabrina 1 and 2. Like, never. We are very, very lucky that we have an incredibly passionate and understanding fan base that is eager for the book.

So, in May, the creator says “there’s no excuse, and there will never be a delay like there was been between Sabrina 1 and 2. Like, never. ” And the next issue came out in June/July last year, and we have seen nothing since.

NOW, the creator says “It’s been a humbling — and busy — few months. I’ve been working on our soon-to-be filmed television pilot Riverdale, which will bring our favorite characters to life for the first time in … decades, maybe? Again, that’s not an excuse, just something that’s been taking up a lot of time and energy..”

So, last time we had the ‘excuse and apology’. This time we have the ‘no excuses just an apolgy’.

He then goes on to say that the fans are the best. Are we? If this is how ‘the best’ fans are treated, I’d hate to see how everyone else is treated.

And if we are ‘the best’, why do we get treated like this from a creator/a company that claims to want our business ?

As much as I like both series, I don’t think I can support a book/title/company that doesn’t seem to care about its fans at all. There has been ZERO word from the company on their Facebook page about what was going on, despite MONTHS of people writing and asking.

Sad customer service all around.

Lost interest a long time ago. Timeliness counts!

I read things when they come out, so I’ll enjoy these when they come out. No big deal!

It’s definitely hard to keep up with the new terminology, and there’s a good chance I have this wrong, but I’m pretty sure asexuality implies a lot more than abstaining from sex and romantic relationships. So it makes little sense to say Jughead is “sublimating sexual urges to things like eating fries.” As an asexual, he’d likely deny he has any sexual urges to sublimate, and if, as a healthy teenage boy, he occasionally needs to masturbate before he can get to sleep at night, he’d see that as a simple bodily function unrelated to the future possibility of copulation. (I am curious what asexual people think about while they masturbate, if anyone could enlighten me.)

Or is it that in Jughead’s case, “asexual” is simply being used to mean he isn’t interested in dating (for the moment)?

Asexuality is so rarely talked about, it’s nice to see a comic character actively identified as such, just so people are more aware what it is and that it isn’t a lifestyle choice.

One of the things I enjoyed about Keanu Reeve’s Constantine was that the character seemed noticeably asexual, though instead fans kept speculating whether he was supposed to be gay.

Again, so impressed by Archie modernity, compared to dc and marvel conservatism.

Jughead was always asexual. The beauty is, they didn’t feel the need to beat you over the head with it. It just didn’t come up. I’d feel better about it if the motivation for this was not to get headlines on comicsbeat, etc. It’s just like Marvel- completely motivated for media attention. Comics suck.

I legit can’t tell whether or not that last comment was intended as a parody of the usual “why do they need to beat me over the head with it” argument.

It’s especially funny to me, because I’m in the middle of re-reading all the original Marvel comics in order, month by month (I’m currently up to 1965), and the constant forced love triangles in nearly every issue of every series could quite literally be described as beating readers over the head with their straightness.

Great news!
Glad to see the new Archie run doing so well. Especially in digital.
That’s a good sign.

Veronica, aside from being a talented artist, has comics retailing in her pedigree as well. She worked at the comic store I work for, a bunch of years ago. Very happy she is tearing it up in the comics world now!

One of the BEST books currently out there! If you haven’t given this title a chance, pick up the first trade and start with this issue to keep the action going! Excellently written, with awesome art! (Issue 6 was kinda a one-off so the creative team could catch their breath.)

The game is presented through IGT and moment has come one of their personal personal commonly used position video games
truly.

I’m just thrilled by all the fresh, new things Archie is developing. Really enjoyed the first issue of Dark Circle’s The Shield too.

[…] Comics Beat – The Black Hood #6 […]

[…] Weekly. Also, the first issue has had some great early reviews, which you can read here, here, and here, and it also makes a couple of recommended lists, here and […]

The return of Jughead’s Time Police? Fantastic! And really need to see his baby sister Jellybean too.

Color me sad. We will be lucky to see #9 before the year wraps.

Ralph: I can’t see this book coming out before next spring, which seems to fit AWA’s current once-a-year schedule. If then!

So they just got a script and are going to start on the art soon on a book that was supposed to come out back in April? Very professional.

Yeah, they may suffer from loss of momentum with this series if they don’t get it back on track…

So this has already been solicited, then? And the customers who preordered this book – paying money in advance for a product the company knew wasn’t being produced on the schedule it advertised — should feel…happy?

No wonder people abandon this hobby.

I’m reading the book, and loving it. And I’m happy as hell that there’s evidence of another issue in the pipeline. Yeah, it’s late. And certainly the delays will lose them some audience. But Jesus, don’t presume to tell me how to feel.

Good for you for being happy. I’m an Archie customer, and I’m not happy with the delays for books I’ve preordered and prepaid for.

I dropped this one, as the company is not taking it seriously enough to put together a publishing schedule. I know that I might sound wayyy too sombre on this, but it’s disrespectful to its readers for a major comic company to publish an ongoing bimonthly title whenever they feel like it.

they should fire their chief creative officer off of the book and get someone else who can write it on time!

Glad to see Archie still has their core audience of young readers. That’s the only thing that can explain the entitled millennial whining going on here.

I’m very confused. As reported here, Archie Comics is laying off staff. Many comments on this site about that news item noted that the new, revamped Archie line has slowed down to a very erratic release schedule. But while that’s going on, the company is presenting a new group of superhero comics in an already over-saturated marketplace for that sort of material. I can’t imagine these books (no matter how good they are) being ordered in numbers more than what the Valiant line is selling right now (under 10,000 copies a book). It’s like someone who’s losing their house because they can’t keep up with the payments deciding to remodel the kitchen and add a couple of new rooms. I don’t get it.

It may not make much sense, but Black Hood is one of the best superhero books being put out by anyone. Whether or not Archie is acting rationally or whatever — I don’t know. But given how good Black Hood has been, I’ll definitely give this a shot (as well as the other titles they’ve got planned).

@ jsf: I understand what you’re saying about the quality of the book. I hope you have the opportunity to enjoy Black Hood for a long time. But then I read another article about how even well reviewed, mid-list superhero titles from the big two are getting crushed in the sales charts these days. I’m sincerely curious how retailers look at something like this new Dark Circle line and take a stab as to how many of their books to order.

[…] See the original post: Comment on INTERVIEW: Artist Drew Johnson on Reinventing Patriotic Superhero “The Shield” for Co… […]

So agreed, JSF! Black Hood is amazing! I even got my boyfriend into it. At first he was totally against the entire thing (he hates superhero comics) but after he finally broke down and bought the first four issues, he was completely hooked. More people should be reading this book!

Black Hood *is* terrific — so much so that I’ll probably take a chance on The Shield, even though I hadn’t planned on it when it was announced, around this time last year.

sigh, yet another white chick, if they were really re-inventing she would be afro-american, hispanic or indian, pass on this one.
Isn’t abot time we had a hindu superheroe.
We have a muslim super hero who outsells everyone so why not hindu.

and we have yet another white male creator, surely this would’ve been opportunity for female artist?

I’m always sad to see anyone lose their job, but I must say that maybe the time for Archie has passed. I thought their core business had nothing to do with comic shops and were all about those digests for young readers which seem to be present at almost every supermarket check-out in the country. But maybe that’s not enough anymore to keep the company afloat. And frankly, I don’t see their road to redemption in playing the characters straight.

I’ve always enjoyed the talents of Mark Waid and Fiona Staples, and while their first issue of their ‘all new’ Archie was a good try and played fine, at the end of the day it was neither fish nor fowl: not a slice of Americana or anything all that outrageous. Without the trappings of the classic, stylized Archie art and the slapstick gags, isn’t it just a another book about a bunch of teenagers? The only real juice it gets is riffing on our perceived notions of the characters — but it’s never going to be edgy enough to be all that unique either. Let’s face it, Betty’s not gonna be a teen mom and Professor Flutesnoot isn’t gonna be Walter White.

I can understand nostalgia piquing an old comic fan’s curiosity, but after picking it up once or twice to take a look, I can’t see this version sustaining itself in the long term (and the sales figures from issue one to two seem to bear this out.) Why would a reader under 30 pick up and follow a more realistic Archie? But this seems to be the basket management is now placing their eggs. And it looks like it’s a pretty small basket.

So maybe they did need a kickstarter?

What hasn’t been addressed is why the creative teams on the two Archie titles that kickstarted this new age of Archie, Afterlife of Archie and Sabrina, are unable to meet any kind of publishing schedule? These titles aren’t even quarterly, there’s sadly only been one issue of Afterlife released this year. I have heard from a lot of people who think these titles are canceled. The momentum on these two titles has been totally killed.

Ralph: I’ve jumped into threads like this and even on TW to ask Francisco Francavilla directly about this. It’s been a lot of “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” stuff. Could the lack of output on Sabrina and Afterlife could be creative or a pay problem? It would be good to hear from SOMEBODY…

Wayne, I fear you may be right.

I have to say I’m surprised by this. Excluding the delays on titles, Afterlife with Archie has been selling amazingly well, the Sabrina reboot has sold great, The Life with Archie had a few issues that sold huge due to gay marriage, etc. The first issue of Archie just sold a ton… you’re telling me the Archie before all the huge changes brought in more money than all the hits they’ve been having lately? It seemed to me that they were breathing new life into the company, so I’m shocked! I wonder if they’re stretching themselves too thin with finances. Aren’t they trying to get back into TV and movies? Maybe they attempted that too early…

Ralph: By the looks of FF’s twitter page, it’s all about covers and exclusive prints now, so I think we may have seen the last of Afterlife. I’m just really surprised that NOBODY besides fans like us are talking about this, and NOBODY in the comics press has asked the creative folks — Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, FF and Richard Hack — about it. Their Afterlife FB page hall monitor claims neither book has been cancelled, but, in this case, NOTHING speaks louder than words.

@Wayne Beamer 9/22/ 12:48pm –

FF makes like $400 or more dollars for every print he does. (He sells them.) I don’t think Archie Comics is paying him that much for a comic page. I can’t blame the guy for focusing more on his work/finances, but it makes me mad that Archie Comics won’t drop him and get someone else who has ‘Afterlife’ as a priority to work on it. His ‘Afterlife’ style is not that unique that somebody else can’t copy it.

As someone who thought there might be a rain cloud over Archie a while back, I don’t see their current position as doom-and-gloom. Everything they’ve done in the past several years has been in service of remaining relevant, and they have done a stellar job of making noise, and getting back into the limelight.

The smart money is on the Horror books being on hold until they can guarantee release – just like the company has done with much of it’s Dark Circle line, and this new set of Riverdale launches. The writer of the horror line is wrapped up in the production of Riverdale, which is definitely a contributing factor – and considering how the creative teams on those books are fueling those books, I’d say good on them for that.

But as with all things, we’ll see.

Hikari: To me it seems, between the covers, commissions and print work, FF is really doing want he wants to do at the right price. Comics got him to this place, and he doesn’t owe the industry anything. But it would be the right thing to let everyone who’s followed him up to this point — or Archie — to fess up.

As far as replacing FF on Afterlife, not gonna happen. The idea started with his zombie variant cover done at least two years ago if not more. Retailers and readers won’t support a new Afterlife co-creator.

Brandon: If Afterlife was really active, we’d have known about it by now. Comics is a world that straddles books and periodicals. I’m not sure if an original GN of new material would sell nearly as well given all the delays, plus the reprinting of each comics issue as a magazine.

Believe me, I hope I’m dead wrong about the intentions of Archie Comics going forward, but I’ve seen this stuff happen before, and it rarely ends well.

I feel happy now.

I haven’t liked most of the variant covers I have seen for Archie; this one WORKS!!! It feels right, honors the original but adds a contemporary feel.

That cover is an instant classic. Bravo.

Love it.

Jaime Hernandez is the artist Archie Comics needs, but not the one it deserves.