EXCLUSIVE: Archie Comics Cancels Kickstarter, Says Comics Delayed but Still Planned

[phonogram12]

This would have been the first Kickstarter I would have ever contributed to just to see where they would've taken the property (especially Adam Hughes' Betty & Veronica). I didn't even contribute to Veronica Mars and I loved that show. This is disappointing. I would've loved to see where their original plans would've taken them.

[MrStatham]

Basically, you were giving money to Archie to pay creators to make comics, without Archie spending any of their own money.

Or in other words... WE WERE GOING TO PAY FOR COMICS LIKE WE ALWAYS HAVE DONE. GASP. SHOCK. HORROR.

[JKtheMac]

DC and Marvel don't earn a ton of revenue from publishing and their numbers are significantly higher than Archie. ...

All good points. This is clearly a company that became frustrated at not being able to build their brand the way they would have liked. After working out how much money they would need to position their planned lines for maximum impact they realised they would be overstretched financially to do it. Borrowing money isn't just about going to the bank or finding investors, it is a financial risk, with a reduction in profits. Any investment requires a tempting return on that investment sometimes ceding some portion of your company, which may not have been an option in this case.

This is where the Kickstarter model can help. Crowdsourcing is many things to many people, but at its heart it isn't retail or investment.

Keeping our focus on comics, it can often become a funding and distribution model for small players. This does not appear to be an investment model, it looks like a pre-payment model. This is the easiest model for the typical consumer to buy into because it is the closest to standard retail. But fundamentally it isn't retail. You are financing a project with the promise of the product. In art circles that is called patronage. It just so happens that in this simple pre-pay example the patronage looks like retail from one side.

Imagine a art crowdsourcing example where you as the investor don't get anything apart from a public thank-you. I could point to many of these but they are not hard to find. The art gets made, the artist gets paid and you get a slice of recognition. How much recognition tends to be based on how much you contributed. It has nothing to do with buying a product or getting a return on investment in financial terms.

So where this crowdsource perhaps went wrong is pitching itself to the wrong people. Most comic book Kickstarter projects are so similar to retail it encourages a comparison amongst the potential backers.

This project was just a call for financing from people who wanted to make their art better and higher profile, to people that might have an interest in helping them do that. It may even have been funded given the full time span. Sure it would have financially helped the company do something they were not able to do but that isn't duplicitous.