Archie Comics Secures Growth Financing

[CBR News]

The publisher has received an unspecified amount of working capital and growth financing from Veritas Financial Partners.


Full article here.

[FromTheAshes21]

So long as they spend it wisely, this could really help Archie moving forward. They are at a critical point right now with the rebooted "Archie" & "Jughead" now established, and "Betty & Veronica" debuting soon; with the potential for "Riverdale" to draw more attention to their books. With a financial cushion, they can guarantee nothing goes off-course, and keep up the quality while rotating top-notch creators on the books (who are thankfully fans of the characters themselves). The only thing Archie really needs to figure out is how to get "Afterlife With Archie" & "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" back on-schedule, without losing the quality of the books. If *someone* is too busy to participate, they need to find a reasonable substitute. "Sabrina" especially suffered, since the book was barely released before vanishing from the shelf for months upon months. At least "Afterlife" had a good start before disappearing.

[GreenLanternRanger]

As much as I enjoy the new Archie comics, I kind of hope the TV show will crash and burn, everything about it just sounds horrible. I want Archie comics to do well in their ventures, but they need to earn that success. IMO the comics deserve to be successful, that mess of a TV show they have planned though, not so much. And yea, the Horror and Dark Circle books need to be put on more steady schedules.

Another thing they might consider is expanding their Action line, Sonic alone does not a line make. I mean Nintendo is apparently open up to people adapting their content into other media again, so why not go after some Nintendo properties for comics? Just a thought.



But yea, I hope they are smart with their money and it helps them in the long run.

[sifighter]

Honestly I'm not a huge fan of regular Archie comics, but I actually really like Afterlife with Archie and some of the Dark Circle comic(haven't read all of them). If they can get those back on track that would be great.

[Captain Craig]

If this capital helps with getting their Dark Circle imprint onto a solid regular publishing basis I'll be happy.
I have zero interest in their main Archie line or even the Afterlife imprint.

[Dark-Flux]

Good for them.
Never been into Archie until the rebooted Waid series and Zdarskys Jughead and ive enjoyed them both immensly. Heres hoping for more of the same.

[The Wizard]

I wish Archie every success.
My disappointment is with their 'super-hero' line. Dark Circle is too bleak.
My wish is that they get Mark Waid or someone equally talented .... and a couple of great artists ... and give us an 'all-readers' line of their heroes ... The Shield, The Wizard, The Black Hood, The Fly, Steel Sterling, and some of the others.
Maybe like DC's Rebirth, more up-beat and not so dreadfully bleak like Dark Circle.

These heroes have not been handled properly ... but to have done so could have, I think, been very beneficial to the Archie line.
Because Archie has not handled them well, ... it would be very hard to re-introduce them.
And I would hate to have Archie go 'belly-up' investing in a super-hero line that would fail them.
Still, it's difficult to see such potentially great properties lie idle.

[seismic-2]

I suppose they've given up on Kickstarter now. I like the new "Archie" comic, as well as the Afterlife and Sabrina series, and I'm looking forward to the new B&V series. I hope this financing helps them succeed, rather than crippling them with debt. I can see that happening, though, after the TV show crashes and burns (which sounds probable!).

[codystarbuck]

I suppose they've given up on Kickstarter now. I like the new "Archie" comic, as well as the Afterlife and Sabrina series, and I'm looking forward to the new B&V series. I hope this financing helps them succeed, rather than crippling them with debt. I can see that happening, though, after the TV show crashes and burns (which sounds probable!).

The problem with Kickstarter is raising enough to fully fund a line of books, rather than a single project or just the next issue. One of the areas that has always crippled small publishers (and Archie qualifies, these days) is cash flow. So many had to wait for revenue to come in off the previous issue before they could even pay to print the next issue. That takes time and often leads to erratic publishing schedules, which loses the audience. People want their books regularly.

If the idea is to be able to float enough titles to create a steady revenue stream, then great. I have no idea about the tv series. it might be good, it might be terrible. Previous live attempts at doing a straight Archie series were abysmal failures. I think you could do a pretty decent comedy series, with a decent writing staff. The problem is, you only have so many stories before you repeat yourself, endlessly. At least this approach gives the possibility of other stories. The proof will be in the pudding, though.

All things considered, a loan of between $2 and 15 million isn't a huge amount; so, they cann't be planning anything too elaborate. I suspect they want to mostly boost the number of titles and cut out delays, like with Dark Circle.

As for the heroes; well, they've never really had a very strong history. They did okay in the 40s; but Archie was outselling them all, after he debuted. The revivals usually petered out pretty quickly. One of the problems is a lack of interesting villains. In pevious revivals, they usually had to resort to converting a couple of hero characters into villains. The Impact line, at DC never really solved the problem, either, though I thought they did a better job than the previous Red Circle revival, back in 1983. I've only glanced at some of the Fox, for the Dark Circle version.

[BrianT]

As long as they utilize it to get all of their publishing lines shipping on a frequent, consistent schedule, that's all I'm concerned with. This has already cost them a lot of momentum.