Killing Archie (the comic book character)?

[becca]

Why?

Okay, to sell stuff, but really, who wants this? Apparently he takes a bullet for a gay friend character which makes it heroic, and a long way from the Archie I remember as a kid which had a line of frankly silly and even inaccurate religious propaganda (under the Spire company)... but what kind of audience is there for adult versions of things created for kids? Realistically Archie should be in his 80s or 90s by now, and many superheroes that started in the '40s to '60s should also be very very old (and not so keen you wouldn't think to put on tights, even with a mask). Why can't more new things be allowed to see print instead and maybe became popular? These companies to me keep digging their own graves by redoing old creations over and over (often having stepped on the old creators).

Supposedly they're going to keep the 'regular' Archie comics going so that's something I suppose. Anybody care? Is it on your local news and in your local newspaper as it has been in mine? Should Betty end up addicted to meth next? Or Veronica become a porn star? Jughead classified obese? What about Donald Duck... where did his nephews Huey Dewey and Louie come from? What was Uncle Scrooge's relationship to Grandma Duck? Why did they eat eggs for breakfast on the farm? Will any of them ever wear pants?

[becca]

Probably a media stunt like this deserves to be ignored, it's too bad comic books, which used to be a mainstream medium, has become a stale niche collectable for mainly adults. Maybe the Japanese imports are reaching more actual kids though? They seem more colorful and fun and better still found outside of the specialist shops.

I really like a comic book called Beanworld which an American artist does, but they all seem to be in expensive hard cover format. I guess any printing is no longer cheap...

[Dex]

Supposedly they're going to keep the 'regular' Archie comics going so that's something I suppose. Anybody care? Is it on your local news and in your local newspaper as it has been in mine? Should Betty end up addicted to meth next? Or Veronica become a porn star? Jughead classified obese?

To be honest, rhetorical as those suggestions may have been, all of those ideas sound great to me. Certainly much better than Archie taking a bullet for a friend which just seems like forced heroism that'd be impossible for me to buy. But a darker sort of "where are they know" of late-20s Archie characters? I'd kinda dig it.

I guess I don't get this. How does canon work in the Archie world? How does he "die" and then the continuation of the regular comics continue? But as long as they still have a more-or-less status quo running of the comics it's hard to justify anyone getting too bothered.

[becca]

U.S. comic books writers are very enamored of the 'alternate world' story, this is how they have kept the superheroes going for seventy five years. Naturally it's all fiction but even fantasy must have logic of some sort to help you suspend basic disbelief so there are parallel worlds where things can go differently from our 'main' world. But I doubt they've explained how a teenager in 1941 is still a teenager in 2014.

I don't object to doing a comic with drug abuse or anything else in it, I object when they use these older characters. How about Tinkerbell gets tested for Hepatitis C and finds out she's pregnant at the same time? Maybe it just rubs me the wrong way. It's the supposed 'adultifying' of something created for children, it's like an art form slowly dying and feeding off itself. If not for the movies I think superheroes would have gone away for at least awhile rather than continuing to push further extremes of violence and gore in their pages. They've pretty much alienated the broad base there used to be, and if little kids don't find good imagination stimulating comic books I can't see them suddenly learning to like the adult or pretentious 'graphic novel' sorts.

As a cartoonist I used to work a little bit in comics way back but the whole specialist fanatic audience and the conventions were not my thing. I wasn't into being an important celebrity to a cult of collectors of multiple copies of things that mostly don't get read. I am glad to have seen some of the Japanese comics finally reach here though, but I thought that might have moved things away from the cult gaudy costume and dark brooding muscles thing. I found the underground cartoonists so much easier to relate to than the superheroes obsessed fans who took over everything else, but I never wanted to do underground stuff either, or serious literature so-called in comic book form. Oh well, timing. If I really wanted I could find a way even if having to resort to self-publishing as so many outsiders have had to (Beanworld, Bone, Elfquest), but would it ever be seen by a general audience? Plus you have to compete against the name creations of past artists that have become totally owned and controlled by corporations.

There was a Friends Of Lulu mini-movement a few years ago (named for the old Little Lulu comic) to encourage comic books for children and females. Maybe a liberation of a medium? Or are paper books of all kinds doomed now?