Creator / Archie Comics

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Archie Comic Publications, Ltd. is an American comic book publisher based out of Pelham, New York. It began in 1939 as MLJ Comics, after the initials of its founders, Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit, and John L. Goldwater. MLJ's titles included Blue Ribbon Comics, Pep Comics, and Top Notch Comics, and its superhero title The Shield ultimately yielded the character that would become the publisher’s new namesake in 1941: Archibald "Archie" Andrews.

The Andy Hardy films were the primary inspiration for this teenaged everyman, and his adventures with his friends soon became the publisher’s headliner. This led to MLJ changing its name to Archie Comics Publications, with the superhero titles being shifted over to the “Archie Adventure Series”.

Archie Comics pushed for the creation of The Comics Code, and more or less ran it for the entirety of its existence. Archie was the last publisher officially adhering to the Code when it ceased to exist in early 2011.^note  DC Comics was the other holdout – although they had been slowly dropping their titles from the Code throughout the 2000's, a few series continued to follow it until the end of 2010. Once DC left the Code, Archie agreed there was no point in keeping it around. Unofficially, they had stopped following it decades earlier, but nobody noticed because things like sex, drugs, or violence were never really part of the Archie universe anyway... until 2013 when they launched the Archie Horror imprint, depicting gruesome horror stories starring versions of the "Archie" cast.

More information and activities: http://www.archiecomics.com/

Imprints

• Archie Action
• Archie Horror
• Dark Circle Comics
• Radio Comics/Mighty Comics Group
• Stan Lee Comics

Archieverse Titles

• Archie Comics
• Josie and the Pussycats (1963)
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch

Licensed Titles

• Sonic the Hedgehog
  • Sonic X
  • Sonic Universe
  • Sonic Boom
• The Flintstones
• The Jetsons
• ManTech
• Mega Man
• NiGHTS into Dreams…
• Street Sharks
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures
• Wild West COW Boys Of Moo Mesa

Licensed Crossovers

• Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Collide
• Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Unite

Superhero Titles

• The Adventures Of The Fly
• Adventures Of The Jaguar
• Black Hood Comics
• Blue Ribbon Comics
• The Comet
• Fly Man
• Hangman Comics
• Mighty Crusaders
  • New Crusaders
• The Shield
• Shield Wizard Comics
• Top Notch Comics
• Zip Comics

Anthologies

• Pep Comics
• Jackpot Comics

Others

• Super Duck
• Wilbur Comics
• Katy Keene
• Lil Jinx
• Cosmo The Merry Martian
  • Cosmo (2018)
• That Wilkin Boy

Tropes:

• Abandoned Mascot: MLJ Comics's original mascot was the patriotic superhero The Shield. However their smash hit Archie Comics series was so successful, not only did Archie become their mascot, but MLJ changed their name to Archie Comics. The Shield languished and became a public domain character, however Archie has made attempts to revitalize the character since the 1990s.
• Animalistic Abilities: The Jaguar has all the powers of the animal kingdom amplified a thousandfold. For instance, summoning the toughness of a rhino's hide grants him invulnerability comparable to Superman.
• Appropriated Title: Archie Comics is named for the most popular title of its previous incarnation, MLJ, Ltd.
• Ascended Fanon: Due to his normal disgust for girls, fans of Archie Comics have speculated whether that Jughead is either gay or asexual. The 2015 reboot has confirmed that he is asexual.
• Fan-Work Ban: Concerned about the proliferation of Rule 34 fanfics, Archie Comics has put a general kibosh on all fan fiction of Archie Comics in general. That hasn't stopped people from putting up fan fiction and fan art on the Internet anyway, although more "official" venues still have to respect the ban; FanFiction.Net, for instance, took down its Archie section (but not its Josie And The Pussycats section), but Archive of Our Own still has one. The main exception is Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), since all Sonic characters are owned by Sega, which is Japanese and doesn't mind nearly as much. (Ken Penders, though, insists that any fan art of his characters include a copyright crediting him.)
• Follow the Leader:
  • The Archie series was meant to capitalize on many of the "Andy Hardy" features of the era. Its own popularity soared enough that near-countless rip-offs were created, some by Archie Comics itself. "That Wilkin Boy", "Josie" and "Wilbur" were all Archie-made blatant rip-offs (though Josie got re-tooled). Lampshaded in the "Archie Marries Veronica" timeline, when Betty's post-Archie boyfriends include Andy Hardy, Henry Aldrich and Richie Cunningham.
  • The 2015 reboot is seen by fans as Archie Comics following Marvel and DC in doing it just for the sake of it. Yeah, one of their titles, Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), did it earlier- but it was forced on them due to a lawsuit from an ex-writer (though it did them a favor by eliminating all the Continuity Snarl the title had been afflicted with).
• Franchise Killer: Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) was the longest-running franchise-based comic series. However, two lawsuits^note The first lawsuit involved Ken Penders, and the second involved Scott Fulop., the lukewarm reception of Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Unite, which heavily used characters from other franchises from Capcom and SEGA, Archie's "Riverdale Reborn" initiative and the advent of Riverdale ultimately killed the series, which led to IDW Publishing getting the Sonic comic license. This has trickled down to Archie itself as the only titles still running consecutively is Archie Comics (2015) and the various digests. Only time will tell if this will turn into a Creator Killer.
• The Great Serpent: The Jaguar's origin story has him and his co-workers getting attacked by a giant, dinosaur-like serpent.
• Hostess Fruit Pies: Archie, Josie and Sabrina all starred in comics that existed only to sell Hostess fruit pies. Archie's nonsensical, low stakes nature meant his formula suffered the fewest deviations for these plots.
• No Export for You: In Europe and Brazil, the Archie franchise is completely unknown. The Archie Comics used to be reprinted in Greece and several other countries, but most such publications have ended.
• Recycled Script: Used often and unabashedly, due to the incredible number of stories already in existence and the short timeframe of an Archie Comics reader. And, of course, no one would notice because they were for kids. Anyone who has been reading for more than a decade could easily pick up a Digest collection and find that only the cover story was new to them.
  • One digest twice featured short strips with Jughead walking into a haberdashery and asking the man behind the counter to take a tie out of the window because he couldn't stand the sight of it or it was so ugly it gave him a headache every time he walked past the store.
  • The same Jughead gag showed up in two different digests released in the same week of that month.
    • It has been worse. One digest reused a near-exact version of a joke in two comics on the same page.
  • This was lampshaded on two different covers, wherein Archie mentioned that the comics would now be printed on recycled paper, causing Jughead or Reggie to respond, "Your jokes have been recycled for years!"
  • A big, current example: several of the "New Look" stories have just been taken (characters, whole sections of dialogue, etc.) from the "Archie Novels" series from the early 1990s. Moose & Midge's break-up, Veronica & Betty fighting about Nick St. Claire, and Archie moving away were all topics taken.
  • There is also the faithful Archie Joke Generating-Laugh Unit 3000, always good for an oldie but goodie, and noted courtesy The Comics Curmudgeon.
  • Joked about in an episode of Friends where Chandler sells a story to the company where Archie temporarily becomes Reggie's butler to earn some extra money, based on his own time working as Joey's assistant. Joey fails to see the parallel but does wind up remembering that they have done a similar story in the past.
• Referenced by…: The Professional Wrestling promotion CHIKARA had Archibald Peck, a wrestling time-traveling marching band leader with alternate personalities, and his majorette, Veronica Ticklefeather.
  • On Mad Men, in the fourth season episode "The Beautiful Girls", when Stan makes a crass remark about Joyce and Peggy going out for drinks, Joyce calls him "Jughead".
  • A first season episode of Veronica Mars is called "Betty and Veronica".
• Screwed by the Network: Archie's biggest demographic for most of its existence was kids casually buying books while shopping with their parents. When major retailers such as Walmart and K-Mart stopped carrying single issue comics in the late 1990s, almost all books by the publisher took a significant hit in sales numbers.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Archie Comics approached Nintendo for the rights to make Nintendo comics, but they turned them down. Sketches were made, however.
  • Archie had a storyline where Archie and his friends went on a world tour, going to various places. One stop was supposed to be in Russia, however this was changed when Putin's controversial anti-LGBT laws took effect and they sent the gang to another location in its stead.