Of course, this all could just be nonsense - this really is just some guy on a forum - but what he says certainly lines up with Archie sales figures, in that the comic sales dropped steeply after a hiatus in 2016 (and that other failures have been leading the publisher to cut the fat).doctorbenMD wrote:Alright, I’ve been holding onto some information for a while until we got some more details and because I’ve been going through some personal stuff on my end. However, I had the pleasure of seeing my informant (and a few other informants who know what they’re talking about) during Free Comic Book Day yesterday, and I have some new information.
The book is definitely cancelled, and the reason why we haven’t heard anything yet is because Archie and Sega were trying to reach a deal together, and because–like I said many months ago–Archie is stalling because of the potential PR nightmare right now while it’s all hands-on-deck during Riverdale. My informant also mentioned that Jon Goldwater (the CEO of Archie Comics) has told him privately that eventually, they want to “get away from Sonic” because it’s “not really Archie,” despite how much of a money-maker it is. When I asked if, also, it was likely that Archie didn’t feel like fighting back for the license, he explained that (as stated above) Archie has had one foot out the door for a long time for a number of reasons (ie: low sales of Sonic recently, bad decisions on other books like Reggie and Me only selling ~4000 copies, the Fulop lawsuit). He also inferred that Sega apparently wanted more money to retain the license, giving more reasons for Archie to not re-up.
Finally, he said he knows how annoying it is that Archie has still not clued the fans in as to what’s going on (he no longer works for Archie and hasn’t for some time, but he’s spoken to people who currently do). So he obviously doesn’t know when it’ll happen.
Believe me, I’m not happy in relaying this information–this sucks. But I think we should’ve all seen this coming.
I can't claim to be a fan of the Archie comic - I only ever read a few of the earliest issues - but if I were I guess I'd be pretty disappointed that such a long-running book ended without any sense of closure. Was that Mega Drive spinoff any good?