Archie Comics, as hardcore trivia types probably remember, owns a stable of superheroes. They’ve been printed in the ’70s and ’80s, and recently DC tried to reboot them into the DCU, but with no luck.
Archie seems to be banking on audiences not necessarily liking current comics superheroes by making a book that’s serious without being gory, profane, or otherwise grim n’ gritty.
It’ll be interesting to see if it works as a print comic. I’ve been keeping my eye on the New Crusaders launch digitally, and while nothing’s been earthshaking, the books are under the supervision of Ian Flynn and thus pretty solid. Flynn’s Archie’s go-to guy for non-ginger material: he currently handles their Sonic and Mega Man books.
Apparently the goal is to hit the tone of the Avengers movie. And, of course, to see if they can’t get any interest in a New Crusaders movie, at least that’s everyone’s assuming. We’ll be curious to see whether Archie can pull this one off in print.
image courtesy Archie Comics




I honestly don’t think a superhero book needs to be full of blood, death, and sex to be good. I’m all for something more Golden Agey. If they know how to write a decent plot then I’m all over it.
I agree, and would like to add that I don’t think that it has to be super-serious either. I don’t think the industry does enough to draw a new and young audience.
I agree with H_E. Monkeybrain’s new digital offerings, and I can’t recall if you’ve mentioned them but I’ll assume you have, hit that sweet spot of quality without being needlessly “edgy” or whatever. But Archie has a good rep right now for putting out a bunch of excellent books that deal with issues seriously and don’t need to run up the price of red ink or use needless profanity.
I’m perfectly good at creating my own needless fucking profanity.