At the New York Comic Con this week, Archie Comics will reveal its next step in the digital frontier. In spring, the company will bring back its line of superhero characters in a subscription model that will offer an original six-page story and access to an archive of past adventures.
“It’s very exciting to be creating the first brand-new digital comic book label,” said Jon Goldwater, the co-chief executive of Archie Comics Publications.
Besides the possibility of reaching an audience beyond the comic book stores, there was a second advantage to this digital model. “Financially, it makes sense,” Mr. Goldwater said. “We are not going to have any print costs. To be a slave to printing prices when you’re starting a new venture is a tremendous concern.”
The idea for this initiative came up in July during the Comic Con International in San Diego. The Archie crew was meeting with Michael Murphey, the founder and chief executive of iVerse Media, a distributor of digital content. The two companies teamed up to bring Archie into the digital world in 2008. Between comics available for free, and those that have been purchased, Archie is closing in on three million downloads.
Mr. Murphey was a fan of Archie’s superheroes, who are often referred to as the Red Circle based on an earlier imprint that published them. The characters include The Fly, which was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby and introduced in 1959, and The Shield, a patriotic hero who had his first adventure in 1940, predating Captain America by a year. The champions banded together as The Mighty Crusaders.
“When Marvel sold to Disney, and with DC owned by Warner Brothers, I thought those characters are the only superheroes left that are not owned by a major studio,” Mr. Murphey said.
Archie last published the characters in 1985. DC Comics licensed them from Archie and released stories in 1991 and in 2008, but both attempts were short lived.
The premise of the digital series, written by Ian Flynn and illustrated by Ben Bates, begins with the heroes largely in retirement in a suburb called the Red Circle. Their enemies find and dispatch the heroes, forcing the next generation, who will be overseen by The Shield, to save the day, thus paving the way for The New Crusaders, the title of the series.
Tonally, the stories will be similar to “The Incredibles,” Mr. Goldwater said. “They are not going to be water-downed superheroes, but they are not going to be dark either.”
The digital marketplace is of growing importance to the comic book industry. As part of the DC Comics initiative to reinvigorate its superhero universe with new No. 1 issues, the company also began selling digital copies of its series on the same day as print publication. Last month, Slave Labor Graphics Publishing, a smaller company, announced it would offer its periodicals only in digital form, saving the print versions for collected editions.
“Publishing and profiting from periodical format comics has become increasingly irrelevant for most indie comics publishers,” wrote Heidi MacDonald, editor for The Beat, a blog that covers comics.
Archie’s latest digital initiative will be similar to Netflix, Mr. Goldwater said. “It will be a nominal monthly charge with access to new comics and thousands and thousands of pages from the archive.”
That trove of material will include stories that have not previously been reprinted. But the archive is meant to enrich the reading experience, not bog it down. It was important to give subscribers a full story that was not mired in decades of continuity, Mr. Goldwater said.
The price, which has not been set, is another important consideration. “Value, value, value. That’s what we want to give at Archie Comics,” said Mr. Goldwater, who said he expected the subscription fee to be no more expensive than a regular comic book ($2.99 or $3.99). “We’re very conscious of what’s going on in the economy right now. We want to be recession busters. We don’t want to gouge our fans.”
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