Archie circulation numbers heading into ground, but how unusual is that?
Skip to commentsYesterday, I joked that the new Life With Archie comic in which the title character is killed was a desperate attempt to remain relevant. This morning I read a post over on Comic Chron that tracked the height of Archie’s popularity (spoiler: peaking in 1958) and the long decline since. For those of us who like to play with numbers, it’s an interesting read.
FiveThirtyEight, the data analytics company associated with political analyst Nate Silver’s, has taken that post and run with other data to determine the market share of Archie. It’s not much. How much of a boost will this Life with Archie make? Probably not much.
So what kind of sales movement does killing off the main character have on a comic?
?The main example of course is the ?Death of Superman? in November 1992 which led to what was reportedly a $30 million day in comics shops, to this day, the largest amount of revenue made in a day in the comics market,? Miller wrote in an email to FiveThirtyEight. ?Captain America?s death in the 2000s was another big example.?
Jim Laveey
John Jackson Miller
Jason Nocera