Shipping in October, Archie #699 is a $1.00-priced issue that’s a “primer” to catch people up on the Waid era of the title before the creative team of Nick Spencer and Marguerite Sauvage arrives in issue #700.

Official PR follows and then a preview:

ARCHIE #699
CATCH UP ON THE BEST-SELLING ARCHIE SAGA BEFORE ISSUE #700! As the Riverdale gang heads toward major changes in the pages of the monumental ARCHIE #700 next month, we follow Archie as he reflects back on past storylines including: the #LipstickIncident, the arrival of the Lodge family, the machinations of the Blossom Twins, the near-tragedy of “Over the Edge” and more! This special issue sets the stage for next month’s landmark 700th issue of ARCHIE by Nick Spencer and Marguerite Sauvage! Based on stories by Mark Waid and Ian Flynn and featuring art by an assortment of Archie talents, this recap issue is the perfect primer for new readers and returning fans to the Archie universe.

Script: Mark Waid, Ian Flynn
Art: Fiona Staples, Veronica Fish, Joe Eisma, Pete Woods, Annie Wu, Audrey Mok, Andre Szymanowicz, Jen Vaughn, Kelly Fitzpatrick
Cover: Marguerite Sauvage
On Sale Date: 10/3
32-page, full color comic
$1.00 U.S. 

2 COMMENTS

  1. The problem with a $1 comic is the market has to sell 4x as many copies to remain in the same place of income. I can think of VERY few times in the history of comics where promotional priced comics made up for the loss of revenue from the promotional price itself — and always kicking off multi-title promotions (Like how BATMAN: THE 10-CENT ADVENTURE led into “Bruce Wayne: Murderer?”, or maybe the DC COUNTDOWN or DC REBIRTH specials kick-launched the line-wides)

    Recent examples like SAGA’s 25 cent issue succeeded in nothing but losing me several hundred dollars for the month; even THE WALKING DEAD’s, which had craziness like 1:500 variants, just barely broke even for us that month as I recall — and all for the reward of seeing consumer sales for those issues go up less than 20%. And we have REAMS of evidence that those “bargain seeking” customers DO NOT (as a class) come back to buy the next full-priced issue.

    And I can’t even imagine how the math works outside the US, where retailers are paying largely insane shipping rates.

    -B

  2. I can only imagine they’re banking on the idea that issue #700 could make up for the lost revenue? Otherwise even the idea of a recap issue is silly. I’d be curious if you’re even hearing anyone excited about Archie 700, Brian. As a reader, I’m not particularly excited by bringing Nick Spencer onto the title. I’ve never seen him do teen drama before. At least Mark Waid had experience with that.

Comments are closed.