RUMOR: Sonic Comics Cancelled, SEGA Wants More Licensing Money & Archie Not Wanting to Renew It

Uh oh.

It seems as though the Archie Comics news worsens as time passes. And now a new low has been reached, courtesy of more information discovered by a fan. It is worth noting that they, themselves, warn not to take this as gospel and that this is still technically unofficial, nothing more than a conversation between “two friends”, so make sure this is kept in mind. That said, this will not give you any hope on the Sonic comics. If anything, it might be the nail in the coffin:

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. 

Now, before I move on to show their replies, let me share with you some tweets that were made, if you’re looking for credibility on this person:

So then, we now know that this person isn’t just some anonymous user looking for attention. But now we get to their reply posts, which have even more interesting information.

When they were asked if they mentioned how long that they had considered the sales to be low:

No, we more talked about the other Archie titles taking a hit like how I mentioned “Reggie and Me” and such.

Clarification on the “money-maker” remark:

For years it had been a money-maker, but not so much now.

Two posts about the information as a whole, with more information about the matter:

I wasn’t *not* given permission to post it, and this was more a conversation between two friends than “definitive gospel.” And this isn’t the first time Goldwater has said this, for what it’s worth.
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There was a chance and Archie has given their final word to Sega and just hasn’t told us for some reason (remember, this you’re all hearing from me so even though this *is all likely to be true*, it’s still unofficial and should not be treated as gospel–this was more about me letting you guys know any new info I found out).

Timeline is like this, basically: Archie stops subscriptions -> Archie and Sega talk for a few months to work out a deal -> Ultimately both walk away from the table because they are no longer interested in doing business with each other.

In regards to Bleeding Cool, a comic tabloid site, getting the attention of comic companies like Archie:

Archie likely took notice considering the “juicy” quote I provided in my post–that Goldwater wanted to eventually “get away from Sonic because they ‘aren’t really Archie.'” Now that they’ve said *something,* they can continue to get by without saying anything else until they want to.

Fun fact: Lisa at subscriptions? Her last name is *also* Goldwater. They really like keepin’ it in the family over there. 

About the risk of leaking information from an informant:

I’m not using any names, am I?

Lastly, they speculated (not actual info) about whether someone else would get the license. It’s still interesting, nevertheless:

I really wouldn’t count on them shopping the license to someone else even. Imagine you’re a country who has a property who licenses out your character to a company from another country to write non-canon stories based on said character. Naturally, the comic leads to stories involving new characters created within these stories that have never and will never show up anywhere else. And then because of ineptitude and bad luck, 2 lawsuits come out–one of which is lost and does damage to the character you’ve licensed out to a company for *years.* SoJ definitely at some point probably was saying “what the fuck.” And these characters are from a TV show from ~25 years ago–talk about a niche within a niche within a niche. Frankly, the comic survived longer than it should have.

So there you have it. Obviously, this isn’t Archie making any official statement, so it is considered a rumor for now. However, like a lot of what we’ve learned so far, it seems to be rather credible. But it’s looking increasingly troubling for the Sonic comics. If people didn’t already feel like the comics were dead, then this will not help matters at all, rumor or not.

This post was originally written by the author for TSSZ News.