This article appears in VICE Magazine's Means of Production issue. Conceived of pre-COVID-19 and constructed during it, it explores the organization and ownership of our world.Archie Andrews, Jughead Jones, Betty Cooper, and Veronica Lodge have existed for decades in a kind of narrative limbo—but right now, on the CW’s Riverdale, they’re getting ready to go to college. They’ve certainly earned it: For four seasons, these supposedly all-American teens have solved murders, broken out of prison, and done battle with a supernatural role-playing game cult.
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Betty’s dad being a serial killer was not exactly a logical next step; the characters of the Archie universe were supposed to be the definition of 1950s wholesome. Its shepherds knew something different: The thing that’s actually important about Jughead isn’t where he goes to college, or whether his family has been involved in a decades-old secret society (don’t ask)—it’s his love of food and his friendship with Archie. That’s why Archie fits so well into today’s intellectual-property-hungry entertainment industry—why take a risk by developing a new set of characters when these established ones are right there?Whether it’s the entire Marvel or DC catalogs of comic book history, the still-spiraling Harry Potter spin-offs, or Disney’s mass-production of Star Wars, a massive chunk of popular media consists of repurposed previously existing IP. But for each success, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of properties lost in the churn of the entertainment industry. What is the life cycle of a piece of intellectual property that was never intended to last forever?The path from Archie’s creation to Riverdale was not particularly smooth—the history of the Archie IP is largely a history of the company defending its right to do what it wanted with Archie in a series of intellectual property disputes, some with more merit than others. Eventually, Archie Comics wound up in the right place at the right time to become a multimedia empire. Here’s how this stable of characters went from sketches to a business juggernaut.
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THE BIRTH OF ARCHIE ANDREWS
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But with the rights firmly in the hands of the company, Archie appeared in more and more media throughout the 1960s, from a series of animated shows produced by Filmation that ran from 1969 to 1977, two TV movies, and even a chain of restaurants. During the 1960s, Archie had his first major intellectual property battle: an accusation of copyright infringement against Mad humorist Harvey Kurtzman’s Help! magazine, which had begun to publish stories using an Archie parody character named Goodman Beaver. Help! publisher James Warren settled out of court with Archie Comics, paying $1,000 and printing an apology letter in the magazine, according to The Comics Journal. Eventually, Kurtzman was forced to sign over the rights to his satirical characters—the first of multiple instances of Archie Comics absorbing mockery of its characters.
FAST-FORWARD TO THE NEAR PRESENT…
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LAWSUITS ENSUE
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WHEN FANTASY ARCHIE BECAME REAL ARCHIE
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