Their website tells a different story.
No more subscriptions.
I literally couldn’t even give you a ballpark figure of when I last saw an Archie comic in the wild.
well. according to the chart posted 20 or so msg above, the DID (and do) … just focus (hey!) on the yellow segments …
turns out, there are a whole lotta more people who just want very nice pics of their kids, and not too many spending a whole weekend in a wet dump to score a pic of a crane in flight …
(I am one of those … my Nikon DSLR w/ very nice “glass” hasn’t been touched in years)
I think one of the reasons DSLRs still exist (at all) … is that they turned out to be able to pull the rug out under the feet of professional video equipment … just like they got their rug pulled out under their feet by phones … IOW: I’d like to know what percentage of DSLRs today are used for photos (as opposed to creating YT/TT/IG vid’s)
I’ve been in the supermarket/convenience business for over 20 years working for multiple companies across most of the United States.
Comic books haven’t been a checkout staple for at least 15 years. The claim that “they’re readily available at every supermarket checkout stand” hasn’t been true for Archie comics or indeed any comics for close to twenty years now.
You’re more likely to see smartphone accessories and batteries at the checkout stand now than any paper publications, and if there are publications, they will be magazines, not comics.
My current employer (a supermarket chain) carries no magazines or books at all. They do carry one or two newspapers in each store, the flagship city paper (e.g. The Washington Post in the DC-MD-VA area) and maybe a local one, if there is still a viable local one.
And by the same guy who turned au bon pain from a purveyor of delicious pastries to the bland soggy things it sells today.
But it certainly seems like the quality of Panera has gone down recently.
Here’s a shot on the dark: how about Google. Yes, they have branded out into selling server space for corporations, and maybe they’ll keep making money at that. But since their start, the workhorse has been search. And AI is taking a real bite out of that. They could go the way of Yahoo.
I agree. Phones replaced the casual point-and-shoot cameras that were popular for several decades. Those who bought those point-and-shoot cameras weren’t the same people buying the DSLs. It’s just a different market. That’s why I don’t think DSLs are in any danger right now.
The chart above seems to show that DSLRs are way down in sales in the last ten years for Nikon at least.
Pedantry alert:
DSLRs per se, i.e. Digital Single-Lens Reflex cameras, are dying due to technology. They haven’t had a major model refresh in a few years now and it looks like design of new models have grounds to a halt.
Mirrorless cameras are not. It’s CDs pushing out vinyl. Mirrorless sales were actually up a bit in 2025 (specialized compacts weirdly took off) as were lens sales. Which suggests that perhaps interchangeable lens cameras have bottomed out and the current hobbyist/pro market will continue to limp along at its current reduced scale.
But that doesn’t say much about brand. Nikon has always been more vulnerable as primarily a camera specialist, while companies like Canon and Sony are more safely diversified. We’ll see if they can cling to enough market-share to remain viable, but I wouldn’t be shocked by a consolidation into fewer players down the road.
Maybe I’m mistaken, but doesn’t AI, at least LLMs, depend on internet search? How else would they get all the free text and images they use for training? At any rate, Google also sells a lot of advertising on Google Maps and Street View. That may not be profitable yet, but I’m sure they have plans for it to be profitable.
and, sad to say, I just found out Panera also owns Einstein Bagels, so I guess they’re also going down
More precisely, both (along with other chains) are owned by JAB Holding Company, based in Luxembourg.
great … a holding in Luxembourg (or Delaware/Bahamas/Panama) truly spells:
All we care is the best quality of food we can provide
/s
More precisely, they and internet search both depend on spiders, programs that traverse web sites and download their contents, then archive them for further processing - such as indexing their contents for search, or training neural networks as LLMs.
here in St Louis, former home of Panera, there’s tons of criticism for dirty restaurants, tiny portions, giving them more negative reputation
they don’t have ads for Sea Monkeys either, but Archie Comics is still doing business.
when I say “available at supermarket checkouts,” the Archie publications I’m talking about are the digest-sized reprints. The 32-page floppy comics are not what I’m talking about. I see the digest-sized reprints at my local grocery stores, Wal-Marts, and other retailers frequently, I can’t speak for where anyone else lives or works.
Out of curiosity, where is that?
I live and shop in the Chicago area, and also regularly go to grocery stores and retailers near my parents’ house in Green Bay, WI, as well; I never see any comic books – digest or floppy, Archie or otherwise – at any of those stores anymore.
There are still magazine racks at the checkout counters at many of those stores, but they’re full of gossip magazines and little puzzle books. No comics at all anymore.
I can’t remember the last time i saw comic books at the checkout counter. I, too, see magazines. People, Men’s health, that sort of thing. But not coming books, in any form factor.
Those are found in a very different kind of store.
I think that’s usually spelled with a “u”, not an “o”.