tales from the spinning rack AKA , the current Fate of Archie Comics

[skypinkblu]

This is from a local online newspaper located in Mamaroneck (the home of Archie Comics) I thought some people might find it interesting.

 

I don't think the running for mayor part is terribly relevant, but ti was part of the article.

 

Archie Comics' Silberkleit Sued by Employees

The co-CEO of the company is running for mayor of Rye.

 

Posted by Liz Giegerich (Editor) , October 09, 2013 at 09:13 AM

patch

 

Archie Comics employees filed a lawsuit against their co-CEO, Nancy Silberkleit, who is also a Rye mayoral candidate, for allegedly acting like "a dictator,” and a “bully,” and displaying “deranged behavior,” according to an article by Ned P. Rauch of The Journal News.

 

Silberkleit told Patch she cannot discuss the case, but that none of the allegations about her are true.

 

The lawsuit seeks to ban Silberkleit from the company offices in Mamaroneck, $25 million in damages and $7.5 million for an anti-bullying fund, Rauch reports. It was filed in State Supreme Court in White Plains on Sept. 30.

 

"What is being reported and described is so far from the truth. This is not me." Silberkleit told Patch Tuesday. "I understand fully what is motivating this slanderous campaign, but I have been patient and tolerant of this outrageous behavior."

 

Silberkleit said she could not elaborate on the group's motivations to initiate the lawsuit. "I have shown strength over the years I have handled this."

 

This is the third time in the last two years that Silberkleit has been involved in a lawsuit with Archie Comics employees. Silberkleit’s late husband Michael Silberkleit left her half the Archie Comics business when he died in 2008. Michael’s father Louis and a partner founded Archie Comics in 1942.

 

According to employee’s filings, Silberkleit has been a disruption in the office, slinging gender-based slurs, acting erratically and in ways that would destroy Archie Comics since she became co-CEO.

 

Co-CEO Jon Goldwater and Archie Comics Productions first sued her in 2011 to bar her from the offices, accusing her of being irrational, claiming she would ruin the business. The lawsuit quotes employees who say Silberkleit yelled “, , ” at men, once asked a male employee to “pull down your pants, I want to see your tan lines,” and harassed employees in other ways.

 

“It is something that is being handled by lawyers now. It is very sad this has gone on and sad it’s gone on this long. What I can say is I have been under tremendous adversity and challenges and I have not folded,” Silberkleit said of the past lawsuits on a Sept. 5 in an interview with Patch, before the most recent case was filed.

 

The 2011 case was settled out of court. As part of the settlement, Silberkleit’s one-time friend Sam Levitin was assigned to act as a liaison between her and the company.

 

In December, 2012 Levitin filed court papers to have Silberkleit removed as a Trustee of the company, saying that she is unstable, destructive and a poor business executive.

 

After he filed that, Silberkleit sought to have Levitan removed from Archie and then filed a sexual harassment claim against him and the company in April 2013.

 

Silberkleit says she knew the past lawsuits would surface when she ran for mayor, and that they were very unexpected and “over the top.” The accusations and court cases have proven that she can face adversity and “not fold” under pressure, she told Patch.

 

"This has nothing to do with my campaign to run for mayor," the candidate said.

 

Silberkleit's City Hall Aspirations

 

Silberkleit decided to run for mayor of Rye after Hurricane Sandy, which forced her to spend a lot of time in Starbucks while she waited for her power to come back on, she said.

 

“I met a lot of people, listened to people,” Silberkleit said. “I don’t get disgruntled and I don’t complain. I was listening and thinking ‘gosh, if I was mayor this is what I would do.’”

 

She named her party “15,720 People,” after the estimated population in Rye, “because it is all about the people,” she said.

 

The top issues the candidate feels are most important in Rye are achieving a sense of collaboration and transparency with the issues, complete communication and instilling confidence in the public “that the city council is working in harmony and not fighting amongst themselves.” She also said she would address flooding issues and wants to generate money for the city and said one idea to do that would be to install parking meters that accept credit cards in the downtown parking lots.

 

“One thing is that I know nothing about politics and I say that is a good thing,” Silberkleit said. “I am coming to the table without being politically minded, non-partisan. I am just like one of the people, I am just a person that lives here in Rye who comes with confidence, optimistic and a lot of ideas. I am a teacher, I am inventive, I show a lot of strength.”

 

Silberkleit grew up in Bergen County, N.J. and worked as a public school teacher before she became co-CEO of Archie. She is currently a resident of Greenhaven.

 

Silberkleit emphasized that her work as a teacher and at Archie will help her lead the city. She mentioned “enwrapping conversation in speech bubbles,” because she believes in the power of visual image and comic books as a means of communication in today’s world.

 

“I’m sure as mayor people will be seeing speech bubbles and a little bit of graphics to show what happened at city council meetings and what we want you to know,” Silberkleit said.

 

Last month, the candidate said she would be venturing out during her lunch hour to meet more people in town and talk about the issues and to hold events so potential voters could get to know her. She sees her candidacy as an opportunity to make a real difference in the community and the world.

 

“We are one little planet out there,” Silberkleit said. “So minute in the hemisphere. There is no reason to think small. We should think globally. Things like the initiative to ban plastic bags and leaf blowers has made impact on globe as a whole. Imagine if every community would do what Rye is doing. If we can all act as one it would be an amazing gift to our environment.”

[MedicAR]

I don't know if the writer of the article intended it or if it is simply the way things actually are, but she sounds like an absolute nut. It's hard to say if it is the writing or the actual statement but the line "Silberkleit says she knew the past lawsuits would surface when she ran for mayor, and that they were very unexpected and 'over the top.'” So which is it? Unexpected? Or she knew they would surface? If you combine that line with the lawsuits, both past and present, she appears to have some sort of behavioral issue.

[kidcolt]

Sounds like one crazy lady. Archie is still my favorite comics I hope they get rid of her and it don't ruin the company.

[DeliBebek]

The Archie universe is still a good property. She and Goldwater should just sell out to Disney now and save everyone the heartache.

[skypinkblu]

The people running Archie used to be the nicest people on earth. When my daughter was in Elementary school they used to donate huge bundles of digests so I could use them for prizes at the school fairs.

 

The last few years there have been quite a few articles about her. Before that, you never heard a peep.

 

 

[TheLiamSturgess]

Yeah, I remember when a previous article was posted on her. Nut then, nut now. Why is it so difficult to get her removed when there are so many people pushing for it?

[DeliBebek]

Yeah, I remember when a previous article was posted on her. Nut then, nut now. Why is it so difficult to get her removed when there are so many people pushing for it?

Archie Comics is still a family-owned business. She and Jon Goldwater are 50/50 partners, although Jon has a bigger personal association with the company, I would think. What does it take to have someone removed from that position?

[bb8]

The Archie universe is still a good property. She and Goldwater should just sell out to Disney now and save everyone the heartache.

 

The company's gotta be worth at least a thousand dollars.

[the blob]

funny thing is, with this bad press, archie still has gotten more good press and "books in the news" in the last couple of years then in heck knows how long. i assume sales are up too (at least vs. 5 or whatever years ago)

[otherworldcomics]

Its sad, but it does sound like she has some mental issues going on. And of course, crazy people never think they are crazy. Its always everyone else. The fact that Archie is still being published is amazing to me. I might have read one once in elementary school, but can't say I ever cared for them. I think its amazing that it is also still a family owned company. I'm suprised Disney or the like hadn't gobbled them up years ago.

[Sarg]

I saw a Betty & Veronica comic digest in the check out line in the grocery store last week. It was the first time I've noticed a comic book/digest in a grocery store in years, perhaps decades.

[TheLiamSturgess]

Strange, because they're all over the place Virtually every newsstand and checkout counter I see on a regular basis, at least where I live.

[skypinkblu]

This article was in the NY Times a few years ago, it gives the history of the company (which I thought was interesting). The suit to keep the daughter in law out was settled in 2012, she got to come back to the Co.

The Battle for a Comic-Book Empire That Archie Built

By ROBIN FINN

MAMARONECK, N.Y. — The entry vestibule at Archie Comic Publications here is a glass portal to childhood innocence, sunny summer days and endless nostalgia: The back end of a vintage white Cadillac, with its killer shark-fin fenders and leather interior intact, has been retrofitted to function as a sofa. Two salvaged audio hookups from an extinct drive-in movie theater complete the Memory Lane montage. Framed posters of Archie, the gullible Riverdale High School redhead, and his equally colorful entourage invigorate the walls.

 

But to gain access to the company’s administrative offices, you must pass through a reminder of its troubled present: double-locked doors and security cameras primarily installed to keep out a designated intruder, the company’s co-chief executive, Nancy Silberkleit, who since January has been under court order to stay away from Archie.

 

At this, the last of the privately run Mom-and-Pop comic book dynasties, Ms. Silberkleit, 59, the daughter-in-law of a company founder, Louis H. Silberkleit, is deadlocked in a court battle for control of the company with Jonathan Goldwater, 52, a son of another founder, John L. Goldwater. Like Betty and Veronica, the two are feuding over Archie’s future, but there is nothing comic — or friendly — about their rivalry. Each accuses the other of endangering the family legacy, Mr. Goldwater by wanting to expand Archie into a megabrand with help from outside investors and the Hollywood uber-agent Ari Emanuel, Ms. Silberkleit by vowing to keep the company’s traditions intact and preserve family ownership, ostensibly leading to stagnation.

 

The hostilities are withering. She says he defamed her and conspired with their employees against her in order to steal control of the company. He says she poisoned the workplace by threatening longtime employees with termination and spewing sexual insults. Meanwhile, they both claim to love Archie dearly, almost like a son — a son who is pushing 71 yet retains a head of lush red hair, abundant freckles and the top spot in a famous love triangle.

 

Competing lawsuits filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan and State Supreme Court in Westchester County lay out a litany of bitter allegations. He punctured her car tires, destroyed her Web site and claimed that she sexually harassed employees. She ordered him to fire several longtime employees because they were too old, too fat or too buxom, and let her dog, Willow, roam the offices and defecate in the art department.

 

In a suit where Archie Comic Publications was co-plaintiff, Mr. Goldwater sought and obtained a restraining order against Ms. Silberkleit in fall 2011 that limited her contact with Archie employees. When she failed to comply with its terms, the plaintiffs sought and obtained a preliminary injunction, and in January she was banned outright from her own memorabilia-filled office by Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich of State Supreme Court.

 

At stake is the future of a company that was established in 1939 and became renowned for emphasizing family values and enduring friendships. Archie’s fan club was a parent-endorsed bastion for children: even a 9-year-old Amy Carter, then the first daughter, sent in her quarter to join, listing the White House as her address. Over the decades Archie expanded into an international teenage symbol: in 2008, the company published 10 million Archie-related comics in 12 languages. Its app has been downloaded four million times, suggesting that Archie, besides inspiring nostalgia, has 21st-century cred.

 

Last week, the two sides began court-approved mediation, but it seems unlikely they will resolve their differences quickly or easily — if at all. If mediation fails, Mr. Goldwater will resume his quest to make Ms. Silberkleit’s absence permanent; she will presumably continue to pursue a $100 million defamation lawsuit against him and the company.

 

“I have to wonder how much of a succession plan was in place,” said Johanna Draper Carlson, a comic book critic and blogger. “Two C.E.O.’s can be a recipe for disaster. There are rumors circulating: everybody’s talking about it, especially since it’s happening at Archie, which is supposed to be so good and wholesome. Suddenly we’re hearing talk of liquidation coming out of the courtroom. It’s unfortunate because Archie really is a unique company.”

 

Indeed, its historical peers, DC and Marvel, are now corporately owned: Warner Brothers Entertainment is the parent of DC and Marvel was acquired by Disney for $4 billion in 2008.

 

Ms. Silberkleit’s lawyer, Howard Simmons, said the restraining order and injunction prohibited her from speaking publicly about Archie-related matters, but he emphasized that restoration of her reputation and preservation of the company was her only goal, not counting an apology from her co-chief.

 

“I have to be her mouthpiece,” he said in a phone interview. “For the past three years, her co-C.E.O., Jon Goldwater, has done everything in his power to undermine her work. Slowly but surely she has been pushed out of the company: the bottom line is they want her out. She loves Archie Comic Publications, and she’s worried about Archie being forced to be sold if this dispute is not resolved. I’m glad it’s gone to mediation. She is in a desperate condition right now.”

 

Mr. Goldwater had a different take. “I know she is trying to frame this as a power grab by Jon,” he said, as if distancing himself from an emotionally fraught situation by speaking of himself in the third person. “But for goodness sake, I didn’t go to this. This came to me.”

 

Sketch of Childhood Friend

 

In 1939, when John L. Goldwater, Louis H. Silberkleit and Maurice Coyne, Mr. Silberkleit’s accountant and partner in his pulp publishing business, Columbia Productions, decided to expand into comic books, their investment was $8,000 apiece. The company, called MLJ, was based in Lower Manhattan.

 

Mr. Goldwater was the visionary who dreamed up superheroes like The Shield and The Wizard and decided, after a few years, that their Pep Comics series could use a few characters who were not superpowered or monsters. In 1941, he sketched the face of a childhood friend: it was Archie, a girl-crazy, pratfall-prone, boy-next-door type.

 

The cartoonist Bob Montana inked the original likenesses of Archie and his pals and plopped them in an idyllic Midwestern community named Riverdale because Mr. Goldwater, a New Yorker, had fond memories of time spent in Hiawatha, Kan. The Archie love triangle was another novelty Mr. Goldwater borrowed from his own past. The brand took a few years to catch on, but by 1943 there was an Archie radio program and, by 1946, an Archie comic strip. That year, with Archie selling a million copies an issue, the partners changed the company’s name to Archie Comics in honor of their most popular creation, the gaptoothed teenager who made them all multimillionaires.

 

After Mr. Coyne retired in 1967, Archie was in its heyday with a television cartoon and a No. 1 pop hit, “Sugar, Sugar,” by the Archies (the record has sold 15 million copies since its release in 1969; alas, Mr. Goldwater notes, the copyright is Sony’s).

 

The elder Mr. Goldwater and Mr. Silberkleit led the company until 1983, when they were succeeded by their oldest sons, Richard and Michael, both from first marriages. The two heirs apparent had been friends since childhood, working their way up the ladder at Archie. One of their first decisions, besides moving the company, now known as Archie Comic Publications, to Westchester County, where both lived, was to regain control of its stock, made available to investors with an initial public offering in the 1970s. They bought it all back, each controlling 50 percent. Richard H. Goldwater was president, Michael I. Silberkleit was chairman, and they shared the title of publisher.

 

They presented a united front, and their 25-year grip on the company was well documented. When their chief artist, Dan DeCarlo, sued over the rights to Josie and the Pussycats royalties in 2001, he was fired. When Warner Music Group introduced an Australian girl band called the Veronicas in 2005 without obtaining licensing permission, Archie sued for $200 million. Michael Silberkleit was clear about his reasons for protecting the clean-cut Archie aura: “Without that image, we’re nothing.”

 

Then, in an odd twist, both men died of cancer within months of each other: Mr. Goldwater in October 2007 and Mr. Silberkleit in August 2008. Victor Gorelick, who joined Archie in 1958 and is still the editor in chief, took over on an emergency basis.

 

Jonathan Goldwater, a son of John Goldwater and his second wife, Gloria, acknowledged that he was not predestined to inherit an executive role, or stock, in Archie. “In a family business there are a lot of dynamics that aren’t on the surface,” he explained. He recalls working in the mailroom with “Uncle Louie” during summer vacations, but his involvement ended there.

 

Instead, he worked as a concert promoter and music manager, and by 2007 was the chief executive of AFA Music Group, a talent development and management agency based in New York City. Shortly before his half-brother’s death, they had a reunion lunch: Richard revealed that his illness was terminal and told Jonathan the day might come when he would have an opportunity to buy into the company. Mr. Goldwater was unaware of Michael Silberkleit’s death until he received a call from his mother several weeks afterward; he then phoned Mr. Gorelick to find out how the company was faring without the families in charge. “It turned out Victor was running the show at that point,” he said.

 

In 2009, after buying half of the stock held by his half-brother’s estate for $2.5 million, Mr. Goldwater left the music business for the family business. “Unintentionally, I wound up following in my dad’s footsteps,” he said. “But I have to admit I felt at first that Archie had become a little irrelevant and fallen off the radar of the national consciousness.”

 

Mr. Goldwater and Ms. Silberkleit, Michael’s widow, had never met until, in a move intended to preserve family control, they became co-chief executives. They both signed contracts that would run through 2013, with Ms. Silberkleit, who at the time was a third-grade art teacher in New Jersey, responsible for scholastic and theatrical ventures and Mr. Goldwater in control of everything else. They were supposed to consult on major decisions. But in an affidavit filed in support of the preliminary injunction, Mr. Goldwater testified that their working relationship had soon atrophied: “All too often her reaction to any discussion at all which she does not understand or does not like is to become threatening and abusive.”

 

New Directions, and Discord

 

The company reported $40 million in sales for 2009 but was, according to Mr. Goldwater, floundering financially and operationally. The overhead was too high, the morale was too low. By 2010, Ms. Silberkleit was, he said, exerting an increasingly “toxic” influence on the employees and refusing to hold meaningful discussions with him about crucial upgrades like digitization.

 

Nor was she receptive to two creative diversifications of the Archie story line: adding a gay character, Kevin Keller, and moving forward with plans for a spinoff series that projected Archie into fantasy marriages with both of his long-term love interests, Betty and Veronica, according to affidavits filed by Mr. Goldwater and Mr. Gorelick in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

 

The hugely enthusiastic response to Kevin Keller’s September 2010 debut in Veronica No. 202 (Veronica’s crush is unrequited because of his being gay) necessitated a second printing, unprecedented in Archie history, and the Keller mini-series for 2011 sold out. So did the “Just Married” edition in the Life With Archie magazine series that chronicled Archie’s two possible marital futures. Suddenly Archie was generating buzz and celebrity blurbs again, the subject of segments on “The Colbert Report” and “The Rachel Maddow Show” and the recipient of Glaad Media Awards nominations.

 

In 2010, Ms. Silberkleit decided to leave teaching and join Archie full time. According to Mr. Goldwater, the complaints from the staff escalated; he said his attempts to mediate were futile and often ended up with them yelling at one another behind closed doors.

 

Mr. Gorelick, 70, said the staff “walked on eggshells” when Ms. Silberkleit was around, fearful of being insulted or castigated. She testified in January that she felt ostracized and disrespected by Mr. Goldwater and the staff; she denied the allegations of directing sexual slurs at employees, though Mr. Gorelick and Mr. Goldwater both described an episode in 2011 where she walked into a meeting, pointed in turn at each of the male editors present and said, “, , .”

 

What Mr. Goldwater refers to as “the boiling point” was reached in May 2011 when a female employee threatened to file a harassment complaint against Ms. Silberkleit with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Mr. Goldwater hired a lawyer and commissioned a human resources consultant to investigate the accusations of workplace abuses; Ms. Silberkleit was the only member of the company who declined to be interviewed. The report, released in June 2011, concluded her absence or removal was advisable, and in July, Mr. Goldwater began legal action against her. According to Mr. Goldwater, all two dozen employees volunteered to supply affidavits bemoaning Ms. Silberkleit’s conduct; Ms. Silberkleit termed that proof of a Machiavellian palace coup engineered by Mr. Goldwater.

 

After a series of court rulings against Ms. Silberkleit that included a $500 fine — for violating the temporary restraining order by twice showing up at the office in mid-December with a former football player in tow — and responsibility for $59,000 in legal expenses accrued by the company, last month the hostile parties agreed to take their problems to mediation. Ms. Silberkleit’s 50 percent share of the company is not in jeopardy, but her job may be.

 

“The judge was very much against Nancy’s case,” Mr. Simmons, Ms. Silberkleit’s lawyer, said. “Mr. Goldwater defamed her, and Judge Kornreich has gone along with it. But the judge didn’t go to the length of removing Nancy as C.E.O., although that’s basically what Goldwater and his lawyer have been asking for.”

 

Although Ms. Silberkleit testified that she brought the former football player, Howard Jordan, to the office to help her with an antibullying-themed comic book, the employees testified that he intimidated the accounting and art departments merely by his unsanctioned presence. It was the company’s position that Ms. Silberkleit was using the unsuspecting Mr. Jordan as “muscle.”

 

In her testimony, Ms. Silberkleit denied ever mistreating her fellow Archie employees: “I’m the one being harassed and abused there.”

 

Besides becoming what Mr. Simmons called “a persona non grata” in the industry, where she no longer speaks at conventions, schools and libraries, Ms. Silberkleit is enjoined from having contact with any of the company’s employees except Mr. Goldwater. Their exchanges are mostly conducted by e-mail and are, he said, “strictly formal.”

 

Her $100 million defamation suit filed in Westchester in January by Mr. Simmons accuses Mr. Goldwater and the company of ruining her credibility and preventing her from doing the job she was hired for. She claims Mr. Goldwater not only pulled the plug on her comic book fair programs, but also destroyed her Web site and excised her files.

 

Each side dismisses the complaints filed by the other as “frivolous.”

 

Meanwhile, Mr. Goldwater, a married father of two, is running Archie solo. An “Occupy Riverdale” comic and an animated “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” series are imminent.

 

“In spite of all this litigation, Archie, for fiscal 2011, is going to turn a profit,” Mr. Goldwater said last month in an interview at his office. “There is no financial jeopardy. We’re leaders in everything digital. I think we’re feeling unchained creatively. Nancy was very resistant to change, but I am fearless. That’s how confident I am in this brand.”

 

His confidence is outwardly expressed by the vanity license plate on his black Mercedes sedan: ARCHIE1.

 

As the court hearings leading to Ms. Silberkleit’s banishment were winding down this winter, Mr. Gorelick was cross-examined by Mr. Simmons. Just before releasing him from the witness stand, Justice Kornreich posed a question of her own. “O.K., another question,” she asked. “Why did Archie marry Veronica?”

 

Mr. Gorelick’s response was swift and succinct: “It made better news than this.”