Just four days ago Archie Comics launched a Kickstarter campaign to launch three new series with high-profile creators like Chip Zdarsky and Adam Hughes. The project came under scrutiny from some outspoken retailers who felt it circumvented the normal distribution system (costing them money), and kicked up a lot of chatter about ethics, Archie’s cashflow, the value of the pledge tiers, and more.

Well, that all comes to an end as the Kickstarter has been cancelled by the publisher.

An update was posted today explaining the change:

We launched the “New Riverdale” Kickstarter as a unique and innovative way to celebrate the company’s upcoming 75th anniversary and to bring attention to some new titles that we are extremely excited about—JUGHEAD by Chip Zdarsky, BETTY AND VERONICA by Adam Hughes and LIFE WITH KEVIN by Dan Parent and J. Bone. We decided to dive into crowdfunding as an energetic, interactive and different method to raise money to help expedite the launch of these titles. The chance to engage with you, our fans, directly was really appealing to us, and we’re extremely grateful and honored by the support and pledges we’ve received.

While the response to these new titles has been amazing, the reaction to an established brand like Archie crowdfunding has not been. Though we saw this as an innovative, progressive and “outside-the-box” way to fund the accelerated schedule we wanted to produce these books, it became another conversation, leading us further away from the purpose of this whole campaign: to get these amazing books in the hands of fans faster than we could on our own. While we fully expected our goal to be funded, it was no longer about the books and how amazing they will be. We don’t want that. This is why we’re shutting this Kickstarter down today.

We don’t regret trying something new. It’s what Archie’s been about for the last six years. We will continue to be a fearless, risk-taking and vibrant brand that will do its best to embrace new platforms, technology and ways to interact with you, the fans. As a company, we have always prided ourselves on pushing boundaries and challenging expectations and perceptions.

The wonderful New Riverdale titles we wanted to launch will still come out—albeit not as quickly as we would have hoped had we attained the funding via Kickstarter. We believe in these books and know they’ll find an audience in comic shops, fueled by great stories and amazing creators.

We’d like to thank the great team at Kickstarter for their guidance and feedback and the entire staff at Archie Comics for their endless hours of hard work and dedication to this very special initiative.

And, most importantly, to you, our fans that pledged money to this Kickstarter—we thank you. Not only do we thank you, but we still want to interact directly with you. Your dedication, love of Archie and his friends and endless positivity are examples to all.

We would love to keep in contact with all of the fans who wanted to contribute to our project. If you were one of our Kickstarter backers, please send an e-mail to publicity@archiecomics.com so that we may gather your e-mail addresses and send you all special thank-you gifts as tokens of our indescribable appreciation.

Your support means the world to us.

It’s a shame the project has been cancelled, as it will possibly discourage other publishers to try new ways to monetize and find new “out of the box” business methods. Archie wasn’t the first publisher to go this route, and thus making many of the “complainers” hypocrites, and hopefully they won’t be the last. Publishers and creators have been regularly using the site to raise funds to create comics that eventually come out in mass market. Archie was just the highest profile publisher to date to do so, and got shit on.

Thankfully we’ll still see these new series released, now in just a longer time frame. Again, the internet mob gets their way….