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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
The New York Times/ ­- Politics, Sáb, 14 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Supreme Court)
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.
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