Michael I. Silberkeit, the chairman of Archie Comic Publications, died on August 5th in New York City at the age of 76 after a short battle with cancer.  The kindly and avuncular Silberkeit worked at Archie for 60 years, where for much of the time he shared leadership of the company with the late Richard Goldwater (see “Archie’s Richard Goldwater Dies”), whose father John Goldwater and his partner Louis Silberkeit, Michael’s father, founded the company.

After a public stock offering in 1970, Michael Silberkeit and Richard Goldwater took the company private again a decade later.  The two second generation comic book moguls managed to maintain Archie Comics’ presence in the market over the decades without ever deviating from the basic wholesome values that were inspired by the Andy Hardy movies and that have remained the basis for the Archie family of comic book titles through the decades.  While the fashions sported by Betty and Veronica have changed, the wholesome innocence of the Archie Comics has remained as has their popularity—Archie Comics currently publishes over 10 million comics per year in 10 different languages.  

In addition to keeping the original Archie Comics characters fresh, Silberkeit and Goldwater managed to license some newer properties such as The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Sonic the Hedgehog that fit in seamlessly in the Archie universe.  Silberkeit served as an executive consultant to the Sabrina the Teenage Witch TV program and also served several terms as the chairman of the Comics Association of America.