Somebody wrote:Marvel have no rights, and have never had rights, to Archie. So they can't, from our POV, unilaterally declare it to be in the Marvel Universe - we would also need a declaration from ARCHIE that it was so.
This is absurd. Marvel has every right to say "Hey, remember that Punisher/Archie crossover? Yeah, that story is set on 616." They don't have the right to unilaterally reprint it, but clearly they can say that as far as Marvel is concerned, that story is 616. This doesn't, as zuckyd pointed out, mean that all of Archie is 616. It's only referring to that one story.
We have plenty of other precedent for Marvel officially declaring that stories they can't legally reprint are 616. For example, they've said that DC vs. Marvel and JLA/Avengers are 616. They've also said that the appearances of Mantis in issues of Justice League of America and Scorpio Rose are the 616 Mantis who was dimension-hopping at the time. The Captain Britain Corps handbook entry references an issue of Top Ten, and the Elf with a Gun entry references an issue of DC's Countdown to Mystery.
And of course, Marvel has officially classified other intercompany crossovers as 7642. If they can't say that Punisher/Archie is 616, then they can't say that Supes/Spidey is 7642. But clearly they
can say that Supes/Spidey is 7642, so they can also say that Punisher/Archie is 616.
Regarding Savage Dragon, I wasn't saying that the story published by Image is 616. I was saying the story in
Spider-Man Team-Up is 616. Savage Dragon appears in that issue of SMTU, and since it's not an interdimensional crossover story, that's the Savage Dragon from 616, not Image. There's no need to include a Howard-clone for Marvel, since that story only takes place in the Destroyer Duck issue, which is in Image's continuity, not 616.