Archie continues their journey into horror by giving their resident witch a new adult-oriented monthly.
It's a great week to be a fan of Archie and horror.
The first story arc of the company's mega-successful Afterlife with Archie will be released in a trade tomorrow, and plans have just been announced for a new monthly title that will put Sabrina the Teenage Witch back in the spotlight. Fittingly beginning in October, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is the second full-on horror comic that Archie will be unleashing. Like Afterlife, the book will be penned by Archie Chief Creative Officer Roberto-Aguirre Sacasa. The gothic-influenced art will be provided by Robert Hack.
Yesterday, USA Today debuted images from the comic in an article that described the book thusly:
"Sabrina takes characters we know and love and pushes them in a new, ghastly direction," says series artist Robert Hack (Doctor Who). "The horror in Sabrina carries so much weight because we've cared for these characters for, quite literally, generations. And Roberto's scripts alternate between tugging at heartstrings and ripping them out."
Oh hell yes.
Those hoping for the goofy light-hearted antics of the popular Sabrina the Teenage Witch sitcom of the 1990s will probably be turned off by the storylines, which promise to feature Sabrina juggling the problems of being a teenager with the pressures of being a witch -- including dealing with her aunts Hilda and Zelda and a variety of foes seeking to exploit her powers and/or destroy her.
This isn't the first foray into horror for Sabrina. In the 1970s she was the hostess of Chilling Adventures in Sorcery, a weird and wonderful anthology printed by Archie for two issues that was quickly folded into the company's Red Circle imprint. (Segments from Chilling Adventures in Sorcery have been reprinted as backup stories in Afterlife with Archie. There's no word yet if such a practice will be a feature of the new Sabrina).
So with word of this comic, it seems more certain than ever that the Archie horror train will be rolling on for the foreseeable future. Here's hoping we get a Vampironica title and a Dilton's Strange Science revival in which Riverdale's resident nerd becomes a Dr. Frankenstein-esque madman...
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