Archie And Victims: Afterlife With Archie #1 Review

“Afterlife With Archie is my pick of the week,” said the owner of my local comic store, where they know me by name and generally ask me to stay right the hell away from the kids’ comics.

“…you gotta be shitting me, dude.”

“I am not kidding. It is not like any Archie comic you have ever seen…”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Goddamned Archie comic,” I muttered.

“…and no matter what you think, it is much darker than you think it is,” he said.

“It would almost have to be.”

“Go take a look,” he said, “Dig to the back of the stack and find one of the variant covers.”

I pawed past copies of your expected Archie-style cartoony fake horror covers and saw… something unexpected. “Jesus. How’d they convince Francesco Francavilla to do a cover for this book?”

“By letting him do the interiors, too.”

“…come again?”

“Check it out. Take a look at page three.”

I opened the book. “Um… is that a Francavilla splash page of Jughead handing Sabrina The Teenage Witch a dead fucking dog?” He nodded. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll try anything once.”

So I did try it. And allow me – a 42-year-old cynical and angry drunk who has just read an Archie comic book – to tell you this: Afterlife With Archie is pretty fucking good.