4 out of 5

After something of a bumpy start, Aguirre-Sacasa, artist Robert Hack, and letterer Jack Morelli take a smart moment to pause, recollect themselves, and tell a one-off tale before moving in to what will probably be something major with next arc ‘Witch War.’  And if the title isn’t any indication, the focus of this Pause is the little ‘uns – the animal associates common to witches and witchery, and especially, of course, the ones that have played named roles in Sabrina thus far: Salem, smarmy secret star of the show, but also – surprisingly and pleasingly – Nag and Nagaina, Ambrose’s familiars.

RAC has been littering the Archie horror series with references, so to do so here isn’t a new trick, but he almost immediately gets, like, two billion and two points for referencing Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.  There’s no hipster cred there – I don’t know what the original source is but I know it from the cartoon and I’m sure everyone knows it from the cartoon too – it’s just that goddamn Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is awesome, and it’s a cheap way to earn my appreciation (ladies).  I mean, it’s not horror, right?  That’s also a pretty chuckly reason to put it in here.  Tempering that a bit is what feels like an overly extended reference to the recent film The Witch – Aguirre-Sacasa cops to this, I just mean to point out that it goes beyond a nod to “these scenes are from that movie” – which I was lukewarm on in film-form, and it feels a bit crammed into the story, but overall, sure, it works.  But Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, man.  Where’s that movie trilogy CGI remake / comic book series / Netflix show?  Farts.

Anyhow, the ansimals gets together to chatta-chit, and tell each other their histories, Nag and Nag going first – ’cause again, Salem is our secret star – and then the cat, each starting their tales from when they were humans and Sacasa and Hack having a fun time putting a lot of their now-personalities into their past selves as well.  And although there’s a requisite amount of nudity and blood and betrayal, the story definitely has a ‘lighter’ feel to it, which makes Hack’s pulpy artwork a bit more suiting; if you’ll recall, I found some of his figurework a little sloppy before.

In the backmatter, RAC speaks to the very organic evolution of the title, and I do feel that.  ‘Familiars’ is a positive result of that type of approach, the kind of tale you can tell was told because it was suddenly of interest to the creator, and not just done to fill some pages.