4 out of 5

Although the story beating ‘neath ‘Afterlife With Archie’ is nothing new – Sarcasa’s pacing has some hiccups and the incredible moodiness of Francesco Francavilla art and amazing colors stumble points as well – but… but… this is one of those few examples where a genre mash-up absolutely elevates the story into something more.  A large part of this is due to the Archie legacy: what keeps this just from being boppy forever-teens thrown into a horror flick is how recognizable the Archie world is.  Doing this fresh, without that background, might make for a fun zombie comic, but there’d be no weight to the characters.  But the flipside of that is that one must appreciate the legacy to leverage that, and that’s where our creators’ hands in the work are absolutely relevant.

So Hot Dog gets run over by Reggie after a bad night with Midge.  Jughead, discovering the mutt (I think how he found him wasn’t quite detailed, but moving on…), goes to Sabrina’s in desperation.  HD dies, and Sabrina and fam are unable to help.  Against the advisement of her aunties, Sabrina helps Juggie resurrect his pal… which unfortunately has that zombie side effect.  Hot Dog bites Juggie, Jughead bites Ethel, and eventually the gang is hiding out in Lodge Manor, waiting for shit to calm down, because we never learn when it comes to zombies and soon the whole town is overrun.  And already you can see how this all fits when tossing zombos into Archie land, but would be an eye-roll were it any other batch of typical teens.  Aguirre-Sacasa manages a pretty devastating balancing act without tipping his hand into cheeky parody, which would make the series more amusing than entertaining: by leaning on the horror elements, he can write the characters as innocently as ever, broaching what comes off as melodrama in most horror as just part of how Archie World deals with events.  He even manages to slip in a ‘damn’ and ‘hell’ rather naturally, without it seeming like its just to purposefully shake things up.  At the same time, familiarity with Weatherbee and Betty and Veronica’s rivalry makes the scenes that play off of these characters slightly – purposefully – humorous.  That balancing act was, for sure, the most important piece of this puzzle to make ‘Afterlife’ something potentially lasting.  So we can forgive Roberto’s need to do some unnecessary time-shifts in his narrative (‘Earlier’s and ‘Previously’s that just interrupt the flow instead of creating tension) and overstuff things with subplots like the Blossom twins and Nancy’s lesbian worries that could’ve been more effectively focused on in later arcs, especially when it’s all just a run-around in these first few issues to get everyone together for the titular escape.  Hopefully, with those extra details tossed in there, next arc’s plotting can be a bit more focused.

On the art tip, no one’s arguing that Francavilla can do horror.  All of the Archiekins are recognizable, then given the beautiful noir wash of heavy shadows.  And as one letter-writer noted about a panel featuring Archie’s dog, Vegas, there are single moments of such stunning humanity captured by Francesco that it truly can be startling in the best way possible.  The star, though, is absolutely the colors.  Black framed panels with an almost exclusive palette of oranges and dusky blues give the book a very distinctive and very off look that’s a perfect tone-setter.  The only nit here is in the shock reveals: oddly, while Franca’s pacing is pretty impeccable at most moments, setups that require some kind of ‘suddenly’ seem to struggle for the shock.  You can feel him experimenting with setups to try to find the best way to make it happen; it just never quite gets there.  The dude’s obviously made a name for himself in the biz lately, so perhaps this is just personal taste.  Perhaps time will tell.

Lastly, some further design / production elements are worthy of note: ‘Afterlife’s cover stock has this kind of matte finish to it.  I don’t know what the practical reason was for this, or if there was one, but handling the book, just that it feels different makes it notable.  And, yeah, it sorta brings to mind the dingy feeling of a mass-market horror paperback that you find in a used shop.  So perhaps that was purposeful.  The AwA crew also provides some classic backup horror tales culled from ‘Chilling Adventures in Sorcery.’  Backups aren’t new; reprints aren’t new.  But it’s not expected from the Archie Universe, and adds to the feeling that this might just be a special book.  Finally: Jack Morelli.  I’m not going to claim to always be able to tell differences in lettering (it’s often an “invisible” art – you tend to notice it when it’s bad, not good), but Morelli brings a ton to the atmosphere of this book.  Yes, for the variation in styles, but also because he nailed the right font-type and spacing to keep the vibe alive.  This has definitely dampened other horror books I’ve read, where art and writing scream genre, but the word bubbles are just standard word bubbles.

So: another standard zombie tale.  Sure.  No surprises.  Unless you’re an Archie fan.  Then there are surprises a’plenty, and wonderfully, the first arc doesn’t hint at the tale burning out anytime soon.