It’s all over the news that Archie Comics is killing off Archie (sounds like a desperate bid to draw attention to a line that has been boring and moribund for decades). But why aren’t these same media outlets talking about the fate of another major character, Sabrina the Teenage Witch?
It’s a bit dark. She casts a spell that starts the zombie apocalypse, and then Dr Lovecraft marries her off to…Cthulhu.
Did I say a bit dark? I meant very, very dark. Riverdale must be built over a hellmouth.
oh my.
But won’t Mary Worth postpone her getting eaten by suggesting they sit down with a nice cup of tea and talk about it first? (And then Mary will look surprised and shocked in the last panel.)
And this fall the same writer (Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa) is writing a Sabrina book that he’s claiming will be a bit darker than “Afterlife With Archie” (the zombie book where this scene comes from) and cites “Rosemary’s Baby,The Exorcist,The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane and Suspiria” as influences on the direction he’s taking with it.
So, yeah – not quite the Archie comics I grew up with.
You should give Archie a bit of a break. The series has a fairly progressive outlook outside of the core conceit (the perpetual love triangle is, of course, filled with all sorts of sexist tropes). And the branch-off line wherein Archie is getting killed off has gotten high marks for decent storytelling, precisely because it broke the mold and allowed the Riverdalians to actually grow up and deal with life.
And hey, Archie dying by protecting Riverdale’s version of Harvey Milk from assassination by a gun nut is actually pretty ballsy. Compare it to “The Puniasher Kills Riverdale”.
That’s why they’ll be last. Those comics are interminable and boring — they’ll stretch the story line out over months.
I am looking forward to seeing Family Circle eaten alive, though, with a little trail of dashed lines showing where they scampered in terror before getting scooped up.
PZ, here is another nice, family-friendly narrative:
Under the Skin http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1441395/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1
Considering the climate, it makes perfect sense to find an alien parasite inhabiting a human body and tricking/devouring human prey in the gray Scottish environment.
It looks practically like that planetoid in Zeta Reticuli!
…and don’t get me started on Toxoplasma Gondii. Brain-controlling bug from Hell.
The Katzenjammer Kids have been infected by those unmentionable entities hinted at in Charles Stross “Laundry” novels. That is why you get so annoyed by just reading the comic strip. A side effect of the mind parasites trying to infect you.
Note that, as mentioned above, this is a spinoff title, showing the kids as adults; Archie will continue to appear in his main title.
I think it’s great just to watch all the doom and gloom of the right wing over this gayification of the archetypal white middle-class heteto-life comic. “WAAAH TEH GHEY DID I GET ANY ON ME? WAAAH! JEEBUS HELP SAVE FROM TEH GHEY! WAIT O Lord, what exactly art thou up to with that dusky manservant? AAAAAAAAAAAGGHGGJHHSPLUTTERAAAAAAGJ!!!;??+;;!!!!!;?(11?!!!’
Ah, I see their cunning plan. The Archie Comics people will make a deal with Joss Whedon so Buffy Summers can move into Riverdale.
PZ@#5– Start here: http://www.whatisdeepfried.com/2014/02/05/weapon-brown-217/ , and over the next 2 or 3 pages, you’ll get your Family Circus wish!
I can’t complain about Toxoplasma gondii; I’m on TNF-α inhibitors (or I have been, and expect to be again) so I get to beg off cleaning the litterbox.
PZ, you’re so behind the times. How Archie Became the Most Enlightened Publisher in Comics.
I do hope you’ll read The Comics Curmudgeon if you aren’t already. (Watch for the Comment of the Week when the blogauthor Josh gets back from his hiatus. You’ll occasionally see a name or two you’ll recognise from here. No, not me—someone funny.)
“Bride of Cthulhu!” Bah! Derlethian heresy!
What controversy? Sabrina & Cthulhu are both above the age of consent, its one female & one male – its traditional marriage.
As for Archie, nobody dies in comics.
Cthulhu succumbs to the heteronormative construct of marriage? Bah. What next, he gets a 401K and a Prius?
A Riverdale/Buffy crossover would be AWESOME.
I have never been more jealous of Sabrina in my entire life.
Cthulhu looks like a cephalroptera.
OK, so Archie has really changed since I last read an issue, something like 40 years ago.
Do we have any real evidence that Cthulhu can be described as a “he”? I think Lovecraft used male pronouns, but his narrators are generally pretty unreliable so I’m not ready to take that as “proof”…
dianne @22, that’s a good question, in the Call of Cthulhu Lovecraft was inconsistent on pronouns, sometimes using “he” and sometimes “it”. I suspect his use of the male pronoun was simply “male as norm” rather than an actual statement of gender.
On the other hand, in some of his letters Lovecraft referred to Cthulhu as having a wife and family, but (unlike Derleth) I’ve always assumed HPL was joking about that–certainly there is no hint in the published stories of Cthulhu and Co. fitting human norms.
The impressive thing about the whole Life With Archie series is that it was such a break from the mold that defined Archie in general (mediocrity and harmlessness mixed in with whatever the popular culture fixation was at that particular moment… also, reselling those stories for decades in condensed versions).
The stories aren’t exactly dark, but they certainly are adult. They’re full of pain and happiness and hardship, which is what makes them somewhat fun to read. While this issue is, to a great deal, a stunt that’s netting them PR, it very much fits in with the series as a whole. It’s probably one of the best series reads out there right now.
I get the hot Sabrina? I’ll take it!
@10/18: Yeah, I’d probably pick up “Archie Meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer” if I saw it on shelves
*pause*
I’d watch that.
–
@10,18,26,27
Archie Comics has already released issues titled “Betty the Vampire Slayer”
A lot of things have changed since then. Forty years ago, disco was in, second wave feminism was popular, and Dawkins actually did science.
teh Cuttlefish @#11: *clenched-tentacle salute* for the Weapon Brown link. Mary Worth and Rex Morgan are also heavily weaponized in that epic tale (now an omnibus graphic novel available at your local comixop and well worth the $).
I wonder where they’ll have the honeymoon?
@mickll #31:
In an acute angle.