Comics have embraced horror since the earliest days of the medium, from EC Comics and Will Eisner on through to the present day. Since the Comics Code restrictions were relaxed a few decades ago, and with artists and writers like Guillermo Del Toro expressing an abiding love, it’s only natural that today we’ve got a couple of scary comic book recommendations.
I highly encourage you to read Archie vs. Predator. I am not going to pretend it’s as thoughtful as you make Afterlife with Archie sound, but it is amazing in its own way.
I gotta back up the Afterlife with Archie choice, that is seriously the good shit. I confess I am an Archie fan from childhood, so it scratches two itches with me, but I’d still recommend it to a non-fan.
It was peacedog and Dr Hillbilly who recommended Afterlife with Archie and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina to me, and I’ll be honest: I thought they were both outta their minds.
And then I thought “OK, this is going to be a smirking parody. Whatever.”
And it’s none of that! It’s SO GOOD. I’m only kind of Archie-lored up, but I can imagine for folks who grew up on Riverdale, getting the backstories about Mrs. Lodge, and Vegas the dog, and Mr. Lodge’s manservant, etc…that’s all gold.
And also, whiskey tango foxtrot on the Blossoms. That was…unexpected.
I am still trying to wrap my head around this being a thing. I would read the Archie Double Digests (or whatever they were called) as a kid when I could persuade my parents or grandparents to buy them for me in the grocery store checkout line. I may need to check them out (FYI Comixology has them on sale right now for $0.99 per issue) just so my brain can process the whole concept of Archie + Zombies = Awesome(???)
Also, the regular Archie 2015 series #1-5 or so are free to read if you have Amazon Prime under the Prime Reading feature (not to be confused with Kindle Unlimited, which is $10/month subscription).
Nothing scary in the funnybooks comes close to Junji Ito’s work to me. Uzumaki, his best known work, is a great place to start, and a pretty superb Lovecraftian cosmic horror story to boot.
Based on Tom’s recommendations, I got both of these (Archie and Caliban) on Comixology, and I’m about halfway through both.
I’m enjoying Caliban immensely.
Archie is good… but at the end of issue #4 it’s fairly standard zombie fare if you don’t have the Archie mythos to fall back on. I would have kept reading anyway, but I’m pleased to see that there’s a left-turn in the near future.
So Netflix has already bought two seasons of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which is kind of amazing. Showrunner is Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who is the lead writer on the comic (and also showrunner on Riverdale).
Show will be in the same universe as Riverdale, but they’re apparently going all out on making Sabrina an adaptation of the comic…which is AWESOME. It is everything any fan of Rosemary’s Baby or The Exorcist could want.
