Archie Comic Publications
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, writer
Francesco Francavilla, artist
I've said before I'm not really a zombie fan. I don't hate the genre, but don't especially seek it out or care much one way or the other most of the time.
I tried The Walking Dead because I grew tired of hearing how good it was and not knowing first hand. So I tried it, and I liked it, but I still maintain that the book is not so much about the zombies as it is the people still living and fighting to survive. The zombies in the book are more like props or part of the environment.
But I don't really care that much about zombies. I skipped the whole Marvel Zombies craze, now on its zillionth miniseries permutation. I'm aware of the franchise, it's popularity, and some of the events that have happened in the books, but I've never actually read one of them. Just don't care to so far.
I did read and enjoy DC's Blackest Night, but that wasn't really zombies although I'll grant that the re-animated corpses of heroes and villains in that book were very similar.
But zombies in Riverdale? That is a concept almost too bizarre to pass up. It's like putting the Archie gang together in a story with the Punisher! Oh wait. They did that, and I bought that one too for the sheer oddity of the thing.
Had this been a miniseries, I likely would have waited for the eventual trade collection, but from the get-go, this series was announced as an ongoing title. So I opted to give the single issues a try. I even opted to buy No. 1 with the gorgeous variant cover by Andrew Pepoy despite the fact I tend to prefer the cover artist be the same one as the interior artist when there's a choice to be made. That's not a dis of Francesco Francavilla's art; his work is perfectly moody for this type of subject matter. But Pepoy's Betty Cooper being terrorized by zombified versions of her friends was just too cute to pass up.
I'm not spoiling anything not already revealed in preview materials for the series by saying that the zombification of Riverdale begins with Hot Dog, Jughead Jones' lovable sheepdog. But the blame for how Hot Dog turns into the first contagion gets spread around a little bit. First Hot Dog is killed in a hit-and-run accident; I won't name the culprit here, but he is named in this first issue. But then two others conspire to bring the beloved canine back. Don't worry, both of them are duly punished for their efforts.
While only one of the five core Archie-gang members is turned into a zombie in this first issue, several other familiar peripheral characters are attacked in these pages. So far, their fates -- newly formed zombies now themselves or simply zombie chow -- are not known, but the body count still seems kind of high for an ongoing series. Who's going to be left after a few more issues at this pace. But then, the threat is still new and most are unaware even of the threat at this point. Maybe the body count will slow as people realize the danger they are in and start fighting back against the zombies now in Riverdale.
I'm loving the book after this first issue and look forward to more. So what am I so afraid of, you might ask. The day before I read this first issue of Afterlife With Archie, I received a notice from my comic supplier that my pre-order for issue No. 4 has been canceled by the publisher. I'm hoping that simply means a delay and the book will be resolicited, but when that is the case, the cancellation notice usually includes that information. Is this book headed for its own untimely demise???
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