The Four Color Media Monitor

It's not enough for Archie to desperately put it's eponymous lead into horror tales. Now, they're doing the same with Sabrina:

The zombie-laden Afterlife with Archie series has been such a boon for the publisher that it's continuing to embrace the horror for Sabrina, an ongoing series launching in October that's written by Afterlife writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and stars Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

What a laugh. Like their other mainstays, it barely registers in sales, and it's long become a cliche for them not to give sales figures to prove their point.

"Sabrina takes characters we know and love and pushes them in a new, ghastly direction," says series artist Robert Hack (Doctor Who). "The horror in Sabrina carries so much weight because we've cared for these characters for, quite literally, generations. And Roberto's scripts alternate between tugging at heartstrings and ripping them out."

I'm sure there's quite a bit of the latter in there.

The new series is much darker than Afterlife, and the "scary stuff" is more spiritual and psychological, Aguirre-Sacasa promises. "It's a story about witches and witchcraft, demonology and occultism, so yes, the 'monsters' are going to be more diabolical.''

The horror renaissance that Afterlife kicked off led directly to Sabrina and gave the creative team permission to try new things and veer in darker directions with Archie's iconic players, says the writer.

However, for him it's not about pushing the envelope further as much as it is "telling a compelling, surprising, emotional story that's perhaps scarier and more grownup than what we've seen before with these characters. It's never been about the easy shock, it's about going deeper and peeling back layers. Sabrina will hopefully continue that."

If it's much darker than Afterlife, I don't buy his defense that it's more spiritual and psychological. I certainly don't expect it to have meaning.

Labels: Archie, msm propaganda, violence