Thursday, December 19, 2013

Hey, Spooky!

TGIT!


I was gonna' write a post either about some top 5 list or another random mash-up of so and so vs. so and so, but that's boring right?

Instead I figured I's borrow a page out of Dan's book and pimp an indie comic you should be be reading and buying instead.


I haven't really sat down and read an Archie comic in years. And I do mean years. The Last time I did, I was in the single digit age bracket, and that's been a good while ago.
Quick interesting fact, my first comic I ever read was in fact an Archie digest comic book. It's really what got me into comics and further developed my appetite to read.

So, I'm at my LCS, and I'm looking at the indie rack, and I see a comic with a beautiful cover called Afterlife With Archie. I pick it up and flip through it. It's got goreous art by Francesco Francavilla, who you should be familir with with his covers for Marvel's Black Panther and various other titles there, and his work for Dark Horse comics, namely the Black Beetle.


It's basically a zombie book involving all your favorite Riverdale gang charaters but with a more mature, adult tone. Note adult as in nudity or swearing, but there is blood and gore, just not an overly excessive amount of it. It starts out with one of the Riverdale gang running over and killing Jughead's dog Hot Dog, and goes from there when he turns to Riverdale's resident witch, Sabrina, the teenage witch.




 Dispite warnings from her aunts, she brings Hot Dog back to life, but with very grave and severe consequnces for both herself and Riverdale. If you haven't guessed by now, Hot Dog bites Jughead, and then it just all quickly goes to shit from there.


 Sounds simplistic enough, and it kind of is. But it's written very well, again, I can't stress enough how beautiful the art is. It's so cool and refreshing to see the Archie gang rendered in such a dark and forboding tone. They talk and act like real teens, not that fake, cartoony shit we're all used to.

It's written by writter Roberto Aguirre-Sasca. He's probably known for writting such titles as the Secret Invasion tie-ins, Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four and comic adaptions of Stephen King's novel, The Stand. He's kicking ass on the writing side, providing the reader with some nice twists and turns on the Riverdale gang, while also inteligently writing them as horror comic.

I'm telling you guys it's really worth picking up and flipping through. I would't stear you wrong on this.
Plus they have their own website devoted to the comic, where you can order merchandise like t-shirts and the like. Here's the link in case you guys are interested:
http://afterlifewitharchie.com/
And being that this is the iPhone age, you can even download a free Afterlife With Archie app.
How cool is that?

There's already two issues out, with the third one coming out the first week of January, so if you're just jumping aboard then you haven't missed too much.

Again, I highly recommend it, if nothing else, for the fucking beautifully gorgeous art.
That's me for this weekend folks.

I'll leave with you a very appropriate song considering today's topic. It's a one-hit wonder from a band called the Squirrel Nut Zippers. You might've heard of it. It's called "Hell"

Hope you got your holiday shopping taken care of 'cause next week's Christmas.
Have a good one:)


7 comments:

IADW said...

Glad you tried it out and even more so that you dug it as much as I did mr! FF is a huge horror fan, and that shows here... he reckons he could even be doing a creator owned Horror book next year, so we will see. Also look for his work on Swamp Thing if you're after some other freakishly cool stuff.

I agree with you there is an amazing amount of support in marketing from this title, and that has to be a sign Archie knows they are onto a winner. It will be interesting if to see if this encourages them to experiment with their line a bit more in future.

I love how the plot moves at a slow but creepy pace too. It's not heavy on dialogue but horrors aren't. The dude also wrote the movie revamp of Carrie too. I haven't checked that out yet but based on this I just might.

This book really does deserve all the attention it can get! Thanks for the plug!

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

No problem Dan. From the back interview of issue one, even the creative team is surprised at just how much resources and marketing The whole Archie Comics staff is throwing at this book. And why wouldn't it? It's fucking beautiful!

I think it has just the right amount of dialogue and pacing myself. It gets to the point w/o dragging ass like so many other titles from the big two have a habit of doing.
Gotta' pimp what we love right Mate?;)

karl said...

Aqirre-Sacasa used to write the Marvel Knights version of the FF and damn good he was too, even if he did push his gay agenda in his script [he appears with his boyfriend in one issue, in one of those Stan Lee type cameos].
Not really a fan of Archie or books of that ilk but anything involving zombies is always well worth a flick through #
Did all my xmas shopping - including a new computer I had to get after my old one packed up, so that was a sudden expense I could do without - on the bright side Ive lots of holiday leave due and wont be back at work till the 21st of January [as Ive never had any time off its well deserved, and who wants to be working where I do at Xmas anyhoo?].#Whod want to live in Riverdale anyway? Must be like living permanently in the Fifties.

Joseph said...

With all the zombie craze i today as it was for vapmires prior its not a suprise to see a book like this. Im not the biggest archie fan but this looks freakin cool.in that page with hot dog it so reminds me of the dog in night of the creeps.thrill me!

Cool blog just found it!
Rpckets and robots background ...rad!

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

@Karl: Not that Riverdale no thank you. Lots of leave time? Damn are you lucky. I know lots of people that'd love to trade places with you on the vacation aspect, instead of your actual job. Happy Christmas:)

@Jospeh: Thanks for stopping by Joseph. Glad you liked the new background, and hopefully you enjoyed this blog as well. Feel free to stick around, 'cause you never know who or what is gonna' stop by the House;)

Omega Agent1 said...

The art work is beautiful. The style fits the genre perfect and it might make me pick up a copy. Nice post.

Merry Christmas man.

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

@Tiger" S'up man? I really can't gush over the artwork enough. Francilla is fucking killing it on that title! Do yourself a favor and buy a copy. Hell, buy two and give it to a friend. It's just that damn good. And Merry Christmas to you as well:)

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