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:)
