Gloriously old-school horror.
Creative Staff:
Story: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Art: Robert Hack
Letters: Jack Morelli
What They Say:
It’s the night before Halloween, the night before Sabrina’s sixteenth birthday, the night of the blood-moon and the lunar eclipse, and Sabrina has made her decision: She will go into the woods of Greendale as a half-witch and emerge…on the other side of a frightful ritual…as a fully baptized member of the Church of Night. But there will be a cost, and his name is Harvey. And unbeknownst to Sabrina and her aunts, there is a serpent in the garden, their great enemy Madam Satan, who is conspiring against them…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
After reading the excellent Afterlife with Archie, I’ve been itching to get my hands on the other Archie Horror title, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Like Afterlife, Sabrian is an excellent, almost old-fashioned horror tale that grounds its more fantastic elements in strong characters and excellent atmosphere.
I came to this issue cold, having not read the previous two, but I was able to pick up the gist fairly quickly. Sabrina lives with her aunts Zelda and Hilda, who are both full witches. Sabrina stands apart as something different, being half-human and half-witch. She faces the decision to become either a full human or a full witch on her sixteenth birthday, but Madam Satan—their “great enemy” according to the summary—sets events into motion that will ruin Sabrina’s ritual and instigate something called “The Great Harrowing.”
It’s not clear what the Great Harrowing entails, but given the issue begins with a history lesson on the persecution of witches by Hilda and Zelda to Sabrina, I wouldn’t be surprised if this wasn’t some new Inquisition arising with witch turning against witch.
Madam Satan’s (don’t you just love comic book names?) tool in all of this is Sabrina’s boyfriend, Harvey Kinkle. Harvey acts like a typical heterosexual boy of sixteen, and while he respects Sabrina and never forces her to do anything she doesn’t want, he obviously feels frustration at their inability to consummate their relationship. Sabrina, for her part, wants Harvey just as much as he wants her, but in order for the ritual to work, she must remain “pure,” or else Satan will reject her. Madam Satan uses this frustration to steer Harvey towards the woods, planting the bug in his mind that Sabrina meets other boys there. Needless to say, the boy Harvey discovers her with is not who he expected.
I’m not entirely sure who Madam Satan is or what she wants—although the backup story helps fill in some of the blanks. Sabrina seems to be special in her status as half-human, half-witch, and Madam Satan takes an active interest in her failing the ritual. My best guess is that either Sabrina will one day prove a threat to her, or Sabrina’s special status somehow triggers the harrowing once Harvey interrupts the ritual. I’m sure more will be explained in the next issue, and this never hurt my enjoyment of the story.
As with Afterlife with Archie, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a smart book created by people who understand the horror genre. The storytelling choices Aguirre-Sacasa and Robert Hack make are excellent. These are not Pagan witches, these are old-school Satan-worshipping, broom-riding spellcasters. The comic never shies away from that, and there exists an interesting dichotomy because, while it possesses all the trappings of a good witch story from the 1960s and ‘70s, Sabrina and her aunts never come across as evil or wicked. Even during the ritual, where Sabrina sacrifices a goat (Baaaaa-phomet) and meets a gigantic, decidedly evil-looking Satan, she retains a sense of goodness and innocence. This depiction problematizes traditional notions about Satanism and witchcraft while retaining the very creepy, very scary visuals.
In many ways, this looks and feels like a ‘60s Devil movie, thanks in large part to Hack’s art (It certainly helps that the story is also set in the 1960s). His style strays far more towards the realistic spectrum than the cartoon-y, but he retains a stylistic flourish that I quite like. He also makes a smart choice in using pastels for colors, creating an almost chalk-like texture that creates a rather rough-hewn look to the entire issue. This rough style brings to mind classic witch/Devil movies like Rosemarie’s Baby,, Suspiria, and House of the Devil (which really intended to ape ’80s horror movies, but uses the same aesthetic style).
It’s obvious that Aguirre-Sacasa and Hack know their horror movies. The opening panels show Hilda, Zelda, and Sabrina picnicking in the woods. Zelda uses a walking stick, and I’ll eat my proverbial hat if it wasn’t based off of the walking staff used by the character Torgo in Manos: The Hands of Fate. They also know a great deal about ritual, because the scenes of Sabrina’s ceremony make use of powerful icons from Christianity and Paganism: the goat named Baaaaa-phomet, the “Queen of the Sabbath” riding in on a black stag and wearing an upside-down cross, the stone slab altar, and Satan’s depiction. These all come together to create a disturbing sequence that feels both real and frightening.
Putting Sabrina in the middle of all of it brings everything into stark relief. This is not the Sabrina played by Melissa Joan Hart or the Sabrina in traditional Archie Comics, and yet at the same time it is. This is a future handmaiden of Satan, but also a high school girl struggling with her desire for her boyfriend, and excited about getting a lead role in the school’s production of Bye, Bye Birdie. These two Sabrinas should be incongruous. They shouldn’t go together. But they do, and seeing how Aguirre-Sacasa and Robert Hack fit these mismatched jigsaw pieces together is just as much fun as the classic horror story that frames it all.
In Summary:
This is the first time I’ve read Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and I’m hooked. The genuinely creepy story, the incongruity of Sabrina’s two halves, the excellent art, and the strong writing come together to make a chilling, atmospheric, and touching piece. I enjoyed it so much that I want to hunt down the previous two issues so I get a fuller idea of the story (not to mention they’ll be fun to read). Doctor Josh gives this an…
Grade: A
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Archie Horror
Release Date: May 27th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
