10 Greatest Horror Comics You NEED To Read
8. Afterlife With Archie
What seemed like a ludicrous premise became an engaging and strangely terrifying story that tears at our collective childhood. For many American children, the adventures of Archie Andrews and his friends in Riverdale were the first comic books that they were allowed to read in the digests purchased from grocery store checkout lines. The tales were wholesome, the conflicts were minor and funny, and no one died. In Roberto Aquirre-Sacassa’s Afterlife with Archie, death is the norm and no one is having fun.
When Reggie hit Jughead’s dog Hot Dog with his car, he begged Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, to bring the pooch back. Despite her better judgment, Sabrina used the Necronomicon, and Hot Dog came back wrong. The zombie dog bit his owner and started a landslide that devastated Riverdale. Archie and the few survivors were forced to abandon the town and escape to the wilds of America.
As one of the last companies to abandon the Comics Code Authority, this allowed the Riverdale gang to experience a variety of horrific themes, like Sabrina being cursed to the Nether-realm by her aunts and forced to marry Cthulhu, Josie and the Pussycats being vampires, and Archie being forced to kill his zombie father to save his mother. It also opened the book to same-sex and incestuous relationships, psychological issues, and plain old blood and gore.