Chilling Adventures in Sorcery #1

Chilling Adventures in Sorcery #1

Archie Horror 2021

Stories by Eliot Rahal, Evan Stanley, Amy Chu

Pat & Tim Kennedy

Illustrated by Vincenzo Federici, Evan Stanley, Derek Charm

Pat & Tim Kenndy & Bob Smith

Coloured by Matt Herms

Lettered by Jack Morelli

THE FUTURE OF ARCHIE COMICS STARTS HERE IN AN ALL-NEW ANTHOLOGY-STYLE ONE-SHOT!

Madam Satan is our tour guide into this horrific world exploring the underbelly of Riverdale and its surrounding areas! Madam Satan is trying to escape Hell. She goes through the circles of Hell in reverse. Along the way she meets lost/tortured souls who tell their stories—like that of Archie Andrews, who accepted a seemingly normal job as the nighttime security shift at Riverdale’s local pizzeria and children’s mascot entertainment venue. Only to learn that the venue harbors a deep, dark, robotic, monstrous secret! And then there’s Jughead Jones, a teen who never met a food he didn’t like. Until now. What is that eerie noise coming from the kitchen…? All that plus more bonus frightful content sure to delight all Archie horror fans!

What a delightfully different and interesting book this is. If you’ve followed the Sabrina series at all then you know Madame Satan has been trying to climb her way out of hell and this issue shows us some of her journey. In a decidedly different take however, we see the residents of Riverdale featured in this journey and not the residents of Greendale and I like this a whole heck of a lot.

While this is a four part anthology series each vignette feels like it flows into the next beautifully. The way that this is being told through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter does a marvellous job in bringing us their personalities. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the story and taking us to the next one is really beautifully handled.

How we see these being structured and how the layers within the story are shown in such a short amount of space is exceptionally well done. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is extremely nice to see.

Now of course each vignette has its own unique style of artwork attached to it. Each one works for the story at hand while I am personally partial to the opening and closing work. I can appreciate what we see throughout the book. I love the mood, tone and feel that each one brings to the table. I’m also incredibly impressed with the way Matt manages to colour each one and is so adaptable in what he’s able to do to further that mood, tone and feel that each one needs. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show some extremely talented eyes for storytelling.

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I love the irony of the last page of the story with Madame Satan. All that trouble to go through to see this upon her arrival. Tsk tsk, well it really couldn’t have happened to a nicer person if you ask me. Though her very presence does add so much drama to every scene she is in. Even within the darker side of the Archie Universe the characters still feel like they are supposed to and regardless of who it is we know them, we feel for them and can even empathise with them, yes even Madame Satan. It’s the perfect time of year for this one-shot but honestly I would love to see Madame Satan pop up year round with her decidedly wicked brand of being regardless of the holiday.