Writer: Roberto Aguirre Sacasa
Artist: Francesco Francavilla
Publisher: Archie Comic Publications, Inc
Released: 4th June 2014
Website: http://afterlifewitharchie.com/news/
I’m fully aware that the vast majority of the readers of this book will be bringing with them warm, childhood memories of the characters portrayed. That is not the case for me. I recognise that the Archie character is set in some long gone time, and that he was a character for children, but that’s all I know about him. I have never read any of his comics, and I have not even researched his past on the Internet before reading this book. All I know is that Francesco Francavilla has illustrated the book, it looks cool. And so I have bought it. Here’s what I made of it.
To get it out of the way first, the best thing about this book is the artwork. To be more precise, the best thing is the colouring of that artwork. That’s what Francavilla does best, using colours to create a gothic atmosphere of cool horror, and it’s the reason why I always get his variant covers on other books. If this book were the worst comic book I’d ever read I’d still get some enjoyment out of it because of Francavilla. This book is not the worst, but it’s not that great either. The art however is pure Francavilla Heaven throughout, and I loved it.
The plot of the book is a simple, generic, zombie’s take over a small-town stuff. It’s been done a billion times before, and you don’t get anything new here. The zombies start eating familiar faces in town, those faces include family members, pet dogs etc, and the heroes have to bash them over the head with a shovel whilst crying about how much they love them. Boo hooo, but not really. It’s been done too many times before, and so it has no real impact, at least for me when I’m reading it, again.
This book follows high-school kids, and without the baggage of already knowing their characters I’m not going to get as much out of it as for people already familiar with them. Please bear that in mind when reading my review. I’m an English guy, and the Archie character means nothing to me. I do however recognise that this is a childish character being placed into the horror genre.
The best way for me to navigate this is to compare it with the time I went to see a ventriloquist show as a college student. The act was an old television act that I enjoyed as a kid (Keith Harris and Orville the Duck). The gimmick was that the duck was swearing, and it was shocking and funny to me as I grew up with it on my television set, and it was kid friendly at that time. But now the same character was foul mouthed and working within a genre that was designed for an older age group. The kids who watched the show had grown up, so this was the act growing up with those same kids. Is that’s what’s happening here with Archie? Not that there’s a lot of swearing going on, because there isn’t. Is it enjoyable for the readers perhaps because their favourite childhood character is now in a horror movie kind of setting? There’s no sexual content, or swearing, but there are lots of brains being bashed out by shovels, and I’m sure that wasn’t a part of the original Archie comics.
There were a few things, outside of the plot, themes and what not that stood out to me as a new reader. The highlight of the book was an inner dialogue coming from a dog that saved his master, sacrificing himself willingly. That was a nice touch, and using the voice of the dog himself made it even more poignant. There were a couple of things that jarred me though.
There were a few panels that’s seemed forced and unnatural. These were the panels that awkwardly mentioned things like cell-phones, new television programmes and technology. It just seemed out of place, as these characters were so old fashioned that I couldn’t imagine them existing in 2014. The writer should have kept them in the fifties, or whatever decade they belong, as bringing them into the now just made them seem unreal, and more like the dated cartoon characters like they actually are. There’s nothing wrong with some anachronism in comic books, but this book tried to have it both ways, and because it couldn’t choose, it kind of got lost in the middle, a no man’s land of not now, and not then.
I also thought it was a bit strange to see two girls fighting over one, ordinary boy. This of course must be something that happened in the original comic series, but these days you don’t see that anymore. It’s considered old fashioned I guess, with women playing all of the masculine roles and taking charge. So to see two girls ostensibly begging for the love of one man was a bit weird. I’m not saying that it’s bad, it’s just that it was placed within this modern context and as we are all living in politically correct, feminist liberal times where women are ostensibly men in dresses, it was out of place, belonging to a long lost era, generation and time. Again, it was in no-man’s land. Lost, confused and awkward as a kid who thinks that being a ‘geek’ at school is going to get him a date in the real world, just like it happens in the movies.
Afterlife with Archie- Book One, is a treat for the eyes, but without artist Francesco Francavilla it’s just another zombie book with characters lost somewhere in no-time/no-man’s land. The sense of being lost in time made the tone a bit confusing to me. It wasn’t funny, or original enough to be anything other than just another zombie book with a gimmick. Actually it had two gimmicks. A great artist and an old kid's cartoon being re-made within the horror/zombie genre. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. Francesco Francavilla is a top artist, but the writing here was nowhere near at his level. It was tagging along for the ride, and although it tried, it came across as a bit lost, a bit forced, a bit confused and narritively speaking, not that original within the context of a formulaic teenagers being attacked by zombies trope. Rating 7/10 (Average book, but with fantastic art)
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