Afterlife with Archie #2

Escape from Riverdale
Chapter Two—"Dance of the Dead"
written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
art by Francesco Francavilla

Oh my!  I mean, oh my!  The dark undercurrents of Afterlife with Archie's premier issue come to a sinister boil in its follow-up.  Jughead's assault on the school dance is gruesome, and Veronica's recollection of it sincerely chilling.  Remembering her own icy and condescending dismissal of Ethel's birthday parties, Veronica selfishly—and astutely—wishes her father had forced her to attend just once, so "...I'd feel less guilty about those thirty seconds...  ...those terrible thirty seconds while Jughead Jones ate Ethel Muggs right in front of us, and no one did anything but stare..." (Afterlife with Archie #2: 6-7).

Jason and Cheryl Blossom—Archie's rich, elitist Pembrooke Academy rivals—make their debut in Aguirre-Sacasa's zombie incarnation.  Their Raggedy Ann and Andy costumes are exceptionally eerie in Francavilla's two-tone color scheme.  And their relationship is intensified to dangerously co-dependent at best, ambiguously incestuous at worst.  It's characteristic of Aguirre-Sacasa's dark irony that the havoc they conspire to inflict on Riverdale's dance has already been exponentially exceeded by Jughead's monstrous appearance.  More than anything in an issue filled with horror, their transition from scheming pranksters to unsettled teens sets the sincerely frightening tone of Afterlife with Archie.

Likewise, Afterlife with Archie transforms the Archie universe's familiar tensions in the sudden crisis.  There's nothing like a zombie apocalypse, for instance, to suddenly unite Betty and Veronica.  After years—decades in the eternal, unmoving chronology of Archie's high school career—of trying to infiltrate Lodge Manor, Archie finds himself seeking refuge from a beleaguered Hiram Lodge.  And Dilton Doiley (dressed as Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street) and Chuck Clayton (perhaps as psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis from Halloween, whose merit he defended in the previous issue) are the first to correctly diagnose the apocalypse.

Francavilla's artwork—his pulp and horror sensibilities, his use of heavy shadows and warm palates—is exceptional.  Archie's wholesome reputation has been shattered, and the dramatically changed appearance of its illustrations helps set the tone.  It should come as no particular surprise, since no one really in Francavilla's artwork ever looks bad, but he manages to morph goofball and inexplicable chick-magnet Archie Andrews into a hot redhead with a muscular build and chiseled features.  No other character has benefited from the make-over more than he.

[January 2014]