The craziest part of Afterlife with Archie isn’t the idea of “Archie with zombies” but how Aguirre-Sacasa’s writing makes me wonder if I shouldn’t be reading Archie on a regular basis. He does a fantastic job with the characters when they’re dealing with the non-zombie related scenes.

Aguirre-Sacasa tells the issue in flashback–with a couple interludes (and what’s up with the weird brother and sister from college… are they in the regular comics); Veronica is telling her father the story of the dance. The recent past tense thing works for the story, particularly because Aguirre-Sacasa gets how to insert Veronica’s panic into her recounting.

And then there’s the Francavilla artwork. He’d do an amazing regular Archie comic too; the way he toggles between horror and teen drama is wonderful.

Even just engaging with the characters as icons, there’s still a lot of tension. Afterlife’s awesome.

Afterlife with Archie is a lot better than it should be, a lot better. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa sets up the issue beautifully–or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe in Archie comics these days Sabrina the teenage witch is a lot different than I was expecting… and maybe Betty and Veronica do act like mean girls.

But even if these instances are examples of the norm, Aguirre-Sacasa still comes up with an excellent script. He pays a lot of homage to horror classics and starts out to make one of his own. The way he plots the issue–Sabrina, Jughead, Archie–he’s really thought it through how he wants the issue to read.

And the Francesco Francavilla artwork is outstanding. Afterlife both looks like the traditional Archie but also has a lot of gothic realism to it. It’s creepy; Francavilla really makes sure it’s always creepy.

It’s a very pleasant surprise.