A lot of this issue is fantastic. Almost all of it. Except the ending and not even the hard cliffhanger, but how Aguirre-Sacasa gets there. The issue is about Sabrina’s baptism (with the Devil, of course) on her sixteenth birthday. Throughout the issue, Aguirre-Sacasa has been doing flashbacks to her talking to her aunts about it five years earlier. For the ceremony, he cuts in between an expository flashback and the modern actions. It’s a very traditional film technique.

And has no place in this (or possibly any) comic book. Of all the techniques Aguirre-Sacasa borrows (he puts some dialogue in parentheses like Bendis), borrowing a movie (and TV) technique just feels wrong. It stops the story and breaks Sabrina as a protagonist. Aguirre-Sacasa is skipping her in her ceremony.

Otherwise, the issue’s wonderful stuff. Beautiful artwork from Hack as well.

Aguirre-Sacasa’s just too crafty.

The protagonist of the second issue of Sabrina–Aguirre-Sacasa doesn’t actually go with Sabrina, but her new (unknown to her) nemesis–is so disturbing, once the story does get back to Sabrina and company, as creepy as they are, they’re welcoming.

The issue’s protagonist is Madam Satan. Who has a proper name, but I can’t remember it (it comes up only once in a flashback). She used to date Sabrina’s father and he dumped her for a human (Sabrina’s mother). So Madam Satan let a bunch of lions eat her, which sent her to the part of Hell for suicides, but she’s back.

I can’t explain it all. Aguirre-Sacasa and Hack have a lovely way of filling in the exposition; the fluidity of Hack’s artwork as it flows between past and present, imagined and real, is phenomenal.

Who knew Sabrina the Teenage Witch could be so dang good?

For Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa takes a very serious approach. It works well with artist Robert Hack, who does horror well, but also does creepiness and the period–Sabrina is set in the fifties and sixties–well too.

So while there's that classic horror look from Hack, Aguirre-Sacasa works in just enough humorous reference to the anticipated Sabrina comic–her cat familiar chastising her, Sabrina using her spells to meet boys, her cousin being obsessed with rock and roll–to give this new variation a personality.

The comic does open far more traditionally, with Sabrina's origin and her father and a scene out of Rosemary's Baby involving her mother, but the second half is where it really gels. Aguirre-Sacasa quickly establishes the Sabrina character as she enters high school, even if her aunts do take an unevenly reduced role.

The cliffhanger's iffy, but very effective visually.

The comic works out well.