Honestly, Archie is a property that has never done anything for me. Even Afterlife With Archie, which everyone praised, didn’t excite me, outside of Francesco Francavilla’s art. That being said, I will read any book that has a creative team which consists of Mark Waid and Fiona Staples. As a comic book fan, I think it’s hard to justify not reading something from two such titans. So I picked up the first issue, and I immediately fell in love with it.
I think a big part of it is that the book feels updated. I won’t pretend to be super familiar with the Archie universe (Sabrina the teenage witch lives there, I guess), but everything I’ve read of it in the past has been cringe worthy at best. Waid’s writing brings the characters into a modern setting, and does it well. Outside of the titular character’s ridiculous bad luck, there’s a sense of realism that this book has. And for someone who just got out of high school, that really hits home.
As with We Can Never Go Home, it’s the characters that really make this series work for me. There are four issues, and I am already hyper invested in the cast. Plus, Fiona Staples on art never hurts anything. Actually that doesn’t sound like high enough praise, but I’m not quite sure if it’s possible to articulate just how brilliant her work on this book is.
