splendid news ! Sabrina the Teenage Witch ismaking her way to boob tube again , in a new show from the creative squad behind Archie Comics ’ other telly adaptation , Riverdale . Even honorable news : this is not your childhood Sabrina . It ’s the version from the undischarged horror comic Chilling Adventures of Sabrina , a Bible you should dead read .
Born out of theArchie Comics resurgencethat first give us not just theexcellent Archie rebootbut the likewise excellent Afterlife with Archie zombi series , Roberto Aguirre - Sacasa and Robert Hack ’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina gives us ( on an intermittent schedule , unfortunately ) a Sabrina that , at first glimpse , was unlike anything the company had done before — and definitely unlike what most people were familiar with through theweird and wonderful Melissa Joan Hart show .
The Sabrina most multitude were used to in the pages of her retiring Archie Word of God was a witch , sure enough , but her magical ability skew on the lighter side of things , using her powers to get ahead advantages against her aunts or to get a wooden leg up at school day , tricks and cantrips in the background of where the real drama was in any Archie book : highschool love story .
Chilling Adventures , just like Afterlife before it , go in the opposite direction , with Sabrina ’s nature as a witch a much more crucial aspect of the serial publication . Not just in the presence of magic , because Chilling Adventures is about the kind of witch that prefer defenseless , bloody accord with Satan rather than floppy hats and broomsticks .
The series starts dark — literally with Sabrina ’s mom being driven crazy by her Warlock don , after she attempt to take her mortal baby daughter aside to quash her being induct into the dark nontextual matter Edward Spellman has been embroiled in for age — and obtain darker , introducing the reader to an vivid magical world of monster and moral greyness . None of the characters you ’re used with from other incarnations are good from being admit down a much darker path , even if their purpose in Sabrina ’s story are still familiar , whether its Aunts Zelda and Hilda or even Sabrina ’s on - off boyfriend Harvey .
Sabrina herself is n’t portray in a sympathetic light , either , joining her aunts in iniquitous rituals and using her magics to harm and even dominate the minds of her fellow teenagers . The Sabrina of Chilling Adventures get laid being a witch as much as her previous incarnations , but with everything ramped up to 11 when it comes to the sand and gore of the Bible ’s traditional repulsion take on witchcraft , the fact she ’s so gung - ho becomes horrifying rather than heroic .
The almost - absurdity of just how dreary Chilling Adventures can be , and all the classic revulsion image it envelops itself in , would n’t work without Hack ’s art going all - in either . The series ’ ‘ 60s setting have Hack ’s sketchy , on the loose mode sing , its hard dividing line give way the brutal nature of Sabrina ’s life as a crone an even harder edge . The colour body of work , sepia look with the casual papa of bright , isolated color ( usually blood crimson , if we ’re fair ) , lends the whole matter a vibe that feels ripped the right way out of the flesh horror comic cover of the stop , whether it ’s used in scenes of Sabrina ’s habitation - life being taught the ways of Witchcraft , or when she ’s at her “ normal ” school in Greendale trying to live the living of a teenage girl … who just so happens to have bloody , alarm supernatural great power .
And really , that ’s what makes Chilling Adventures of Sabrina work . For all the wickedness and depravity of its supernatural side — and it really is a shockingly grim endeavor at times — the series is still true to what people have loved about Sabrina in all forms for decades before it . The frame is still there , the characters are still there , albeit in twisted form ( sure , Hilda and Zelda occasionally partake in a bit of gore - laden cannibalism , but they ’re still goofy yet loving defender to Sabrina ) . All the thing that drove the drama of the previous incarnations — Sabrina speculate whether to encompass or give up her magical side , the button and pull between her high schooltime life and her home life — is still in looseness , it just has a non-white mettle underlying it all .
As a repulsion comedian , Chilling Adventures can be as vivid and gutwrenching assome of the good workplace on shelves right on now . But what makes it shine is that it ’s all that , while still being Sabrina ’s journeying through teenage life sentence . The fatuousness of how , at the surface , it seems so wildly different balancing with the at times summer camp familiarity of the Sabrina we know and love is a precarious balance , but just like Afterlife with Archie before it , Aguirre - Sacasa and Hack tap that balance perfectly . There ’s no other repulsion comic like Sabrina , the kind of book can make you laugh in a moment of otherwise gossamer , sick terror — and we ca n’t waitress to see its foolhardy mix of diabolical horror and teen life to get translated to TV .
HorrorRiverdale
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