With almost a month left of summer, those kids going back to school means Halloween will soon be in the air, and Archie Comics is bringing NINE issues for Halloween, with four holiday treats from horror imprint Archie Horror. Get ready for standalone one-shot issues anyone can dive into. Just in time for Sabrina’s 60th anniversary, her black cat familiar Salem gets his own story in Chilling Adventures of Salem, kid readers are the focus of Fear the Funhouse, a classic title is back in Return of Chilling Adventures in Sorcery, and finally, Archie and friends go the way of The X-Files in Chilling Adventures Presents… Weirder Mysteries (what a great title!). Plus five classic-style new Archie books with a Halloween or fall theme.
If those Archie Horror titles sound like a Halloween film festival, it’s because that was the plan. Check out the covers and details below.
For 15 years and 327 episodes, CW’s Supernatural established itself as the longest continuously running genre series of the century. It’s the kind of series, like The X-Files, anyone can drop in on without getting lost in some ongoing story arc. It’s no wonder that no movie mega-star gets as enormous a crowd at San Diego Comic-Con as when stars Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki enter the building. With that kind of start, and a retro spin like the successful series Stranger Things, its coming prequel The Winchesters has the potential of doing well, and the full trailer for the series looks like it may have what it takes to stick around awhile, with a great vintage vibe and Scooby Doo look.
Romeo and Juliet, Emma, American Graffiti, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Grease, Square Pegs, The Outsiders, Sixteen Candles, Say Anything, Heathers, Dazed and Confused, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Clueless (the best version of Emma), 10 Things I Hate About You, Veronica Mars, Orange County, Superbad, Riverdale. Writers have concocted several personal and entertaining coming of age movies and TV series over the years. Add to that list Netflix’s new series Boo, Bitch, a funny, clever, supernatural twist on the typical “last days of high school” story, full of snappy, witty dialogue that catches the genre up with the year 2022.
Put away what you remember (if anything) about the 1970s Kung Fu television series. You didn’t really watch the series for David Carradine, did you? If you were like most of the viewers, you probably showed up for the martial arts. CW Network’s new reboot of Kung Fu is for that same audience, but it also casts a wider net. Wednesday night Olivia Liang showed up to take the new series, CW’s Kung Fu, by storm. You can compare it to the similar-vibed, live-action Mulan, some of your favorite recent martial arts series that have the same dramatic beats likeWu Assassins, or you can compare it to series like Charmed, Smallville, Stargirl, or Riverdale. Fans of all these shows will get a kick out of the ease at which the CW has brought a young Chinese-American hero into our must-watch DVR queue with college student-turned-Shaolin warrior Nicky Shen. She’s a completely modern, updated Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and she brings with her an interesting supporting cast while pulling some intrigue into the story via elements of classic Chinese mythology and history. It’s fantasy, and its supernatural, and there’s swinging kicks and swordplay you’re not going to want to miss.
If first impressions are everything, the first four minutes of the new CW series Superman & Lois look like a great next series to add to your DVR. But that’s not where the writers of the series take us, leaning more into the soap opera drama audiences saw in years of Smallville. The typical Superman tale follows Clark Kent from rural America to the big city of Metropolis, when the typical Supes story takes off. This series reverses that plan, moving Supes and his family back to Smallville when newspaper man Clark Kent loses his job in the big city. What happens when you take a strong-willed city woman like Lois Lane and her and Clark’s two (newly created) citified (twin) sons to Smallville? Fans loving to watch Superman soaring in the supersuit, righting wrongs and exploring the globe, will need to take a backseat for at least part of the new series. Economic downturns, the scam of reverse mortgages, embedded conflicts between rural and urban America–things you probably don’t turn to for your next CW superhero series–is the direction of the new series. But what about strong-willed Lois? Although she gets to share the title, Lois doesn’t get much to do–yet.
It had a promising first and third season, twists and turns, clever story arcs, and a contender for the most faithful adaptation of a comic book series from the past decade. The creators of the fourth and final season of Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina gave 2020 a much-needed batch of two complete seasons, and we already gave the third season kudos in the 2020 Best of TV review here at borg. Kiernan Shipka proved to be one of TV’s best young actors, embodying a character that is next in line after Buffy Summers, Veronica Mars, and Liv Moore as young genre heroines who led series you can count on the first time and after re-watches. Already a contender for one of the best TV series of this century, and one of Netflix’s most creative efforts, how did the final season fare for our heroine Sabrina Spellman?
With all the Netflix series being rolled out this year, October Faction might get overlooked. It’s the latest monster series based on a comic book and it arrived on Netflix this past weekend. Based on Steve Niles and Damien Worm’s graphic novel/comics of the same name, both the TV series (created by Sleepy Hollow and Stargate’sDamian Kindler) and the comics are a darker spin on The Addams Family–the comics even darker than the TV series, which is closer in tone to Riverdale, Charmed, and Stranger Things than, say, Grimm or Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Unfortunately it’s not as well-constructed or visualized as any of those series, but it may be worth the time for fans of horror or stories of students with super powers. It’s the super powers angle that demonstrates how closely linked superhero series are with supernatural and horror stories in the 21st century–Swap out a few words, monsters for malevolent aliens and witches and warlocks for superheroes and you’ll find October Faction has the same story beats as, say The Umbrella Academy or The Boys.October Factionhas an easier to digest, more accessible story than both of those series although the production values lack a certain tightness in editing and cinematography style. It also could use a soundtrack that better matches the charging, creepy pitches found in Netflix’s three trailers for the series.
This is a story about a husband and wife and their twin 17-year-olds, and how the twins handle learning their parents belong to an age-old network of monster hunters. Tamara Taylor(Bones, Altered Carbon, Lost, Serenity) is really in the driver’s seat as Deloris, the mom who always seems to have the right firearm close by, joined by husband Fred, played by J.C. MacKenzie, a character actor TV audiences have seen in dozens of police procedural series and movies, including The Irishman, The Departed, The Shield, and Hemlock Grove, as a father who is looking forward to a rest from the monster work. If you agree MacKenzie is a ringer for a younger Matthew Modine, you might convince yourself October Faction is a prequel to Stranger Things (he also evokes Ed Begley, Jr.). MacKenzie’s casting is an odd choice, like starring old school Fred MacMurray or Robert Young as a modern, mouthy murderer of monsters. But he might grow on you. The kids are more interesting: Newcomers Aurora Burghart plays Viv, an angsty teen who sketches morbid miscellany and can’t understand why she sees things before they happen, and Gabriel Darku is Geoff, her gay brother who is lost leaving behind his old friends for the family’s most recent relocation–and who also thinks he sees the deceased dead.
The level of horror and gore is about that of Shaun of the Dead, enough to establish genre while not becoming a full-on slasher show. At first this appears to be another story of the Ender’s Game or Starship Troopers variety–black and white good and bad guys and monsters that are evil because ugly, unfamiliar, and different things are always evil. Fortunately the story catches up in time and the theme becomes that of fellow monster series Grimm, that not all monsters are bad, and sometimes humans are the worst threat of all.
At last a new Nancy Drew television series has arrived, but except for the odd screencap (a quick shot of Nancy Drew and The Hidden Staircase, or Nancy Drew and The Secret in the Old Attic) it has little resemblance to the novels the series is based on. Billed as a brilliant teen detective by the studio, CW’s Nancy Drewpresents a heroine that is anything but, if the rest of the series is anything like the pilot episode. If you like disinterested young adults begrudgingly solving crimes that would be solved quicker by reasonably motivated teenage kids with half a brain, then this is your show. This is not the smart, driven hero detective beloved by generations of readers.
The pilot reveals yet another series-long mystery set-up, instead of a mystery-of-the-week a la The X-Files. Coincidentally the pilot introduces the same kind of body-in-a-box mystery as the far more engrossing new series, Fox’s Prodigal Son (but compelling writing and acting is pulling me back for more of that series). It even shares the same story of a split family and parents somehow conspiring (or not) over a corpse in a trunk, while tricking the younger version of the series lead that it was all a dream. Nancy Drew unfortunately also shares a lead character much like the brooding under-achiever in this year’s new AMC mystery series NOS4A2, a series that handled strange mystery and a confused young woman protagonist more believably.
Nancy Drew is played by 23-year-old Kennedy McCann. Sometimes a series will cast young adults for teenage roles and make it work, but McCann just doesn’t look like a high schooler (nor do her friends). Nancy’s boyfriend is played by Tunji Fasim, and her key circle includes diner (think Twin Peaks, Riverdale, etc.) co-workers played by Maddison Jaizani, Leah Lewis, and Alex Saxon, with Nancy’s dad played by Scott Wolf, and his lover/city detective played by Alvina August. The mystery begins with Nancy and her co-workers present as the last to see a local socialite alive–Nancy finds her dead in the diner parking lot, and everyone is hauled downtown to get interrogated. The backdrop shuffled in is some local lore about a teenager who committed suicide by diving off a local cliff years ago, and Nancy coming to terms with her father after her mother recently died.
It’s not an overstatement to say Francesco Francavilla is the artist who brought Archie Comics back to life. At the very least he has turned a new generation of readers onto one of comicdom’s longest lasting titles. Along with Jon Goldwater and Alex Segura behind the scenes and writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and later artist Robert Hack in the pages of the monthly books, it was Francavilla’s haunting, brand new look at Riverdale and its teen characters that kick-started reader interest in new titles and take another look at the classic stories, the ones with the traditional Dan DeCarlo look that 70 years of readers were familiar with. Francavilla, the Eisner Award-winning cover artist, is the focus of a new hardcover book Archie Comics is premiering this Wednesday. Featuring all of his Archie Comics standard covers and variants, plus selected interior artwork and cover artwork for books outside the Archie universe, The Archie Art of Francesco Francavilla is a must for collectors of his books and neo-pulp styled art prints.
In part because of his use of fantastic colors for his imagery, his designs seem to pop on every page. You’ll find his several covers for Afterlife with Archie, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Vampironica, Jughead the Hunger, Archie Meets Batman, Archie vs Sharknado, Archie vs Predator, Chilling Adventures in Sorcery, Riverdale, Life with Archie, Archie, Jughead, Betty & Veronica, and Josie and the Pussycats. Other pages highlight Francavilla’s style on the covers of New Crusaders, The Black Hood, and The Hangman. The Archie Art of Francesco Francavilla also includes some cover and page roughs–preliminary sketches used for approval and story breaking, all shown along with the final versions. You’ll also find exclusive cover art from convention-only covers and other variants.
Woule we have a Riverdale television series if not for Francavilla’s darker look at Archie? Probably not. Here is a first look at some advance preview pages of The Archie Art of Francesco Francavilla for borg readers courtesy of Archie Comics:
The annual Star Wars Day, May the Fourth, is back again–an excuse to watch the movies again and meet up with friends and talk all things of a galaxy far, far away. And again it is overlapping with Free Comic Book Day, a good excuse to visit your local comic book shop and get re-introduced to some series you may have missed.
You can’t beat the “gold line” of comics this year, with Jody Houser writing two free comics, Doctor Whoand Stranger Things. Jason Aaron serves as a writer on the Avengers issue (including a great Wolverine story), which is always a good FCBD title. Archie Comics has a new Riverdale Season 3 FCBD story. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creator Kevin Eastman is back writing the featured TMNT issue. And fans of the Whedonverse won’t want to miss their copy of the BOOM! Studios twofer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, complete with a great cover by Moon Knight cover artist and Vampironica creator Greg Smallwood. And for adults, Vampirella fans should check out its Issue #0/FCBD issue, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the character, complete with art by Bruce Timm and work by the late Forrest J. Ackerman. Two other interesting titles for the older crowd worth checking out are Antarctic Press’s Punchline with great art by Matthew Weldon, and Shout Comics’ Midnight Sky.
The above issues are also good choices for kids, but some other titles are more targeted at the younger set including Casper the Ghost in Casper’s Spooksville.Dear Justice League lets kids go one-on-one with their favorite superheroes. Go Fish!is a great looking fish tale. You can never go wrong with a new Little Lulu story. Lumberjanes is back with another campfire story. And last but not least, Star Wars Adventures is a great pick for any Star Wars fan this May the Fourth.
Take a look at some covers and previews to books available free (supplies may be limited) at Elite Comics or your local comic book shop today only:
