The best vampire graphic novel today stars the all-American hero Archie Andrews. What happened to him, asks KUSHAN MITRA

To call me an Archie comics fan would be an understatement. Recently while moving home, I discovered that I had over a hundred Digest and Double Digest comics, far more than I thought I owned. In addition, I have spent thousands of rupees buying digital versions of the comics on the iTunes store. There is something about these comics that I have enjoyed since I was a teenager; easy reading I guess.

And this fascination with Archie comics from a young age helped me move to darker, grittier graphic novels, such as those by Alan Moore. However, nothing could have prepared me for the dive into darkness that Archie comics took. Genuinely, I was not prepared for ‘Afterlife with Archie’; I had heard and read that this delve into zombie fiction was a tour de force, but somehow, after seeing what Hollywood movie studios had done to so many of my childhood movie icons, I did not initially download the application.

Without giving too much away, the plot is fairly simple. A car driven by Riverdale’s resident douche Reggie Mantle runs over and kills Hot Dog, Jughead Jones’ beloved pooch. Sabrina, not quite the teenage witch of the TV series (she is going to have a darker resurrection soon), helps ‘reanimate’ Hot Dog, but he is now a zombie.

He bites Jughead, who also becomes a zombie and spreads the contagion through the town. Our red-haired hero is the one who brings together the survivors at lodge Manor.

The story, written by Nicaraguan-American writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa — who weirdly enough is a writer on the bubbly American TV series Glee — is told from various perspectives. It explores dark issues that would not have seemed out of place in an Alan Moore or even a Mark Millar graphic novel, but reconciling it in your head with the goofy, clumsy characters of Archie comicsIJ Not an easy task.

Not only do you confront death head on (well, this is a zombie series, so there is a lot of death), you also confront lesbianism, infidelity and incest (not where you would expect). Yes, Archie did introduce Kevin Keller, a gay character some years ago, but that still fit into the happy world of Archie. That said, the artwork by Italian artist Francesco Francavilla is stunning. While bending the rules of the Archie pantheon a bit, he manages to make the characters identifiable. Yet, with his use of muted colours and the creation of characters, this is possibly the best written and drawn comic of the recent past.

The first story arc of the series ‘Escape from Riverdale’ recently finished and I am looking forward to see what happens in the second arc. later this year, the second re-imagination in this continuity will take place with ‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’. The Afterlife series drops a hint of this, but do not expect Hilda and Zelda to look the way they did.

The ‘Afterlife with Archie’ series is a far bigger deal than Archie Andrews dying in ‘life with Archie’ #36. The series — not easily available in India, but found on the Archie Comics app (iOS, Android) or online — had begun to meander, like any long comic book series.

‘Afterlife with Archie’ is dark; it is not meant for kids, is rated ‘teens plus’ and is not marketed to pre-teens at all. So much so that it requires a separate application download if you read it on your phone or tablet.

As far as a standalone comic series goes, ‘Afterlife with Archie’ is brilliant. As an old Archie fan, it stunned me at first but won me over. It is not without reason that Aguirre-Sacasa is now the Chief Creative Officer of Archie Comics. There are, however, a few problems, not least of which is trying to find it in India, a country without proper comic book stores. It is available online and on the application and costs Rs 300 a month for unlimited access on multiple devices.