Archie’s getting damned, y’all. Oni Press released new details about their upcoming Archie in Hell series, which puts everyone’s favorite football champion at the center of a gruesome sacrifice, and it looks like poor Archie Andrews just won’t be able to catch a break.
Following up on the recent Afterlife With Archie series, Archie in Hell is written by Patrick Horvath with art by Tyler Crook, featuring a series of variant covers by Paul Azaceta, Jesse Lonergan, Kano, Dan Parent, Mirka Andolfo, and Mahmud Asrar. The new line follows the titular redhead in an alternate universe Riverdale where his life goes completely to hell…literally, with a synopsis as follows:
They say that every small town has a secret. Well, in the case of Riverdale, it’s one heck of a humdinger: An ancient order of cultists has infiltrated its townspeople, bent on using human sacrifice to usher a demon lord into our mortal plane. And they’ve finally identified the final target they need to bring a century’s worth of planning to fruition: hometown football champion and all-around good guy Archie Andrews. But this secret cabal never dreamed that actual witches walk Riverdale’s streets . . . and when cult and coven clash in the final stages of Archie’s secret ritual sacrifice, the consequences will be cosmic . . . and young Archie Andrews will find himself damned to something far worse than Hell’s inner circle.
“Getting the opportunity to work on this book has been a series of pleasant surprises,” said Horvath. “When Hunter Gorinson and Sierra Hahn from Oni mentioned the possibility to me, it happened to line up pretty perfectly with my schedule. I just found myself thinking that if I was ever going to do something like this, now was the time. I had also been looking for an opportunity to write a project for another artist. Tyler has been an art hero of mine for a while now and getting to work with him on this has been supremely inspiring.”
This new series lines up with the eighty-fifth anniversary of Archie’s first appearance in 1941, in Pep Comics #22, which began a legacy that continues to this day, and stretches from comics to television shows to a new live-action movie currently in development.
“I have always wanted to work on an Archie comic, and I was super stoked when Patrick and Sierra presented me with a story that combined Archie with horror and history,” said Crook. “As an artist who loves period pieces, it gives me something meaty to bite into and provides us a wonderful, interesting and terrifying way to explore these classic characters.”
Archie in Hell #1 hits shelves on November 4. Check out a preview of the first issue below:
