Francesco Francavilla To Draw AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE

In news that certainly made both Paul Montgomery and I very happy, today Archie Comics announced that artist Francesco Francavilla will join writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa on the Afterlife with Archie zombie ongoing series!

Francavilla is no stranger to Riverdale having drawn a bunch of variant covers over the past few years for the KISS storyline, including Paul’s favorite cover of 2011. And it was one of those variant covers that brought his particular project to life. As Francavilla told The Hollywood Reporter today,

When Archie Comics approached me to do [the zombie variant cover for Life with Archie] — on the heels of the previous, and quite popular, KISS covers — I was told that the title was “AfterLife With Archie.” That made me think of the dead and undead so the zombies came along. And being a huge fan of those classic EC comics, I went with that approach, including hand-drawn balloons and text, typical of that period.

Add a dash of an extremely popular little comic book and television show called The Walking Dead and here we are with a full blown zombies-in-Riverdale ongoing series that started life as a variant cover.

Aguirre-Sacasa, the writer of the recent Archie/Glee crossover story arc that was tons of fun, had this to say about the story in the same interview with The Hollywood Reporter,

The challenge of telling a great zombie-horror story while also telling a great Archie story. In other words, the fun of the project is keeping all of the quintessential Archie elements alive during a zombie-apocalypse and using well-known Archie tropes in service of a post-apocalyptic survival story. So that it’s Sabrina screwing up a spell — typical Sabrina — which lets an Evil Dead-like force loose in the word. And it’s Reggie’s thoughtless and casual cruelty which sets things in motion. And Betty and Veronica’s rivalry plays out with, literally, life-and-death stakes. Archie bumbles his way into the role of de-facto leader; Jughead just wants to eat everything — and anyone — in sight, etc.

…

It’s a World War Z-style epidemic, which we track from the first zombie infection — Jughead — as it spreads throughout Riverdale and then the world. The first arc is set in Riverdale, with the kids figuring out what’s happening, and hunkering down against the swelling zombie masses before deciding that the only chance they have of surviving is if they leave Riverdale.

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Listen, it’s dark. There’s gore, there’s a body-count, but it’s fun too, it’s not hyper-bleak. It’s a romp, like an early Peter Jackson movie. The head may be decapitated, but the tongue is still firmly planted in cheek.

Afterlife with Archie begins in October!