Got Afterlife With Archie #7 in the mail the other day.This is one of those comics that may already have fallen off the radar for those who saw it simply in terms of the sensational press release that greeted the release of its first issue.

Yes, it’s an Archie comic that’s not for kids. My daughters understand that without having to ask. There’s no curiosity. They get that it’s not for them. But they also get that there are grown-ups like me who’ve been reading Archie all their lives. There are Batman comics for them, and others for me. They get that. Those are those out there in the world who want to make some big shallow deal out of the fact that there’s an Archie comic not for kids, but those folks should really read Afterlife With Archie and they’ll see how well it works. The storyline’s only gotten stronger after the initial shock of seeing the teens of Riverdale (and their pets) devour each other. There are Lovecraftian underpinnings that have emerged in the saga. The early issues was threatening to become one very long chase scene.

Though it could be said to take place in a separate, realist-yet-supernatural Archie universe, where the inhabitants of Riverdale are more sexually aware and more psychologically unstable, Afterlife With Archie is nonetheless full of respect for the Archie legacy. It doesn’t create new characters, populating its horror tales with established Riverdale citizens major and minor. I’m actually surprised that, given the relentless and consistent doom and gloom that writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has applied to Afterlife With Archie for seven severe issues now, that Riverdale cult figure Jinx Malloy and his perpetual dark cloud of disaster have not made an appearance yet.

Afterlife With Archie book that continues to grow, and apparently continues to be successful. It’s been repackaged in book and magazine formats and has inspired another dark-humored adult-oriented Archie title, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. This is not a one-off, or a gimmick. It’s not like Cecily von Ziegesar’s Gossip Girl Psycho Killer self-parody book. It’s an ongoing adventure with style and merit. It may have come late to the now-largely-passed zombie trend that saturated the early 2010s with blood, but it has deserved to live beyond that passing phase and build its own grisly teen death story in its own sweet time.