Archie Horror Presents Chilling Adventures
As you know if you’ve been reading any of my previous posts, I’m a fan of the Archie Horror imprint. I think they’ve done a lot of really creative work and been successful in expanding the Archie brand in ways I wouldn’t have thought likely. That said, Chilling Adventures is a total dud.
The idea here was to present a horror anthology, with a bunch of short stories from a variety of authors and artists. According to the editor’s introduction the model was supposed to be something like EC’s Tales from the Crypt, which I can see, but I think the more immediate reference might have been The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror. And if that’s the comparison being made I think Chilling Adventures suffers by it. In fact, I can’t think of any comparison it doesn’t suffer by.
The blame can be laid squarely at the feet of the writers. Normally in a variety-show effort like this you can expect a mix of good and bad. Here I had trouble identifying anything that was good. Pretty much everything on tap was either tired and clichéd or confusing. Sometimes both. There’s a gesture at a frame story as Madame Satan gets bored with ruling hell and takes up being a high school principal. Archie gets trapped in a killer video game. Veronica is possessed by a demon dress. Jinx (Sabrina’s “familiar”) rescues a bunch of stray animals from a sorcerer. Jughead (the werewolf version) fights Krampus. Shape-shifting aliens land in Riverdale. Some of this might have been interesting, especially given the talent assembled, but it’s just a dull mess that never got any better as it stumbled along. Were they in a rush? Uninspired? I don’t know, but nothing here worked for me.
Alex Good 
That’s a bummer. Especially when the other stuff has been good.
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I guess it’s a reversion to the mean. Felt like this was B-sides or stuff they were just putting out there.
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Maybe this was all the stuff they wrote when their drug stash ran out and they were forced to improvise with paint thinner?
You know those artistic types 😉
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There’s a lot of bonkers stuff going on, so have to take that as a maybe.
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I mean, when I run out of caffeine, things get wild.
Robbing space banks. Vandalizing national guard armorys. Stealing winning lottery tickets. It is a crazy time!
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I prefer rigging lotteries, but otherwise this sounds OK.
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I prefer the winning myself. But each to their own.
If I won the lottery, I’d quit my job in a heart beat…
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I rig the lottery and win. You steal the winning tickets and win. It’s all winning.
You can’t quit your job and sit on the couch drinking eggnog and energy drinks all day. Not healthy. You need to get outside.
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Once I’m a millionaire, I’ll BUY the outdoors. And ban it. At least the winter parts. And all the parts with lots of trees.
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-20 C out there this morning. Time to go for a walk.
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Man, see, THAT is the kind of outdoors I’ll ban. Nobody needs to deal with that.
I would call out of work at those temps…
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