Patrick Horvath And Tyler Crook Send Archie Andrews To Hell

‘Archie in Hell’

Courtesy of Oni Press

You’re more likely to find Archie Andrews booking back-to-back dates with Betty and Veronica, or else enjoying a milkshake and cheeseburger at Pop Tate’s Chock’lit Shoppe with Jughead, than you are to find him the captive of a supernatural cult looking to summon an eldritch god.

But that’s exactly what’s going down for Riverdale’s golden boy in Oni Press’s absolutely bonkers Archie in Hell storyline from writer Patrick Horvath (Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees) and artist Tyler Crook (Colonel Weird: Cosmagog).

“I‘ve never done a licensed thing for an extended number of issues before,” Horvath told me over Zoom. “It was an experiment to see how it would go, and also a fun opportunity. There was a lot of fun energy behind it and a lot of runway to it.”

What really got him on board was a crazy elevator pitch from Oni President and Publisher Hunter Gorinson: “Quantum Leap by way of the Dark Tower series.”

Crook, who was already at work on a creator-owned project at Oni, needed a little more convincing.

“Hunter gave me the hard sell on it, and I was like, ‘Okay, let me let me call up Patrick and do a vibe check,’” remembered the Eisner Award-nominated illustrator. “I called him up, we chatted for about an hour-and-a-half, and I was like, ‘Okay, yeah, this’ll be fun. ‘We’re on the same wavelength.’”

Despite its provocative title, Archie in Hell begins innocuously enough, with the eponymous character going around town to collect non-perishable food for the less fortunate. Except the charitable drive is nothing more than a front for a sinister cabal in need of an innocent youth to serve as the doorway for the Lovecraftian entity they worship.

“The big tenet was, ‘You’ve got to be true to the Archieverse,’ for lack of a better term,” Horvath explained. “You have to honor that legacy. This is just Archie and the gang, but they’re being put through a very traumatic scenario—especially Archie. It’s that juxtaposition of this wholesome setup and a horrible thing colliding with it. I’m trying really hard not to be flippant about the violence that happens. But it is a horror book and it’s supposed to be upsetting.”

Added Crook: “It’s not a horror scenario that the Archie characters just happen to be in. It’s definitely a character-driven book.”

You might assume there would be limits on mutilating and murdering beloved comic book icons before damning them to Hell, but you’d be wrong! The biggest pushback Horvath got from the powers that be had nothing to do with violence or allowing the the all-American streets of Riverdale to run red with blood.

“I think you can approach pretty much anything you want with Archie and the license, but you have to do it with respect to what the characters would and wouldn’t do,” shared the writer. “I did get kickback on, ‘Oh Jughead wouldn’t say this,’ or, ‘Archie would probably do this,’ or ‘Betty loves this.’ Those are the notes, which makes sense to me. I get it, and I’m on that same page. I want to make sure that these characters are who they are. But with regard to where it goes, I haven’t had any pushback, which is pretty refreshing. I’m sure there’s stuff that are non-starters for them, but I haven’t found them yet.”

Said Crook, “There’s a similarity between comedy and horror, in that they’re both about setting someone up for an idea and then either subverting it or destroying it in some way. Archie’s a great place for that. There are funny and cute moments that are humorous, but they use the same sort of mechanics as a lot of the horror stuff.”

If you look back across Archie’s 85-year-old history, there are several precedents of the formula taking a bizarre turn—whether it’s 1994’s Archie Meets the Punisher, 2015’s Archie vs. Predator, and even the short-lived Archie’s Weird Mysteries cartoon series from 1999.

There are stories where Archie is double-booking dates one minute, “and then there’ll be aliens,” mused Crook. “Or Jughead will get superpowers after eating a radioactive hamburger or something. The Archie world is always game for anything. They’re always ready to experiment with something weird.”

“The bar was definitely set by those,” agreed Horvath, who also cited Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s Afterlife with Archie and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina as major sources of inspiration (indeed, Sabrina Spellman, who resides in the neighboring town of Greendale, does make an appearance here). “It felt like they were being genuine about what they wanted to do with that stuff. And they were pretty far out, which I thought was awesome. They were willing to take a swing with it … I wanted to see how far I could go, how weird we could get with it. This first issue definitely sets the table, but it goes in some pretty wild places.”

Issue #1 of Archie in Hell is on sale from Oni Press Nov. 4.