School Library Journal Review
Gr 10 Up-This horror flick reimagining of Sabrina the Teenage Witch is a lushly cinematic and refreshingly grim departure from the charmingly sweet heroine of yesteryear. This isn't your mother's teenage witch: although Sabrina is dealing with common adolescent woes, she's also consorting with the devil and feasting on a sacrificial goat. The story takes place in the days before Sabrina's confirmation into the coven, coinciding with her 16th birthday. In the upcoming ceremony, she must choose to either live as an immortal witch, infinitely powerful but incapable of romantic love, or as a mortal, destined to die but also able to spend her life with her dreamboat boyfriend, Harvey. Meanwhile, Madam Satan, a powerful witch with a vendetta against Sabrina's father, is accidentally raised from hell by two familiar Archie-universe figures; Betty and Veronica are wryly reinvented here as ditzy but powerful witches. The five-issue collection ends in a diabolically creepy cliff-hanger. This iteration is set in the 1960s, incorporating the social upheavals of the time while visually alluding to Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, and other paranormal horror films. Hack's scratched filmstrip style, set in sepia tones, makes the inevitable violent splashes of red provocatively grotesque. Some nudity and violence make this more appropriate for older teens. VERDICT Deftly balancing suspense, violence, and wit, this is a welcome and frightening addition for lovers of horror, suspense, and graphic novels; hand to fans of Emily Carroll's Through the Woods and followers of The Walking Dead.-Anna Murphy, Berkeley Carroll School, Brooklyn © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in the 1960s, this Archie spin-off draws heavily on the tropes of pulpy teen horror comics. Warlock Edward Spellman marries a mortal wife instead of a witch, gaining a powerful enemy. His daughter, Sabrina, is taken from him and raised by two aunts-who happen to be witches. Years later, teen Sabrina is faced with all of the usual preoccupations: a football-star boyfriend, auditions for the school musical, swirling hormones, and a bloody Satanic ritual that will mark her coming-of-age at 16. Unlike most young witches, Sabrina has a choice: to live as a normal human or to dedicate her soul to the devil and gain access to unlimited power. Both choices come with a terrible price. Hack's brushy line work captures Sabrina's youthful naïveté and decay and murder in dark forests. Aguirre-Sacasa's (Afterlife with Archie) well-realized characters and humor bring depth to what could have been a rather dreary tale of revenge and gore. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
No longer a do-gooder who learns from her magical mishaps, Aguirre-Sacasa's Sabrina lives a gruesome existence. The week of Sabrina's sixteenth birthday the day she must choose whether to become mortal or to serve the devil Madam Satan extracts revenge against Sabrina's father by targeting the teenage witch, especially through her sexually frustrated boyfriend, Harvey. Hack indulges this grim rendition with sepia-toned illustrations that emphasize the sickly yellows and gory reds a color scheme that resembles a bloody fingerprint. Though his line work is realistic, the inked shadows are also wild and lively. The witches here, sallow and nude in their pure form, eat corpses, steal the flesh off beautiful faces, seduce, and murder. And it's not just the bad guys who are openly satanic. Sabrina's loving aunties are the ones emphatically salting human meat for dinner. Madam Satan's face is particularly disturbing skull eyes, a missing nose, and skeletal cheeks offset by ruby lips. This is not your mother's Sabrina, but like Afterlife with Archie (2014), it's a welcome though unsettling deviance from the clean-cut Archiverse.--Hyzy, Biz Copyright 2016 Booklist
