Riverdale Gets Invaded By Deadites In Archie X The Army Of Darkness

Archie Vs The Evil Dead is not a crossover I saw coming, tbh.

We don’t do a lot of comics news here, which is something I wouldn’t mind changing, so let’s start with a weird bit of news that just washed up on my shore. Archie Comics and Dynamite Entertainment have teamed up to deliver a crossover that will see Riverdale’s freckle-faced ladies’ man, Archie Andrews, team up with everyone’s favourite hard-luck horror hero, Ash Williams, for Archie X The Army Of Darkness. Yep, that’s a bit different.

This isn’t the first time Archie has crossed paths with franchises you wouldn’t expect America’s favourite teen to have much truck with, tangling with the Punisher and KISS back in the day and, recently, meeting Kevin Smith‘s Jay and Silent Bob. Jay even calls him a freckled fuck at one point, perhaps indicating that, in this post-Riverdale world, Archie and the gang aren’t necessarily as clean cut as they used to be (I gotta assume the regular comics are still all ages, though).

Writer Eric Burnham and artist Bill Glavan are bringing us this one, and the official synopsis hints at a hell of a body count – or is it heck, given it’s Archie? Anyway:

There’s a certain man — name’s Ash, you may have heard of him — who is doomed to battle against the forces of evil, over and over again, whether he likes it or not. No matter where he goes, the cycle of violence always repeats itself — until the day that he arrives in the picturesque town of Riverdale.

This supernaturally wholesome community seems to break the curse that has plagued Ash ever since he first encountered its otherworldly evil all those years ago. Or rather, the curse was broken — until an over-curious teenager named Archie finds a copy of the Necronomicon Ex Mortis and reads a portion of it aloud, summoning the horrifying Deadites once again!

Now, Ash and the good townsfolk of Riverdale must hold back the undead hordes long enough for Archie to undo what he’s unwittingly done. Otherwise, an Army of Darkness will roll over Riverdale and destroy everything and everyone in its path — and that’s just not going to happen on Ashley J. Williams’s watch!

Guess I gotta pick up a shitload of Archie books, as Banky once said in Chasing Amy.