This Article Originally Ran On Blumhouse.com
When we talk comics, 1962 is a very important year. It was the year Marvel Comics introduced the world to Spider-Man, Thor, Ant-Man, and Hulk, changing the comic book market forever. Quietly, as Marvel was building their Mighty Marching Society, and DC was basking in the super sales of their heroes, Archie Comics writer George Gladir and artist Dan DeCarlo came up with an idea for a single issue character, someone they figured would not be much of anything to the world, but would certainly fill the pages of ARCHIE’S MADHOUSE for the month. In issue 22, October 1962, George and Dan brought Sabrina into the world.
Sabrina was your normal teenaged girl of the early 60s. Obsessed with boys and trying to find her place in the world. Oh, and she was a witch. Sabrina used her powers to secretly help others - something that drove her aunts crazy. Like other witches, Sabrina’s aunts wanted her to use her powers for more nefarious reasons. The only person Sabrina could confide in was her cat, Salem who was actually a boy turned into a cat after he tried to use magic to rule the world. When she could get away from her aunts, Sabrina would rush off to see Harvey Kinkle, her clumsy and somewhat absent minded boyfriend.
Sabrina turned out to be a huge hit with readers, and before long she was showing up in other Archie Comics publications. By the '70s, Sabrina had her own animated series, as well as her own comic, SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH, which ran for 77 issues. Sabrina became a household name and an idol to girls around the world. But by the mid 1980s, Sabrina all but vanished. Her cartoon was cancelled, as was her comic. She would pop up in ARCHIE DIGEST from time to time when they would reprint her old stories, but for the most part, the teenaged enchantress was gone from the public lexicon.
She would return with a vengeance in 1996 with a massively successful live action sitcom that would run for seven years and spawn three made for TV movies. Concurrent with the sitcom, Sabrina would rule the Saturday morning airwaves in animated form. Sabrina was the family friendly answer to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, though Buffy made her TV debut a year after the wonderful witch.
Since the 90s, Sabrina has been a marketing powerhouse for the Archie Comics company. Along with the TV adventures, Sabrina has had a series of comics, including a crossover with SONIC THE HEDGEHOG that I have never read but am now endlessly obsessing about. How does that happen?! I need to know! As with all things comic, Sabrina recently grew up with her audience. She’s still a teen, she’s just a little more… creepy.
It started with the hit series AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE where the residents of Riverdale find themselves in the midst of a zombie apocalypse started by Sabrina and Jugghead. The series revitalized sales for the company, saving it from near bankruptcy. Also, it is really well done. You should totally check it out. Arguably the best horror comic out today.
With the success of AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE, Archie Comics looked to find more ways to bring their characters into the horror genre. Sabrina was an obvious choice, and THE CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA began publication in 2014. The series, set in the 1960s, follows Sabrina as she turns 16 and is forced to choose between a life of witchcraft and her boyfriend. Oh, and she needs to save the world from Madam Satan. The series has received rave reviews.
Witches have been a focus of the fears of man for as long as human history goes back. A mix of misogynistic fears of women and power, as well as good old fashioned idiocy of people of the past, many things that could not be explained by known science at various points in history were attributed to witchcraft. Sadly, many young women have met horrible fates at the hands of frightened superstitious people. Even worse, it still happens today.
Adolfina Ocampos was tied to a stake, shot with arrows, then burned alive for practicing witchcraft in Paraguay in 2014. In 2015, a Nigerian boy was abandoned by his family for practicing witchcraft. He was three. If you think these kinds of things only happen in 3rd World countries, you would be wrong. In 2014, London police investigated 27 cases of child abuse where the child was accused of witchcraft by the parents. Between 2000 and 2012, over 100 women have been accused of, and killed for practicing, witchcraft in India.
Saudi Arabia has an Anti-Witchcraft Unit - a government agency that hunts down witches under purview of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Their orders are to find witches and reverse their evil spells. In 2011, when a severed wolf’s head was found wrapped in lingerie, the Anti-Witchcraft Unit was sent in. They were able to undo the spell that the wolf’s head was used in. According to a report in the Saudi paper Okaz, the unit was able to find the family that was cursed and somehow break the spell that was causing them great harm. In their first two years, the Anti-Witchcraft Unit had closed nearly 600 cases of witchcraft, the majority of accused being immigrants who worked as servants to wealthy families. More than a few were women who were accused of using witchcraft to force a man to sleep with them. What a shock.
In 2015, a Saudi judge who was accused of taking bribes claimed, in court, that he was under a spell and could not control himself, but he was receiving treatment through ruqyah, a rather common remedy for “evil eye”.
Fawza Falih Muhammad Ali is the last woman to be have been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for witchcraft. She was arrested and tried in 2006 for crimes of witchcraft, recourse to jinn, and animal slaughter. The evidence against her was the statement of a single man who claimed she had made him impotent. Ali was sentenced to death by beheading, but died before her sentence could be carried out. According to Saudi authorities, she choked to death while eating. They kept her death secret for nearly a year.
We may like to think that here, in the good old USA, we are above such things. Lucas Leonard would disagree with you if he hadn’t been beaten to death by his parents, his sister, and four other members of the Word of Life Christian Church in New Hartford, NY.
Lucas, 19, had become disillusioned by the church after Jerry Irwin had become the pastor. Irwin had turned the Pentecostal church into something more akin to a cult, setting himself as the leader. After Lucas expressed his desire to leave the church, an emergency all night counseling session was held.
At the session, which was attended by Lucas, his brother Christopher, their parents and sister, and 30 other members of the church, Lucas and Christopher were beaten repeatedly. The beatings lasted for fourteen hours and ended when parishioners believed that Lucas was dead. He wasn’t, not yet. Lucas would die the next day in the hospital. An autopsy showed that he died from blunt-force trauma to the torso and genitals. After his death, one of Lucas’ relatives claimed that he was involved in witchcraft and voodoo, which led the boy astray. The local police didn’t see that as a plausible reason for torturing and killing Lucas.
Humanity has always had a problem moving forward. We struggle with progress, fighting it all the way, constantly trying to keep things the way we think is best. The way it was when we were kids. Sadly, while we would like to think that we've moved beyond stupid superstitions and goofy beliefs, we're still the same species who figured our dicks weren't working because a woman hexed us.
If only Sabrina could put a spell on all of us and open our eyes to reality.