I’m a huge fan of Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. I liked the old comic incarnation just fine, but being a bit of a spooky girl myself, especially during my bygone teenage years, I always felt she was just a little too cute, a little too nice, a little too desperate to be normal when it was within her substantial power to show everyone, especially the mean girls, exactly how very very it was to be special.

And, truth be told, I’ve been missing the chatty, snarky version of Salem a bit.

I’m happy to report that he’s back in Kelly Thompson’s Sabrina The Teenage Witch #1 from Archie Comics (art by Veronica Fish, Andy Fish, and Jack Morelli), which dropped this past NCBD (3/27).

I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to feel about comic Sabrina after the conclusion of the show’s first season – Harvey doing what we all knew he was going to do eventually and hiding behind townie superstition, Sabrina joining the Weird Sisters (Prudence, Dorcas, and Abigail) as queens of the Academy of Unseen Arts, and Nicholas Scratch getting the opportunity to woo Ms. Spellman after she finally signed her name in the Dark Lord’s book. It was also so perfect and perfectly, well, chilling.

Would the comic be as dark? As evocative? The color palette and lovely but distinctly non-horror-oriented cover art seemed to suggest it would not. Would the panels return to the “Disneyfied” Melissa Joan Hart era? It’s not typically Thompson’s MO, but writers are allowed to try new things. And hey, I didn’t mind the show at the time. I’m a little too world weary for something that straight-up cute now, but that’s on me.

Well, never fear, witches, Thompson has managed to strike a perfect balance between Sabrina’s two incarnations that will please both camps and everyone in between. There are cat butt jokes, a properly dignified Aunt Zelda, a properly adorable Aunt Hilda, and concerns about attracting attention by casting spells. Which, of course, doesn’t stop our heroine from doing so to change her hair to a more “natural blonde,” (“just a little one”), giving a cute boy at her new school a nudge to flirt with her, embarrassing the mean girl, and triggering a demon to stalk the woods (oops).

Sabrina the Teenage Witch #1 is a delightful foray into the Archie Comics world and is great for fans and new readers alike. I’ll definitely be following along, and I think all of you will enjoy the ride as well.