After tearing through his own well-received one-shot, Jughead’s furry alter ego gets an ongoing series, Jughead: The Hunger, by writer Frank Tieri and artists Pat and Tim Kennedy.
“We purposely left the door open with the one shot, we told you if you made Jughead the Hunger a hit we’d make more — and since you more than held up your end of the bargain, here we are,” Tieri said in the press release. “Fans can expect more of everything they loved about the one shot now as we expand our universe– more werewolf Juggie, more bad ass Betty, more conflicted Archie and more twists and turns than you can shake a severed arm at.”
Tieri worked with artist Michael Walsh on the one-shot, who is doing one of the covers for the first issue of the new series. Colorist Matt Herms and letterer Jack Morelli will round out the creative team.
The comic is the third ongoing horror title released by Archie, following Afterlife with Archie and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Instead of an Archie Horror logo, though, the covers for the first issue sport an “Archie’s Madhouse Presents” emblem. Archie’s Mad House was a title published by Archie from 1959 until 1982 that featured the works of Dan DeCarlo, Harry Lucey, Chic Stone, Bob White and even Wally Wood, as they told zany stories featuring the Archie characters and new ones like Captain Sprocket and Clyde Didit; it’s also where Sabrina the Teenage Witch first debuted. So it’s an appropriate reference.
The story involves the always-hungry Jughead getting even hungrier during the full moon, as he turns into a vampire. The one-shot dealt with his origins and also introduced Betty as a bad-ass werewolf hunter.
The new series debuts Oct. 25. Check out covers and some preliminary art from the first issue below.