Archie Comics' Chief Creative Officer and writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa finally addressed the chronic tardiness of these titles and promised that SABRINA #2 will be released on April 15, 2015, and AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE #8 will be released on May 6, 2015:
“I could give you a dozen excuses, and none of them are really good. We really really wanted to launch the book at New York Comic-Con because it was close to Halloween. In retrospect, we should’ve delayed the launch to get a few issues in the can,” says Aguirre-Sacasa. “there’s no excuse, and there will never be a delay like there was been between Sabrina 1 and 2. Like, never. We are very, very lucky that we have an incredibly passionate and understanding fan base that is eager for the book.”We also learned that Archie Comics will be launching a new Archie Horror imprint in May 2015. I think that's their way of telling readers that they haven't given up on their best-selling horror titles, even if they struggle to get new issues out to the readers.
They also announced that they are planning a third title under the Archie Horror imprint, but were skimpy on the details:
As for that mysterious third horror series, the publisher isn’t quite ready to reveal what it is just yet. But Aguirre-Sacasa was able to give us a pretty sizable set of clues.
“I can tell you that it will be centered around a major Archie character,” teases Aguirre-Sacasa. “She has appeared in one of our books before. And [the book] will be in a genre we have not explored or even hinted at in Sabrina—in Afterlife, we’ve only hinted at it a tiny, tiny bit. And it will be set in the present.”The running theory is that this will be a new take on Josie & the Pussycats or It's Josie. I've read suggestions that Josie & the Pussycats might make for an interesting werecat/lycanthropy concept, which might be interesting.
I've also had a few online friends suggest that the third title might focus on Cheryl Blossom.
Personally, I think it's more likely that we'll see something patterned after It's Josie or maybe the Pussycats. And it might be fun to adapt their old "Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space" cartoon series into a creepy alien invasion story (shades of the 1980s "War of the Worlds" TV series??).
But I think it's more likely that this new series will be a ghost story/haunted house type of title -- only because of the clue that the genre was hinted at in AFTERLIFE #2 and I've got that image of Mr. Lodge being haunted by the spirit of his dead life stuck in my head.
I'm still holding out hope for a TWO-FISTED TONI TOPAZ: MISTRESS OF THE MACABRE series -- guest-starring the Carneys, of course! But that might be a bit of a long shot...