Josie and the Pussycats in Space
Written by Alex de Campi
Art by Devaki Neogi and Lee Loughridge
Lettering by Jack Morelli
Published by Archie Comics
‘Rama Rating: 8 out of 10
What do you get when you cross the cramped, paranoid horor of John Carpenter’s The Thing with an all-female power pop trio? Why, Josie and the Pussycats in Space, of course!
Written with a fun but gleefully dark energy by Alex de Campi and given shockingly visceral displays of alien-on-human violence by Devaki Neogi and Lee Loughridge, Josie and the Pussycats in Space delivers a rollercoaster of a read. One minute it is a fun comedy about exhausted musicians and their entourage, trying to make a living on the edges of space; the next, it’s a pitched tale of survival horror in which our cast faces down a terrifying entity, bent on consuming and duplicating its victims for a mass takeover. With those powers combined, Josie and the Pussycats in Space stands as a solid Archie’s Weird Mysteries-style story in the company’s genre-inspired line of side titles.
While Josie and the Pussycats in Space takes some really dark, harrowing turns throughout its five-issue run, the setup is pretty familiar. Positing a world in which the Pussycats’ stardom reaches all the way into outer space, writer Alex de Campi grounds Josie and the gang early and with plenty of charm. Her Melody in particular is a real hoot, calling to mind the broadly comic, and occasionally fourth-wall-breaking take on her from the Marguerite Bennett and Cameron DeOrdio volume of Josie. Armed with these sound characterizations, de Campi then starts to twist the knife plot-wise, upending the Pussycats’ galactic tour with disaster.
It is here when the series starts to show its teeth, morphing from a wry comedy to a tense horror thriller. Even better, de Campi shows early that she’s not afraid to make this a life-and-death situation, plunging the band into a fight for their lives against a foe that is learning how to best dispatch them. Thatsaid, once the tonal switch happens, some of her in-world texture about the new state of the “Archie Universe” reads a bit wooden and some of the jokes don’t land as well as you would hope. But the weird tonal jumble adds to the series’ charm, giving it a real fun, schlocky feel right up until the final beat. One that gives the series a truly unexpected down note of an ending. The tonal switches could have been smoother, but I do very much appreciate the series’ effort to put the horror back into horror comedy.
Aiding in that effort are artists Devaki Neogi and Lee Loughridge, who give this series a tremendously dark and cramped feeling throughout. Taking inspiration from classic horror comics of old, Neogi and Loughridge inject a fun EC Comics vibe into these five issues, moving readers from cramped spaceship interiors to the vast, yawning void of hyperspace. Most of the layouts here are pretty simple, never really breaking out of the panel grid set up save for a few random splash pages, usually of the attacking aliens or how they consume bodies.
But the real standout of the pair’s artwork is it’s brutality and unsettling way it displays the alien antagonist. Though never explicitly “gory,” the pair deliver a hybrid of the anthropomorphic personality of Marvel’s Symbiotes and the titular face-stealer of the horror film The Thing. The result is a skin-crawling showing from the two, one that consistently creeps through the issues either in a solid or semi-solid form, taking crew members one-by-one in theatrical, startling displays. I didn’t really expect a lot of body horror from Josie and the Pussycats in Space, but Devaki Neogi and Lee Loughridge really swing for the fences in terms of how “gross” this series can get.
Though not as broadly funny as Archie vs. Predator or as pointedly bleak as Afterlife with Archie, Josie and the Pussycats in Space is a fun new “What If?” for the line’s range of genre exercises. Thanks to the keen edge and solid characterizations of Alex de Campi and the wonderful horror visuals from Devaki Neogi and Lee Loughridge, this series is a worthwhile read for fans and newcomers to Archie’s dark expanded universe.