Excited to restart Sabrina? Here's how the teenage witch (and her cat) evolved

After already reinventing Archie and the gang on CW's "Riverdale", comic book writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has modernized another classic Archie character: Sabrina Spellman (also known as Sabrina the Teenage Witch) , who returns to TV on Friday with Netflix. "Sliding Adventures of Sabrina." The series features Kiernan Shipka of "Mad Men" as Sabrina, a young woman struggling to choose between becoming a witch or being deadly, when forces of evil conspire against her.

This new series stands out clearly from the legendary light sitcom from Sabrina's previous series of real acts, "Sabrina the Teenage Witch", starring Melissa Joan Hart. But Sabrina has undergone many reinventions since its inception, 56 years ago. Here is a reminder of his story, on screen and on the page.

"The crazy house of Archie"

Created by writer George Gladir and artist Dan DeCarlo, Sabrina made her debut in number 22 of the comic book series Archie's Mad House in 1962. She was featured as a mischievous teenager who loves play tricks on classmates. The question states that Sabrina can never fall in love or lose her powers (character trait reminiscent of Kim Novak's witch in the movie "Bell, Book, and Candle" of 1958), but this aspect of the character is abandoned enough quickly, so many of his stories involve going out with girls and flirting with boys. Subsequent publications reveal that Sabrina lives with her aunts Hilda and Zelda, who look like stereotypical witches – unlike Sabrina, who dresses like a modern teenager. Sabrina appeared in Archie's Mad House editions throughout the 1960s before moving on to other Archie Comics titles, but she enjoyed a greater improvement in her visibility after appearing on television. .

First animated appearances

In 1969, Sabrina was introduced to new audiences on a special television show called "Archie and her new friends". Shortly after, she appeared in recurring segments of "The Archie Comedy Hour", in which the character tries to use her magic to solve her problems. problems by hiding from Archie and her friends that she is a witch. In 1970, Sabrina received a spin-off, "Sabrina and the Groovies Goolies", in which she met wacky situations involving the Goolies, a group of monsters inspired by Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, a mummy and a werewolf. The Goolies were then split into their own series and the Sabrina show was renamed as the first "Sabrina the Teenage Witch".

This series gave Sabrina a story of origin: the opening narrative says that Hilda and Zelda were trying to create a wicked witch, but accidentally knocked out "pretty girls" in their potion., inadvertently creating Sabrina, the "grooviest teenage witch". The series lasted until 1974. Sabrina joined Archie in 1977 for "The New Archie and Sabrina Hour", but the show was canceled after one season. She continued to appear in comics (including her own comic strip from 1971), but she did not appear on television until the mid-1990s.

"Sabrina the teenage witch"

In 1996, a television pilot film of "Sabrina the Teen Girl" starring Melissa Joan Hart (and starring the future "Deadpool" Ryan Reynolds) made her showtime debut. The pilot was chosen for a series by ABC, but most of the actors in the film were dropped, with the exception of Hart. The series began on September 27 of the same year and was viewed by more than 17 million viewers. It was the highest rated series in T.G.I.F. programming for the next four years.

In this version, Sabrina is the daughter of a man and a witch. She discovers she is a witch at the age of 16. Partly because of a curse, Sabrina can not be with her parents, so she lives with her aunts Hilda (Caroline Rhea) and Zelda (Beth Broderick). A typical episode could show that Sabrina was trying to use her powers and making them turn against them, usually leading to some kind of life lesson. Several details of the live-action series were then added to the comics: In addition to the half-dead filiation of Sabrina, her cat, Salem, who in the comics was a regular orange tabby, became a black cat that speaks , and Hilda and Zelda turned into people of normal appearance. The show lasted four seasons on ABC before being canceled and resumed by the WB, which aired its last three.

"Sabrina: the animated series"

While the live program was broadcast on ABC, a Saturday morning cartoon entitled "Sabrina: The Animated Series" was also produced. This series is inspired more directly by the comic book, Sabrina being described as a schoolgirl who already knows her witch descent. The show nonetheless retained Salem as a talking cat. Hart's younger sister, Emily, was playing Sabrina, while Melissa was expressing Hilda and Zelda. The series lasted 65 episodes but was canceled from ABC around the same time ABC canceled the live action "Sabrina". Sabrina then made some more lively appearances in "Sabrina's Secret Life" from 2003 to 2004 and "Sabrina: Secrets of a Teenage Witch" from 2013 to 2014, although neither series was successful. or the popularity of previous series.

"Sabrina's Icing Adventures"

The new Sabrina series has its roots in the recent history of comics. In 2013, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa began writing Afterlife With Archie, a series of horrors in which Riverdale is plagued by an epidemic of zombies caused by Sabrina's use of her magic to resurrect the Jughead dog. The series was full of gore and graphic violence, and it was a huge success. Aguirre-Sacasa did the same with another series of mature horrors entitled "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina". The book features a 1960s Sabrina who seeks to become a witch while she is the target of Madame Satan, a perverse witch who seeks to avenge the Spellman family. Aguirre-Sacasa was hired in 2014 as Creative Director of Archie Comics and he developed "Riverdale" for the CW, which debuted three years later. Many fans expected Sabrina to eventually make an appearance in the series, but a new series, based on "Chilling Adventures," was created for Netflix. Sabrina's longtime fans may be shocked by "Chilling Adventures" (especially with all of Satan's calls), but the new series offers Sabrina a refreshing new essence.