Sabrina, the Teenage Witch #1
Sabrina, the Teenage Witch #1 (April 1971) marks the graduation of Archie Comics' most enduring supernatural character from anthology guest star to series headliner — a transition nine years in the making from her debut in Archie's Madhouse #22 (October 1962). By anchoring a regular book around a teenage witch navigating the tension between the mortal world and the magical one, Archie demonstrated that its core humor formula could support genuine genre hybridization, broadening what a funny-animal-style publisher could publish. The series ran continuously for 77 issues through 1983, establishing Sabrina's cast and story rhythms so durably that every subsequent adaptation — from the Filmation cartoons to the 1996 Melissa Joan Hart sitcom to Netflix's Chilling Adventures — has drawn on the template this issue launched. Its cultural reach eventually made Sabrina one of the most recognizable witch characters in American popular culture.
In "Strange Love," Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, spins a little magic after catching Harvey with another girl—casting a spell on Archie to make him obsessively smitten with her. But when Veronica shows up furious at Archie’s sudden behavior, Sabrina must quickly undo the spell and wipe both memories clean. A playful, spellbound twist on teenage romance, drawn with Dan DeCarlo’s signature charm and Rudy Lapick’s crisp inks, all on a cover by DeCarlo and Lapick.
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Sabrina was co-created by writer George Gladir and artist Dan DeCarlo as what both creators expected to be a one-off gag story for Archie's Madhouse #22 in October 1962; reader demand turned her into a recurring anthology fixture. Gladir later recalled that he named the character 'Sabrina' after a junior high school acquaintance whose name, he eventually realized, was actually Sabra Holbrook — chosen partly because it had what he described as a New England ring to it. The character's television breakthrough came when Filmation licensed her for The Archie Comedy Hour in 1969, and the success of those animated segments — later repackaged as a standalone Sabrina the Teenage Witch animated series in 1971 — gave Archie editorial the commercial confidence to launch a dedicated solo comic that same year. Issue #1 was scripted by Frank Doyle with interior and cover art by Dan DeCarlo, inked by Rudy Lapick, and lettered by Bill Yoshida.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First issue of Sabrina's debut solo ongoing comic series, cover-dated April 1971, published by Archie Comics (Archie Publications).
- Sabrina Spellman was originally created by writer George Gladir and artist Dan DeCarlo; her first-ever appearance was in Archie's Madhouse #22 (October 1962), nearly a decade before this solo title launched.
- Issue #1 credits: script by Frank Doyle; pencils/cover by Dan DeCarlo; inks by Rudy Lapick; lettering by Bill Yoshida — a separate creative team from Sabrina's original creators.
- The launch of the solo title was directly driven by the success of Filmation's animated Sabrina segments, which debuted in The Archie Comedy Hour in 1969 and were repackaged as a standalone animated series in 1971.
- The series ran for 77 issues (1971–1983), making it one of Archie's longest-running spin-off titles of the Bronze Age.
- In the original 1971 comics, Salem is depicted as an ordinary, non-speaking cat; the backstory of Salem as a punished warlock turned into a cat was introduced only with the 1996 live-action sitcom.
- Each issue in the series included backup Li'l Jinx single-page strips by Joe Edwards alongside the main Sabrina anthology stories, giving the book a two-feature format typical of Archie's Bronze Age titles.
- Archie Comics published an official 48-page full-facsimile reprint edition of issue #1 in August 2025, confirming the issue's landmark status within the publisher's own history.
Cast · 12 characters
Full credits
Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
▸ Reveal full plot — may contain spoilers
When Sabrina sees Harvey with another girl, she decides to pay him back by going out with another boy, so she puts Archie under her spell and makes him uncontrollably in love with her. But before Harvey can see them together, Veronica shows up and gets angry at Archie, so Sabrina has to end the spell and erase their memories.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).