Sabrina the Teenage Witch #65
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeSabrina the Teenage Witch #65 (May 2005) sits in the heart of writer-artist Tania del Rio's landmark manga-style reinvention of the title, which began with issue #58 in 2004 and ran through issue #100 in 2009 — one of the earliest and most sustained attempts by a mainstream American publisher to produce an ongoing shōjo-influenced monthly comic aimed at a young all-ages readership. The 'Stormy Weather' story continues del Rio's serialized, continuity-driven approach, a deliberate break from the episodic gag-strip format that had defined the Archie house style for decades. By weaving a romantic quadrangle among Sabrina, Harvey, Shinji, and Llandra through multi-issue arcs, the run demonstrated that Archie's characters could sustain long-form dramatic storytelling — a creative argument that resonated across the publisher's later reinventions. The issue also reflects the broader mid-2000s mainstreaming of manga aesthetics in American youth comics, with Archie committing its flagship witch title to the experiment for a full five years.
In "Caught on Tape," Sabrina the Teenage Witch swaps her date with Harvey for a magical mission when her Aunt Hilda lands her first assignment on the Magic Council—tracking down a mortal who stole an animal from the magical realm. With Tania del Rio writing and illustrating the story, and Jim Amash handling inks, this 2005 issue blends teen drama with spellbinding mischief, all wrapped in a cover by del Rio and Amash.
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Tania del Rio came to the title directly from TOKYOPOP's Rising Stars of Manga anthology (vol. 2, 2003), where her entry 'Lovesketch' caught Archie's attention and led to her taking over both writing and art duties beginning with issue #58 in 2004. Del Rio, a graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design with a BFA in animation, restructured the series as an interconnected shōjo narrative, simultaneously severing the title's long-standing ties to either the live-action sitcom or the animated series continuities and introducing the Magical Realm and the Charm School as recurring settings. By issue #65, the series was roughly eight issues into that new framework, with del Rio building toward a larger political storyline involving the Magic Realm's ruling council while keeping Sabrina's romantic entanglements front and center.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published May 2005 by Archie Publications; 32 pages, full color.
- Written and drawn by Tania del Rio — the same creator who relaunched the title in a shōjo manga style beginning with issue #58 in 2004 and sustained the run through issue #100 in 2009 (a 42-issue tenure).
- Lead story titled 'Stormy Weather': Sabrina, Llandra, Shinji, and Harvey travel to a dilapidated winter cabin near a ski resort; the girls must use magic to restore it secretly before a snowstorm strands Harvey and Shinji away from the cabin.
- Cover by Holly Golightly, a frequent cover contributor to Archie titles of this era.
- Issue falls within the mid-run of del Rio's serialized romantic quadrangle involving Sabrina, Harvey (her mortal boyfriend), Shinji (a Charm School student), and Llandra (Sabrina's best friend) — a multi-year arc that replaced the earlier episodic format.
- The series was cut free from both the live-action sitcom and the animated series continuities starting with issue #58; #65 carries none of the TV-adaptation character designs or plotlines.
- The early issues of del Rio's manga run (#58–61) were collected in the trade paperback Sabrina: The Magic Revisited; subsequent arcs were collected in the four-volume The Magic Within series published by Archie Comics in 2013.
- All five characters indexed in this issue — Sabrina Spellman, Harvey Kinkle, Hilda Spellman, Zelda Spellman, and Salem — are established recurring cast members of the del Rio era, not debut appearances.
Cast · 5 characters
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Reprinted in Sabrina the Teenage Witch: The Magic Within #1 (2013)
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