Sabrina the Teenage Witch

Sabrina the Teenage Witch
Sabrina the Teenage Witch #1 (April 1971). Cover art by Dan DeCarlo. Original title is stylized Sabrina: The Teen-Age Witch
Publication information
Publisher	Archie Comics
Format	Ongoing series
Genre	Teen humor
Publication date	(vol. 1) April 1971 - Jan. 1983 (vol. 2) May 1997 - Dec. 1999 (vol. 3) Jan. 2000 - Sept. 2009
No. of issues	(vol. 1): 77 (vol. 2): 32 (vol. 3): 104

Sabrina the Teenage Witch is a comic book series published by Archie Comics about the adventures of a fictional American teenager named Sabrina Spellman. Sabrina was created by writer George Gladir and artist Dan DeCarlo, and first appeared in Archie's Madhouse #22 (cover-dated Oct. 1962). Storylines of the character at elementary-school-age also appear under the title "Sabrina -- That Cute Little Witch" in almost all of the Little Archie comics.

The premise is that Sabrina, a "half-witch" – her mother is an ordinary human, or "mortal" as witches refer to them, while her father is a warlock – lives with her two aunts, Hilda and Zelda Spellman, both witches themselves, in the fictional town of Greendale, which is located somewhere near Riverdale, the home of Archie Andrews. Also living with the three women as the family pet is Salem Saberhagen, a warlock who has been turned into a cat as punishment for world domination attempts. Sabrina's primary romantic interest is her mortal boyfriend Harvey Kinkle who, like nearly all the other mortals in Sabrina's world, is unaware she is a witch.

Most of Sabrina's adventures consist of Sabrina either trying to use her powers in secret to help others – witches generally are not allowed to tell mortals about their abilities or existence – or dealing with the day-to-day trials of being a teenager. A recurring theme in Sabrina's stories is her learning more about the proper use of her powers, either through her aunts or from trips to a magical dimension that is the home of various magical/mythological creatures, including other witches. Various names are given to this dimension; the mid-late 2000s comics refer to it as the "Magic Realm,"^[1] while the live-action sitcom referred to it as the "Other Realm".

The comic's characters have also appeared in various other media formats. The live-action sitcom, in which Sabrina discovers her powers at the age of sixteen, aired for a combined seven seasons on ABC and the WB. Earlier, there had been an animated series produced by Filmation Associates. Another format was a series of paperback novels (see list below) written by various authors, including Nancy Holder, Diana G. Gallagher, and Mel Odom, as well as a late 1990s/early 2000s animated series set in the original Archie Comics continuity, where Sabrina already knows about her powers while in junior high. She is portrayed by Melissa Joan Hart on the live action sitcom and Kiernan Shipka on the Riverdale spin-off, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.