A Denver comic writer just landed a byline in one of the most enduring names in American pop culture. R. Alan Brooks has written a story appearing in the Archie Comic Digest Halloween Special, which hit comic stores, grocery stores, and drug stores Friday, and he'll celebrate the milestone with a signing event at Mutiny Comics and Coffee in Englewood next week.
Brooks, who has been an Archie Comics fan since childhood, wrote an eight-page story for the digest that weaves together several threads suggested to him by Archie Comics Co-CEO Nancy Silberkleit, according to Westword. Those concepts, drawn from Silberkleit's own interests in education, cat overpopulation, and the Rutland Halloween Parade, gave Brooks the raw material to build a single narrative around Scarlett Saltee, the autistic Archie character Silberkleit and her creative team introduced in January 2020 as a half-Irish, half-Filipino figure meant to promote neurodiversity awareness among readers, per The Art of Autism. Silberkleit, who spent two decades as a public school art teacher in New Jersey before stepping into Archie's executive leadership in March 2009 following the death of her husband and former publisher Michael Silberkleit, has said Archie moments bring people together.
The story includes Jughead along with Black characters Chuck and Nancy, and it sends the Riverdale gang into the orbit of the real-life Rutland Halloween Parade, an annual Vermont event started in 1960 by comic book enthusiast Tom Fagan. Handling the art for Brooks's story is Colleen Doran, an Eisner and Bram Stoker Award-winning illustrator best known for her creator-owned series A Distant Soil and her work with Marvel and DC characters, according to the Comic-Con Museum.
A Parade With Comic-History Weight
Setting an Archie story at the Rutland parade taps into a lineage that predates Brooks by more than five decades. The event was featured in Avengers #83 in 1970 and again in Batman #237 in 1971, per the seed reporting, before becoming the site of comics' first-ever multi-company crossover in 1972, when writers Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway, and Len Wein coordinated a shared storyline across Amazing Adventures #16, Thor #207, and Justice League of America #103. That 1972 stunt, as detailed by ScreenRant, married Marvel and DC characters at the real-world parade, and it's the kind of nostalgic touchstone that gives Brooks's Archie debut extra resonance among longtime comic readers.
Archie Andrews himself has his own origin worth noting: the character was created to capitalize on the success of Andy Hardy, the film character played by Mickey Rooney, and first appeared in Pep Comics #22 in October 1941. Brooks's story marks a new chapter for that eight-decade-old franchise, and he told the outlet the digest tale may turn out to be his first Archie story rather than his only one.
How the Assignment Came Together
The connection between Brooks and Silberkleit that turned into a writing assignment began at the Jaipur Literature Festival, where Brooks moderated a panel that included Silberkleit. He arrived late after a blown tire on his 2005 Toyota Camry on the way to the festival, and the two ended up talking for hours once he got there — a conversation that eventually led to the Archie opportunity.
Brooks brings a resume that spans local journalism and national platforms alike. He has written the weekly comic strip What'd I Miss? for The Colorado Sun since the digital outlet launched its comic section in 2019, and the strip has picked up multiple Colorado Press Association awards for engaging directly with current cultural issues. He's also taught graphic novel writing in the MFA programs at Regis University and Wilkes University and sits on the board of directors at Denver's Lighthouse Writers Workshop, which credits his years of writing concise weekly newspaper comics with helping him condense multi-layered social issues into Archie's eight-page digest format.
A Body of Work Beyond Riverdale
Brooks's other comic credits include Flatland, published in 2019, along with The Burning Metronome, The Mask in Your Dreams, and Anguish Garden. His 2007 novel The Pull of the Earth won the Colorado Book Award for literary fiction, and his 2014 book The Snarktastic Guide to College Success rounds out a bibliography that spans fiction, comics, and nonfiction. In October 2020, he delivered a TEDxMileHigh talk titled “When the world is burning, is art a waste of time?” that drew more than one million views within two months of its release.
He's also expanded into film, serving as writer and executive producer on Always, Most of the Time, a romantic drama short co-created with director Victor V. Hogan II that explores relationship trauma and time travel and premiered at the American Black Film Festival in June 2025 — a project he's now adapting back into a graphic novel. In February 2022, the Denver Art Museum debuted a permanent graphic novel exhibit Brooks wrote and illustrated about 19th-century Black cowboy Nat Love, commissioned as part of the museum's renovated Western American Art gallery.
Meet Brooks in Englewood
Fans can meet Brooks in person from 3 to 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, August 26, at Mutiny Comics and Coffee, 3483 South Broadway in Englewood. The location reflects a broader shift along the corridor: Mutiny vacated its 115-year-old original storefront at 2 South Broadway in Denver in 2024 amid rising commercial rents, relocating to Englewood, as Hoodline previously reported. The former Denver building was later purchased by a local real estate investor for $1.5 million in May 2026.
The Archie Comic Digest Halloween Special is available now at comic stores, grocery stores, and drug stores, giving Denver readers an easy chance to pick up Brooks's first foray into one of comics' oldest and most recognizable universes before heading to the Englewood signing.
