Howdy, folks, my name is Matt Sutton, and I am the "comic book cohort" you may remember my colleague Bert mentioning in the past. As you can assume, I'm a comic book fan. I don't consider myself an aficionado by any means, but I do enjoy them quite a bit. I've been a fan of superheroes since I was a kid, thanks to the old
Super Friends cartoon, but only within the last eight months did I start reading comic books on a regular basis. And now, I'm a veritable comic book junkie.
But now that I've introduced myself, I might as well speak about why I'm here. Bert started this blog a while back after one of our many visits to our favorite comic book store, and recently asked me if I'd like to contribute. I said sure, and after weeks of wondering what, if anything, I'd say here, I came to a conclusion. So I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey into a young man's comic book collection. And as we venture into the bizarre and unusual, the wild and weird, the mad and the macabre, you'll be privy to just what exactly I'm thinking about the material we'll be perusing.
I should probably preface this review by saying that I have an unabashed infatuation with horror movies, especially those released during the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. And if I had to choose amongst all the villains who gained prevalence during that era, my allegiances would lie with Jason Voorhees, the behemoth whose hockey mask and machete haunted Camp Crystal Lake in no less than ten
Friday the 13th movies. But like I'm sure people did with the legendary Universal monsters of the 1930s and 1940s, I — and quite a few other fans of the genre — always wondered what would happen if the popular villains that terrorized my generation's horror movies did battle. Sure, Jason fought Leatherface in a (very rare) comic book miniseries published by Topps Comics in 1995, but what people really wanted to see was an epic cinematic showdown between the kingpins of '80s horror: Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, the razor-fingered boogeyman played by Robert Englund in the
Nightmare on Elm Street series. King Kong fought Godzilla, Frankenstein fought the Wolf Man and Dracula, but what would happen if Freddy Krueger fought Jason Voorhees? After a decade of buildup, that question was finally answered in 2003's appropriately-titled movie
Freddy vs. Jason, which turned out to be a financial success by topping the American box office charts for two weeks in a row.
But how do you top something like that? The answer is quite simple, really. We've seen two horror icons go at it, so the next logical step would be to add a third one. The rumors of
Freddy vs. Jason 2 started swirling after the movie's success, rumors the two titans of terror may be battling Ash Williams, the cocky wiseass played by Bruce Campbell in Sam Raimi's
Evil Dead trilogy. But thanks to certain legal complications involving the rights of certain characters, that movie has yet to be made, and it probably never will be. But the movie that could have been finally saw the light of day through the pages of a six-issue comic miniseries published earlier this year by the DC Comics imprint WildStorm.
Written by James Kuhoric and illustrated by Jason Craig,
Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash adapts Jeff Katz's pitch for its unproduced cinematic counterpart. The story picks up five years after the events of
Freddy vs. Jason, and the town of Crystal Lake is about to rise above the horrors that have plagued it for so long. Unfortunately, some demons of the past cannot be so easily buried. Though defeated (and decapitated) at the end of the movie, Freddy is still alive inside of Jason's subconscious mind. And through the time he's spent living in ol' Jason's brain, Freddy has discovered that he can be resurrected and become even more powerful through an ancient book of spells known as "Necronomicon Ex Mortis." Using images of Jason's beloved mother to trick him, Freddy compels Jason to retrieve the Necromicon for him.
But little do Freddy or Jason know, though, that there is a major roadblock between them and the Necronomicon. Ash Williams has arrived in Crystal Lake to help the local S-Mart department store get ready for the Christmas shopping season. But when he hears of a series of violent murders being attributed to the local legend of Jason Voorhees, Ash believes that Jason may in fact be a demon straight from the pages of the Necronomicon itself. Ash's quest to destroy the cursed book pulls him directly into the path of the two prolific murderers, sparking a battle royale between them that once again coats Crystal Lake in a thick layer of fresh blood.
As much as I'd love to have seen
Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash as a movie, I'm not sure it could have worked as anything other than a comic book. Its over-the-top insanity is almost too much for any one movie to contain. And besides, I'm not sure if the worlds of Freddy, Jason, and Ash could have meshed well together in a cinematic form. (And that's even with the Necronomicon's cameo in
Jason Goes To Hell.) However, as a fan of all three characters,
Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash was in no way a disappointment or a letdown.
One of the big things I enjoyed about it is how James Kuhoric and Jason Craig managed to work in references to the histories of all three characters. The series is populated with references to all three franchises, both through Kuhoric's writing and Craig's art. Someone who has plenty of knowledge about the
Elm Street,
Friday the 13th, and
Evil Dead franchises would hopefully pick up on these moments, which could make for a much more refreshing experience. It's like the reference to purple stretchy pants in the recently-released
Incredible Hulk movie; it's structured in such a way that non-fans can enjoy it, but the die-hards will eat it up.
Aside from the homages to the pasts of the three lead characters,
Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash still holds up as a solid horror comic. It has plenty of thrills, excitement, and good old-fashioned blood and guts. I also really liked Craig's artwork. With help coming from Thomas Mason's excellent coloring work, Craig's art packs the comics with a visceral feel that gives the violence the impact that it requires.
Needless to say, I enjoyed
Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash quite a bit. It's a fun sort of story in the vein of DC's
Elseworlds and Marvel's
What If...? books, only with no superheroes and a lot more sex and violence. Freddy, Jason, and Ash might never see combat against one another on the big screen, but the real of comic books is a good enough battleground for me. I'd suggest that non-fans should probably flip through it first, but you hardcore fans of one or all of these three characters should be ashamed of themselves if you've missed out on it so far. My advice to you horror fans who have yet to read it should run out to your nearest comic book shop and see if they have any back issues. Or you could just wait to pick up the trade paperback when it's released on September 10th.
So that's my review of WildStorm's
Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash, and I hope you enjoyed it. I've got a few more ideas for future reviews, so we'll just have to see what I can get done and when. So be on the lookout, okay?
