With their “House of Horror” brand, New Line Cinema has been pimping their slasher franchises (Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Nightmare on Elm Street) for all they’re worth as of late, and by far the coolest bit of merchandise to be spawned out of this whole resurgence is a series of three individual one-shot comic books (published by Avatar Press and written by Chaos! Comics founder and Lady Death and Evil Ernie creator Brian Pulido) based on the each member of the terror trio—you know, the icons: Jason, Leatherface, and Freddy Krueger.
The machete-wielding, grim gore-creating goalie himself, Mr. Voorhees, is out to help more annoying humans meet their demise in his comic, and this time he’s being pursued and hunted down by the military, as a mayor and the daughter of the founder of Camp Crystal Lake have decided that they will start a new beginning and build a new resort over the old “camp blood” land. The trouble is, the “supernatural killer” that stalks the woods must be eliminated, and, well, as evidenced by a look at the freak’s filmography, Jason just isn’t that easy to kill.
Of course, Jason ends up slaughtering just about every character in the comic (who didn’t see that one coming), but, as in any Friday the 13th film, it’s not the fact that Jason kills that keeps his loyal fans coming back for more–it’s the creative methods he manages to do so, and this Friday the 13th comic does not disappoint. The reader gets the privilege of witnessing Jason slice a solider in two, punch another member of the military’s head off, squash another’s noggin like a cockroach, push a man’s heart out of his body by punching him through the back, disembowel a guy with his own gun, and take the top half of a kissing couple’s heads off with one clean swipe (the female member of the couple provides the comic with kinda-weird artificial, drawn nudity…but hey, this is Friday the 13th, and nudity is a staple for the series, no matter what the medium). Jason takes his fair share of damage, too, as he is shot at a number of times, and, in the coolest moment of the comic, he even undergoes a direct hit with a grenade, which manages to take a huge chunk out of his shoulder and torso. Penciller and inker Mike Wolfer illustrates every bit of the sanguineous slaughter in all its depraved detail—truthfully, I’ve never seen blood look so beautiful in my life.
The Friday the 13th comic is a Jason fan’s wet dream as it contains every essential detail a hardcore fan could ever hope for—blood, boobs, and more blood, all graciously seen and given out by the drooping eyes and flesh-mutilating, gloved hands of Jason V. In short, the comic can be considered nirvana for slasher fans.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre comic, while differing in plot, is just as satisfying as the Friday book. Surprisingly, New Line chose to make the comic based on the TCM remake, but the choice doesn’t deter from the Chainsaw series’ true trademark of torturous tendencies and sheer brutality. The book could easily hold its own against any of the TCM films. The plot utilizes the same device that we’ve seen thousands of times before (beginning with the original TCM)—a group of teens, while on a road trip, manage to stumble upon the house of a deranged family. This time, however, the teens decide to rob a member of the Chainsaw family’s gas station/mom-and-pop shop. Naturally, they get themselves in a hell of a lot of trouble, and what follows is…yep, you guessed it: torment and bloodshed. We’re treated to butcher knife decapitations, chainsaw shoulder separation, and one poor kid even gets his hand nailed into a wooden table, where he is then forced to snort lines of kitchen scrub while getting his thumb severed by a small blade. This book presents situations that would bring tears of joy to Ed Gein, and each situation is complimented by Jacen Burrows disgustingly impressive art and Andrew Dalhouse’s smooth-but-bleak, faded colors, so it’s safe to say that this comic will also function greatly as a pretty kick-ass part of any TCM fan’s collection.
Last on the (cannibalistic) menu is pop culture’s most charismatic child-killing, one-liner spitting scorched psycho, Freddy Krueger. His book, while based solely on Nightmare on Elm Street, does borrow an element from the Freddy vs. Jason film in that it brings back Hypnocil, the dream-stifling, coma-inducing drug that was created in an attempt to keep Freddy out of the children of Elm Street’s heads. The book begins with Lindsay, a girl with an obsession with plastic surgery. After she experiences a lethal meeting with Freddy while in a sate of sleep, her friend, Emily, a wannabe journalist, is determined to find out just why no one seems to believe Lindsay when she swears that she saw the Gloved One. Emily eventually stumbles into a corrupt doctor and finds out all about the Hypnocil conspiracy, and, since Emily knows the forbidden secret of why the drug is being used, the doctor has no choice but to use the involuntary slumber-promoting serum on her. Now Emily is trapped in Krueger’s domain, where anything he thinks of can go down, and doom is imminent.
The art, like in the rest of the House of Horror books, is spectacular and extremely detailed. The Nightmare on Elm Street series has always consisted of cartoon-y slayings, and penciller and inker Juan Jose Ryp toys with the surreal, exaggerated cartoon feel, but still manages to make the art come off as realistic and not dipping too deep into the bizarre. Sure, there’s a scene in which a candy-craving girl bloats up to an immense size (only to be gorily popped like a bloody, meat-filled balloon by a single knife on Krueger’s digit), but Ryp still keeps the correct anatomy slightly intact, so the character never ends up looking like she jumped out of an episode of Felix the Cat. Reading this book makes one feel as if they are seeing a new Nightmare film, so chalk this one into the “must-have” category.
I hear that Avatar is already turning each of these House of Horror titles into their own monthly series, and if these initial issues are any indication, slasher fans will have a new medium to dedicate their attention and cash to. Brian Pulido did an outstanding job writing each of the comic’s stories, staying true to each of the franchises’ roots, while still finding a little variation to make each comic bring something unique and different to the ongoing capers of New Line Cinema’s most iconic triple threat. All three of these books are essential literature for fiends who like their slasher stories as gruesome as possible.
-Spooky Steve
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
