Nightmare on Elm St and Friday the 13th Comics

The Credits: Written by Brian Pulido for Evil Ernie /Lady Death fame (*Groan*), and art by Juan Jose Ryp (Robocop , Angel Stom Revolution, Lady Death)

The Plot: Taking a page from Freddy Vs Jason this series the town of Springwood has every teenager on Hypnosyl and have "quarantined" Freddy Kruger by suppressing all knowledge of his existence making the kids dreams safe.

The one-shot features the story of Emily, a rebellious teen who is trying to learn the "dark secret" of Springwood, and when her friend Lindsay is taken into police custody and taken to Westin Hills, Emily gathers up a group of friends to free her friend and find the truth. Of course, this plucky group bite off more than they can chew since they learn about Freddy, and when they're off Hypnocyl he kills them all one by one in many inventive ways. When Emily attempts to upload her findings onto the internet, she is stopped by the police of Springwood, however she also becomes a victim of Freddy.

The "Paranoid" story arc continues where the one shot left off, where Lindsay's friend Claire is haunted by nightmares of her dead friends and of Freddy. Freddy learns of a shortage of Hypnocyl in Springwood and orchestrates an accident that prevents the next shipment from making it into town and Freddy goes on yet another murder rampage.

Claire manages to pull Freddy out of the dreamworld and with the help of the souls that he had taken, she manages to kill Freddy in the real world.

The Plot: In the first three issues of this series we meet Jade and her family, brother Brad and her dad who move to Springwood and soon become terrorized by Freddy. With the help of a comatose girl, and her father, who is a formed US Military ranger, they battle Freddy in the Dreamworld and eventually defeat him using the help of her fathers military tactics. Jade and her dad battle Freddy in the dreamworld, but that still doesn't stop Freddy from killing Jade in the end.

The fourth issue features the girl who was in a coma haunting Freddy in the dreamworld coming and going as he pleases, Freddy is haunted over "the one that got away"

My Critique:

The Plot: First and foremost, I am not a fan of Brian Pulido's work. At all. Some may remember that he was the "mastermind" (for lack of a better term) behind Chaos! Comics in the 90's, which is a perfect example of everything that was wrong with comic books in the 90's: Big titted women, plots that were either mindless or so much teenaged angst filled mental masturbation, full of senseless gore and stories that sound like they were the play-by-play of a game involving a 12 sided dice. How did he treat Nightmare on Elm St? Well, considering most of the work was already done for him since he lifted the theme from Freddy VS Jason. I mean, did Pulido put any sort of thought in working the plot at all?

I mean, in the "Paranoid" story, the main character is the daughter of chief of police, which isn't too far off from the main character in Freddy VS Jason. And there's the entire focus being put on Hypnocyl as a plot point.

And what essentially happens here folks is that the writer takes a plot point that was merely used as a method of convenience to explain Freddy's long absence and use it to write themselves in a corner. You're spending more time explaining how Freddy gets around the hypnocyl thing instead of focusing on more interesting angles you could be putting into the story (like character development maybe?)

Granted, I'm not expecting Shakespeare, but it's like he didn't give it much though. It's full of lots of kills, and it essentially reads like some of the less inspired Nightmare on Elm St movies, except for worse, because they spend even less time focusing on developing the characters, and more on Freddy's inventive ways of killing people and bad puns.

I don't care about any of the characters in this story, because all of them are clichés that are probably more at home in a Friday the 13th story than a Nightmare on Elm St one.

But that is the weakness in the writers ability, he spends more time on the title character, who already has a significant backstory already and has an already established personality, and you get these half rate cookie-cutter cliché characters.

It's counter to the idea of the Nightmare series where they actually spent the time allowing the audience to get to know the characters that Freddy will kill beyond the "This is so and so and they're afraid of this" writing that foreshadows how Freddy is going to kill them.

The heroes in these stories are flatly one dimensional as well, and are portrayed as cocky females, who for whatever reasons become nearly helpless when faced by Freddy.

Oh and the conclusion is another uninspiring bit of storytelling recycling old ideas from the previous movies. Pulling Freddy out of the dreamworld and having the souls of his victims tear him apart.

My Critique:

The Plot: So you're Jim Lee, creator and owner of WildStorm entertainment, and you get a call one day from New Line Cinema asking you to do a comic book about Nightmare on Elm St. Now here you are, a subsidiary of DC Comics, who is under the belt of AOL Time Warner, which dumps tons of money printing comic books and comic related merchandising that the competition just can't meet, so you could get a substantial chunk of change.

Here you've got a very popular character that many people would love to write, and comic books have be come a legitimate enough medium that you could wrangle in somebody who writes a popular TV show or movies, who do you pick to write Nightmare on Elm St?

Apparently the obvious answer is Chuck Dixon, which to this day still blows my fucking mind. Why Chuck Dixon? A guy who's major career accomplishments have been writing mostly Batman and war-themed comics. The closet thing to doing horror comics before was doing the writing chores for a Batman/Predator and Superman/Aliens .

Granted, every writer would like the chance to stretch out and try something new, but there is a lot of the old tired and typical Chuck Dixon trappings. The most obvious one, which is about as subtle as being slapped in the face with a rotten fish bloated with maggots is the military theme injected into the plot.

Was the major idea going through his head something like "Hey, how would a seasoned war veteran fight Freddy?" because that's about all the thought it seems that he put into it. The story itself is incredibly weak, the body counter is lower than A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 (A whopping three people get killed in the whole story.) And it appears that Dixon is more focused on the gimmicks of the dreamworld, flaunting his military knowledge.

Okay "Buzz", we know you've been involved with writing G.I. Joe for 20 years, thanks for inserting one into a Nightmare on Elm St comic.

While these are all very cute and interesting things to toss in there, I think Mr. Dixon focuses on these gimmicks and as a result the character all come off as weak.

The story seems almost childish in some ways, I understand that Freddy isn't exactly the most serious of characters, but Dixon's handling of the character and the supporting casts dreams worlds don't seem as dark as any previous entries into the franchise.

And I find myself constantly going back to the fact that he sticks a soldier, not only that but a grown-up soldier into a Nightmare on Elm St movie, totally circumventing one of the "rules" of the Nightmare mythos just so he can write in a scene where a soldier vomits out some military speak and lobs some grenades.

What makes this even more infuriating is the fact that even though Mr. All-American Zen-Soldier hops into his daughters dream to try and save the day, he still ends up failing and his daughter dies. So it's not even something that has some sort of purpose except for satisfying the fucking need to toss a gimmick in there.

The Comparison: Wow you see, now I'm really hard pressed to make a decision here. I mean it's tough to pick who wrote the better Freddy story here, because by and far, it's my opinion that neither of these writers are very good at writing the type of story that they were commissioned to do. At least not with any ability to create an interesting story, that is true to the mythos, but also branches out and does something new.

On the one side of the spectrum, you've got Pulido, who has had his nose in the ass of horror writing since forever, he's the all knowing horror fan that knows so much about the fucking Nightmare on Elm St series, that he can't pump out anything takes far too much from what's previously established that his own plots seem dull and boring because they seem rehashed or recycled. The big problem with hiring somebody who is probably a huge fan of a series, is that their ability to think outside the box and write something different is greatly hampered.

Dixon's writing on the other hand is the exact opposite, the guy seems too unfamiliar with the franchise and it's goings on. From what I gather reading the other story lines it seems his approach to the Nightmare on Elm St was trying to spend more time defining the world the Freddy lives in. What the hell for? I mean the guy lives in a realm of pure imagination, there is no need to "explore" something like that because technically speaking there are no rules there. Everything is defined by ones imagination. If Freddy is effectively unstoppable there and can create whatever environment he wants, that's not really something you should focus so much time on because it's a manipulative reality. The fact that he focused pitting Freddy against a US Soldier again outlines his probable lack of knowledge of the franchise. You're also left to wonder how the fuck a US Soldier can just "Zen" himself into his daughters dreams as well. Not a lot of advance thought went into explaining that.

So, it's sad but true, Pulido writes a better Nightmare on Elm St story. Even if it is bland, one-dimensional, and rife with clichés instead of actual characters, he remains more true to the series, and is better because he stayed in relatively safe confines of writing a mediocre story that fits in with the franchise. Dixon, I'll admit took a risk by trying to do something different. Of course, when you make a gamble like that and you fumble, you're apt to land flat on your face. If Chuck's done anything, it's that, thanks to his limited scope in terms of writing, and the incessant need to insert a military themed character in the story who really, at the end of the day, stands out like a sore thumb.

The Art: Juan Jose Ryp is an artist who can put a lot of detail in what he's drawing, that's the first thing you notice. Where a lot of artists in the industry usually lose points in my book is their lack of drawing detailed panels, they're usually devoid of backgrounds, usually favoring detailed characters, and having opaque background or ones filled with speed lines, one can appreciate the effort Ryp puts into adding a background that is as detailed as the subject characters.

When he draws somebody getting hacked up, it is graphic in full blood splattering detail. It's harsh, it's ugly, and it fits very well. While Pulido's writing may be bland, at least the death sequences that he writes are given justice by Ryp's artistic styling's.

Freddy looks good in most panels, some of them seem a little odd, like he's kind of mushy or something, I think they were going for more of a contemporary look for Kruger as opposed to going for a look more akin to his Freddy VS Jason incarnation. Which I suppose works well if you're nostalgic, but personally I liked the new look, it was more fearsome looking.

One of my big gripes is that the art also suffers from what I call "independent comic syndrome" in which the artist resorts to making all the women have large breasts, and perpetually hard nipples. Go ahead and flip through these comics, these girls could be in a blazing inferno and their nipples are pointing out like they're outside without a jacket in the middle of January.

This sort of artistic masturbation seems on par with the type of tripe Pulido writes for his own material. We are spared from having these women run around in skimpy bikini's, but it's a small mercy considering it's using the same tired tactics to get people to read the book.

Why do all these female characters have to be big breasted, with hard nipples and constant panty wedgies? I know it's an attempt to reel in horny men who have nothing better to do than get their jollies off horror comics, but for fucks sake man, the only one in these comics that doesn't fall under this archetype is the fat chick and she dies in the first issue!

Short of that minor gripe, this is actually a visually appealing series, and certainly the art makes up for the writers short comings.

The Art: *sigh*, when you have an artist who's major contributions to drawing comic books has been drawing super-heroes their entire career, you really shouldn't expect much out of them, but this is still pretty disappointing.

On the one hand, you can hardly blame him because he's been drawing for companies that have been under the regulation of the Comic Book Authority Code, and has been drawing in a genre that doesn't usually have graphic horror violence in it's pages.

But that doesn't stop the fact that his style just doesn't fit very well with this Nightmare on Elm St series. His artwork is too, generic, it's not dark enough and it's very very plain. There is not much detail, and you can tell that he's just not used to drawing gory pictures.

It's actually pretty sad, seeing him draw Freddy slashing people up, and the cuts that he draw don't look all that bad. It's hard to take a story seriously that has weak visuals on top of a weak story.

His rendition of Freddy himself is also pretty dull, making Kruger look more at home in a Superman comic book than in a horror series. I didn't think it was possible, but Kevin West has managed to take Freddy and make him almost... nice.... while not altering his look.

It's like Freddy Kruger, if his entire look was orchestrated by the Gap, that's the best way I can explain it. It's so bland and unremarkable because it's drawn by somebody who isn't used to drawing ugly thing, but big muscular people with anatomically incorrect bodies.

So here's the question I have: Why did they hire this guy to do the art work when it's clear that he cannot convey the mood or capture the essence of horror in his art work? When I consider the artists available to DC Comics and WildStorm, I have to wonder why of all people did they choose this guy over somebody who could properly draw a horror comic?

Okay, he's talented, but not for horror.

Why didn't they hire somebody who's really good at it? If there wasn't somebody on the staff they could hire, why not a freelancer? They could have picked somebody better than this.

The combination of Chuck Dixon's awful story, and this "clean-cut" artwork make this rendition too "bright" when it should be dark.

And the Winner is: Avatar's rendition of Nightmare On Elm St. Although it has a weak story, I think I have more than clearly define why it does better than WildStorm's rendition of the franchise. Where did Wildstorm go wrong? In it's choice of writer and artist. Put them in a Batman book and I'm sure they'd do just fine, but Nightmare on Elm St? While it was probably experimental for them, for the reader who is picking up Nightmare on Elm St as a fan of the franchise, they're going to be disappointed with the end result. While the Avatar version had a weak story, it still remained faithful to the series, and the art was outstanding enough to make it more appealing to myself, and I'm sure any long time fan of the Nightmare series would appreciate the Avatar version better.

Where Did WildStorm Go From Here?: After finishing their first story arc, they tried a new story with Dixon and West at the creative helm. Their next story arc involved a bunch of unpopular kids (who were previously overlooked by Freddy) who conjure up a dream being of myth to fight Freddy on their behalf. I read the first issue of it and it thoroughly put me off reading the rest of the story arc, it was horrible. Since that arc finished, they did one more stand alone series before WildStorm canned all their New Line horror titles and consolidated them into one anthology title called "New Line Cinema's House of Horrors" writing chores have been picked up by Christos Gage (The Authority , World War Hulk: X-Men ) and Peter Milligan (X-Statix , JLA ) I can't say for Gage, but I know Milligan is a fucking awesome writer and I hope he can do the character some justice. All in all, I was pretty disappointed with the work that WildStorm has presented so far, so I stopped getting the issues monthly, maybe I'll be interested in reading the trade paperbacks though.

Next Up - Friday the 13th