Nightmare on Elm St and Friday the 13th Comics

The Credits: Written by Brian Pulido (Evil Ernie/Lady Death), and art by Mike Wolfer (Strange Killings , The Return of the Living Dead comic series) and Greg Waller (War Angel, Robocop, Doktor Sleepless)

The Fearbook issue was written by Mike Wolfer with art by Sebastian Fiumara

The Plot: The central plot point (outside of the fact that Jason is going on a bloody rampage killing teenagers who are drinking, smoking dope and having pre-marital sex, which should be a given) to this series is on Miles and Laura Upland, siblings who own the Trent Organization. Amung one of the many holdings the company has, is the ownership to the land that Camp Crystal Lake is on.

Knowing the curse of Jason Voorhees, the two attempt to destroy Jason once and for all in order to develop the land into a more lucrative business venture.

In the one shot, we find that Laura is secretly trying to kill Jason, which doesn't go so well considering everything her hired gunsils throw at him doesn't work considering the fact that he can regenerate his body.

In the three issue "Bloodbath" mini-series, the Trent Corporation attempts to lure Jason out and destroy him by opening up a new summer camp called "Camp Tomorrow", and hiring a bunch of orphans and troubled teenagers to work at the camp to act as bait to get Jason to come to them. This plan goes awry since the teens soon find out what the real purpose of their employment is, and Jason still manages kick everybodies ass, the lone survivor Violet, is captured by the Trent Corporation.

The Fearbook one-shot concludes the story with Violet being held prisoner of the Trent Corporation and Jason tracking them down and slaughtering everybody.

The Plot: The plot to this one is almost exactly like any given Friday the 13th movie, but with a new twist.

Sally the lone survivor of a murder spree at Camp Crystal Lake tells the local police that they were attacked by the spirit of Jason Voorhees.

She recounts how her and a group of fellow teenagers were hired to prepare Camp Crystal Lake for it's grand reopening, following a number of tragic incidents that occurred during the 50's involving the death of young Jason Voorhees.

The group is soon wiped out one by one by Jason, who is not only an unstopable killing machine, but powered by an ancient evil in the forest and has the command over the souls of his many victims over the years.

Jason kills them all one by one, with the long survivor, Sally, the only one alive to tell the tale.

My Critique:

The Plot: As I've mentioned in my Nightmare on Elm St review, I'm not a huge fan of Brian Pulido, in fact I think he's an awful writer. Like his writing with Nightmare, these Friday the 13th comics appear to be written by somebody who is so emersed in the mythos of the franchise that they can't think outside of the box or do anything creative, but instead recycle the same damn thing and create a story that's a step above an internet fan-fic.

He centers on the clichés of the Friday the 13th Franchise, namly, mindless slaughter (at the hands of Jason), teenage drinking, drugs, and sex. These seem to be the only elements that seem to be focused on with any sort of detail.

Jason is essentially unstoppable, and he works in the fact that Jason can regenerate any injury, like thet explain in Jason X , and your writer has no originality of his own if he's lifting plot elements from the shit stain that is Jason X (As an aside, Pulido did a Jason X one shot comic and a Jason VS Jason X two part mini-series for Avatar, and he managed to make these even worse than the movie they were based on.)

You get a faint glimmer of hope that maybe Pulido could come up with something original when he works in the who Trent Corporation plot thread, but it's just an excuse to stick soldiers into the comic that spend all their time shooting Jason (which doesn't work) and getting killed. The addition of these hired commandos to the plot, while less out of place than Chuck Dixon's inclusion of a soldier in the Nightmare comics, reek of unoriginality because basically it's pretty much the same thing Pulido would do when he wrote Evil Ernie back in the 90's, only he doesn't have to write as much dialogue.

The orphans hired to run a camp as bait for Jason also falls short because again it's something that's just put there to facilitate a lot of mindless sex and gore into the story. Again, not expecting Shakespeak when we're talking about Friday the 13th, but Pulido's lack of care in developing this idea further than "Hey wouldn't it be cool if this corporation was trying to capture Jason and hired a bunch of kids to act as bait?" Again, the story seems to suffer from "fan-fic" syndrome because it's almost as if he put less effort into developing the story than they usually would in a Jason movie.

The most irritating part of it all is that Pulido has taken the franchise a step back, it's a mistake not only Pulido's made, but also the asshole who made Jason X did as well. We've all seen Jason mindlessly killing naked or stoned teenagers, the reason why the franchise was going fucking nowhere was because the viewing audience wants a little more than an hour and a half long movie full of gimmicky kill scenes.

So once again, Pulido screws the pooch, but I hardly find that a surprise.

My Critique:

The Plot: Now this is more like it! Get some competant writers, and you get a story that not only maintains the status quo of the franchise but also builds upon it as well.

Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti create a fucking brilliant story, which is something that the Avatar rendition of Friday the 13th was missing so badly. As I said over to the left, people who have hung onto the franchise for 11 movies want to see a little more than just mindless killing. It's been done. How about getting down to some fucking explaining already? Or maybe building on some of the key elements of the series?

Like how the fuck does Jason keep coming back from the dead? It's something that was "hinted" at in Jason Goes to Hell (actually it was more of a homage to Sam Raimi's Evil Dead movies, but still, closest anyone ever went to explaining that one.) With this revamp Justin and Jimmy not only take the basics of the Friday the 13th franchise, but also build on it.

They make Jason scary again. He's not just some unstoppable goon that is indestructable, he's a fucking force of nature. He's powered by some evil mojo and he has more tricks up his sleves than hacking you to bits with a machetti.

Best moment I read in this series was the scene where the swimmer is grabbed by all the kids at the bottom of the lake. That's what I'm fucking talking about man. That is some powerful story telling.

The fact that they build on the who "evil in the forest" thing powering Jason gives the series a new level as well, it's not just Pamela Voorhee's revenge against the people of Crystal Lake that tethers Jason there, but some unspeakable evil in the woods that tethers Jason to that place and uses his body as an avatar for it's wanton destruction.

It still uses some of the clichés, pre-marrital sex, drugs, drinking, the big titted women getting hoplessly slaughtered by Jason, but they are written in there with little wrinkles that make them somewhat fresh again. Also I thought it was a nice touch adding in the sexually confused guys who might be gay for each other, a sign of the times that Jason doesn't just slaughter hetero couples. An equal rights mass murderer, how 21st century is that?

This series, unlike Wildstorm's rendition of Nightmare on Elm St also seems worth the "Suggested For Mature Readers" warning that they print on it. Nightmare was pretty tame in comparisson to this series which is chocked full of adult themes that Dixon, for whatever reasons, couldn't write into his take on Freddy.

All in all, the most impressive work I've seen of any of the two horror franchises, I'm very impressed what these two guys have done. This should set the standard for anybody who makes another Friday the 13th story, it'll certainly avoid another fucking monstrocity like Jason X from ever being made that's for sure.

The Comparison: I'd make a comparisson here, but I think it's obvious which of the two I like and I'm just going to repeat what I said above. Who did the better job? Surprisingly, Wildstorm, great work all around. I recommend anyone who wants to read a good Friday the 13th story to pick up what Wildstorm did.

The Avatar stuff that Pulido is so rife with clichés it's so bland and boring, and comparing the two would be like comparing a fan-fiction to a New York Times Best Seller.

The Art: Mike Wolfer does a great job, he certainly can draw an interesting scene with a lot of detail (especially in the gore department) I suppose the whole project was fun because he got to draw a lot of action (certainly wasn't a lot of plot)

There really isn't much else to say about it, when Fiumara takes over the art chores in the Fearbook, the style change enough to take away from the story which Wolfer was writing.

The Art: Once again, Wildstorm made a good choice in hiring Adam Archer as the artist, he can draw some dark stuff, and he can put in a lot of detail in a drawing. My favorite part is the whole kids in the lake scene. It is so beatifully rendered.

His page layouts work great and flow well with the story.

My only gripe is that he draws all the women with gigantic breasts. Was that really necessary? Okay, one or two big breasted girls I get, but all of them have hugs fucking knockers, it's just unecessary and unrealistic.

And the Winner is: Obviously Wildstorm's version of Friday the 13th, I think I've punctuated the fact that instead of going for the "safe" cliché route, and doing something different was the best thing they could have done. Bang up writing and art team. While the Avatar books had some nice art, the writing clearly lacked and

Where Did WildStorm Go From Here?: After finishing their first story arc, they canned the Friday the 13th title and they're consolidating all of New Lines horror properties into an anthology title, I talked about that in the Nightmare on Elm St review, remember?

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