Army of Darkness/Evil Dead Comics Discussion Thread!

[Deadite_Scholar]

Comic book artist Larry Watts (who did the interior artwork for Evil Dead 2: Revenge of Hitler, covers for Evil Dead 2: Cradle of The Damned, and the interior art of Army of Darkness: Ash In Space) was chit-chatting over on r/EvilDead and revealed that Revenge of Hitler was originally pitched as an "Ash vs Trump" comic.

He was also asked about what it was like working with StudioCanal on ED2 vs working with MGM on AOD, and then revealed that there were plans for a "Machete vs Army of Darkness" comic. I guess the world wasn't ready for Danny Trejo vs the Deadites...

Ha, that was part of the conversation I was having with him.

 

[MCT28]

Ha, that was part of the conversation I was having with him.

I'm really hoping he gets on Hail To The Deadites and divulges more interesting nuggets like this, because it's a damn shame that all these strange concepts die and are never brought up by anyone until years later (if they're even brought up at all). I mean, here we are almost 8 years since Revenge of Hitler came out and we're just now finding out it was supposed to be a totally different comic altogether!

 

[Deadite_Scholar]

I'm really hoping he gets on Hail To The Deadites and divulges more interesting nuggets like this, because it's a damn shame that all these strange concepts die and are never brought up by anyone until years later (if they're even brought up at all). I mean, here we are almost 8 years since Revenge of Hitler came out and we're just now finding out it was supposed to be a totally different comic altogether!

I don't think the Ash vs Trump idea was that unknown. I seem to remember Space Goat's founder mentioning once that they wanted to do a book where Trump became a deadite but StudioCanal shot it down. Which is a good thing because one of the reasons I love Evil Dead is that it is decidedly non political and I'd rather it stay that way.

 

[MCT28]

Army of Darkness Forever is getting a bonus issue in celebration of Dynamite's 20th anniversary (since AOD was the first title they published)

I have no idea if this is the "gore-tacular" mentioned in the blurb for #12, or if that's something else entirely.

 

[DyD]

So now they've gone back to saying the original plan was for a shorter mini and that it got expanded to 12 issues due to "support from fans"? I'm still having a real hard time believing they could tell this story in fewer issues. Hell, apparently they couldn't do it in 12 either, and this newly added 13th super-sized issue proves it. I also think it's weird they keep marketing the series as "the long-awaited direct sequel to creator Sam Raimi’s original vision for the ending of the final film starring Ash" when that's barely a third of what it actually is. That only fuels my suspicions that maybe the original plan was for a shorter mini focused only on the post-apoc story and the whole multiple timelines crap was added later.

 

[MCT28]

AOD Forever #10 thoughts:
Like I said for #9, the plot train is really rolling now, and there wasn't really any moment I didn't like. After nine issues, it was nice for Sheila to finally have an issue for her to properly take center-stage of. A few little tidbits I noticed:

Spoiler

Sheila's de-possession method was probably intended to be a nod to that line in Evil Dead 2013 about the "purification by fire", but it came across more like an Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom reference.

Spoiler

Also, Sheila's gray streak in her hair (which did appear in the last issue, so it's not a coloring fowl-up) is no-doubt an homage to Ash's gray hair streak from ED2, so that was a nice little touch.

The only thing that really drove me crazy was the way Sheila kept referring to Ash as "my love". I mean, it's not like she doesn't know his name (she says it in the movie when she's getting ready to be grabbed by the winged Deadite). Besides that, it was an overall pretty enjoyable issue.

 

[MCT28]

Dynamite's very first Army of Darkness comic, Ashes 2 Ashes #1, was released 20 years ago today (July 28th, 2004).

 

[Kain]

We were here covering it!

 

[MaidOfKandar]

AOD Forever #10 thoughts:
Like I said for #9, the plot train is really rolling now, and there wasn't really any moment I didn't like. After nine issues, it was nice for Sheila to finally have an issue for her to properly take center-stage of. A few little tidbits I noticed:

Spoiler

Sheila's de-possession method was probably intended to be a nod to that line in Evil Dead 2013 about the "purification by fire", but it came across more like an Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom reference.

Spoiler

Also, Sheila's gray streak in her hair (which did appear in the last issue, so it's not a coloring fowl-up) is no-doubt an homage to Ash's gray hair streak from ED2, so that was a nice little touch.

The only thing that really drove me crazy was the way Sheila kept referring to Ash as "my love". I mean, it's not like she doesn't know his name (she says it in the movie when she's getting ready to be grabbed by the winged Deadite). Besides that, it was an overall pretty enjoyable issue.

As the board's resident Sheila fan, I am excited for this one.

I continue to miss Nick Bradshaw's art.

 

[MCT28]

So that HorrorHound magazine doing a retrospective on the Evil Dead trilogy has a selection covering the Space Goat Evil Dead 2 comics, which is directly taken from a book they published last year called HALFTONE HORRORS The History of Horror Movie Comic Books, which sets out to cover every officially licensed comic based on a horror movie. Dark Horse's Army of Darkness #1 is hidden in the shadows on the book's cover, and other Evil Dead-related comic covers have appeared in other material related to this book, so it's definitely safe to say that they're covered in it. I might have to pick up a copy of this sometime...

So I ended up purchasing a copy of this book and... if you wanted coverage of the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness comics then you certainly get your money's worth, because there's 40 PAGES covering ED/AOD books... the biggest chapter for any franchise in this tome. It's mainly a cover art gallery with select snippets of storyline overviews that covers everything from the 1992 AOD Dark Horse series up to the first issue of Army of Darkness vs. Reanimator: Necronomicon Rising from 2022. When I say it's a cover art gallery, I mean it's ALL THE COVERS: every variant, every photo cover, every foil cover, every sketch cover... there were covers in there that I had never seen before (who knew the first AOD/Xena series had a photo cover for #4? I sure didn't!). As for the descriptions of the stories themselves, a lot of it comes across as reworded paragraphs lifted from Wikipedia or the Evil Dead Wiki, which I totally get since there's a lot of books to cover and I'm sure author Nathan Hannerman didn't want to read everything he had to cram into these 235 pages. Honestly my biggest complaint was something that's AOD-adjacent: the inclusion of Dynamite's solo Reanimator stuff lumped in with comics based on the Re-Animator movie series (even though a little blurb the later AOD crossover specifically says that Dynamite's Reanimator has nothing to do with the movies).

Overall, it's pretty damn cool and definitely worth picking up for fans of the ED/AOD comics (or fans of the franchise in general).

 

[Kain]

So I ended up purchasing a copy of this book and... if you wanted coverage of the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness comics then you certainly get your money's worth, because there's 40 PAGES covering ED/AOD books... the biggest chapter for any franchise in this tome. It's mainly a cover art gallery with select snippets of storyline overviews that covers everything from the 1992 AOD Dark Horse series up to the first issue of Army of Darkness vs. Reanimator: Necronomicon Rising from 2022. When I say it's a cover art gallery, I mean it's ALL THE COVERS: every variant, every photo cover, every foil cover, every sketch cover... there were covers in there that I had never seen before (who knew the first AOD/Xena series had a photo cover for #4? I sure didn't!). As for the descriptions of the stories themselves, a lot of it comes across as reworded paragraphs lifted from Wikipedia or the Evil Dead Wiki, which I totally get since there's a lot of books to cover and I'm sure author Nathan Hannerman didn't want to read everything he had to cram into these 235 pages. Honestly my biggest complaint was something that's AOD-adjacent: the inclusion of Dynamite's solo Reanimator stuff lumped in with comics based on the Re-Animator movie series (even though a little blurb the later AOD crossover specifically says that Dynamite's Reanimator has nothing to do with the movies).

Overall, it's pretty damn cool and definitely worth picking up for fans of the ED/AOD comics (or fans of the franchise in general).

We cover have coverage of every Evil Dead comic on this site.

 

[MCT28]

We cover have coverage of every Evil Dead comic on this site.

Well, besides a few things like Dark Horse's Total Carnage and Dynamite's Prophecy (which can easily fly under the radar since they're not specifically advertised as AOD titles, and even this book didn't have them) that is very true... but I just like that the cover gallery is finally presented on a physical, tangible format, you know? Something you've got to pull off a shelf, flip through, and can hold in your hand. There's just something cool about that to me.

 

[MaidOfKandar]

Finally caught up on AOD Forever

Spoiler: Spoilers

I generally liked the Sheila plotline the best (I know, shocking). A lot of story beats were swiped from her story arc in Ash and the Army of Darkness, but this one had some heft and darkness to it.

The two Ash plotlines were weaker but I liked the apocalypse one much better.

Overall, middling-to-good, leaning toward good.

 

[DyD]

Finally caught up on AOD Forever

Spoiler: Spoilers

I generally liked the Sheila plotline the best (I know, shocking). A lot of story beats were swiped from her story arc in Ash and the Army of Darkness, but this one had some heft and darkness to it.

The two Ash plotlines were weaker but I liked the apocalypse one much better.

Overall, middling-to-good, leaning toward good.

Yeah, up until the point I read, the Sheila storyline was definitely the most interesting and the one with the most potential to be truly great, which actually grew to frustrate me as they kept squandering that potential, dismissing every single interesting idea and rushing story development to the most boring, safe, derivative conclusions. I'm sounding like a broken record about this comic already, but I really wish we got each timeline as a standalone story instead of this multiverse nonsense. The Sheila story would make a great sans-Ash sequel to Army of Darkness. The 1993 stuff would make for an unusual but very interesting storyline in which Ash actually becomes the villain. And everyone here knows how much I always wanted a straightforward sequel to the original AoD post-apoc ending. Instead, we got this comic, that presents all of those interesting ideas, but doesn't actually do much with any of them and keeps getting in its own way constantly.

 

[MCT28]

The Sheila story would make a great sans-Ash sequel to Army of Darkness. The 1993 stuff would make for an unusual but very interesting storyline in which Ash actually becomes the villain. And everyone here knows how much I always wanted a straightforward sequel to the original AoD post-apoc ending. Instead, we got this comic, that presents all of those interesting ideas, but doesn't actually do much with any of them and keeps getting in its own way constantly.

So I guess now would be as good of time as any to talk about a secret project I've been working on.

I want to start off by saying I own multiple physical copies of the issues in this series, and I strongly encourage people to go out and support your local comic shops. HOWEVER... as this series has gone on and my opinion began to fluctuate, I decided to "sail the high seas" and download the digital copies of every issue... taking them apart and organizing them into their three respective eras in an effort to view the story "in order" and maybe change my attitude about it along the way.

As of the writing of this (with issues #1-10), the standings are as follows...
* 2093 has a total of 64 pages (including five double-page spreads and one "split page" shared with 1300 AD)
* 1993 has a total of 61 pages (including three double-page spreads)
* 1300 AD has a total of 71 pages (including three double-page spreads and the aforementioned "split" with 2093)
(There's also the obligatory "My name is Ash" recap from #1 that is four full pages, with it's fifth page starting the 2093 section)

To the shock of absolutely no-one: keeping these stories separate instead of constantly flip-flopping between the three makes for far better reading. As of now (up to issue #10), each timeframe has enough material to fill three standard single issues (there's 32 pages per issue, but that includes advertisements and cover galleries, so let's just say it's between 20 to 25 pages of actual story). Issues #1-3 should have been 2093, #4-6 should have been 1993, and #7-9 should have been 1300 AD.

We'll see how the last three issues go, but as of right now, I'm coming around to see 1300 AD as the better story overall.

 

[DyD]

To the shock of absolutely no-one: keeping these stories separate instead of constantly flip-flopping between the three makes for far better reading. As of now (up to issue #10), each timeframe has enough material to fill three standard single issues (there's 32 pages per issue, but that includes advertisements and cover galleries, so let's just say it's between 20 to 25 pages of actual story). Issues #1-3 should have been 2093, #4-6 should have been 1993, and #7-9 should have been 1300 AD.

Very cool. That does seem like a much better, or at least more sensible, way to organize and release this. They could've even done it like Marvel does on some of their big multi-title events, putting out one "starter" issue followed by an isolated three issue mini-series for each timeline and then close it off with a single "conclusion" issue. It goes to show how little the concurrent timelines thing seems to matter to the larger story if breaking it all apart and then reorganizing everything the way you've done there not only doesn't ruin it, but makes it better. I think even in that format the conclusion to the individual stories still wouldn't be completely satisfying, since I believe at some point the stories would have to start weaving together anyway, but if it at least makes the reading experience better, it's still a valid experiment.

 

[MCT28]

AOD Forever #11 came out today. I picked up both the Fleecs and Suydam covers. Not too much to say story wise except it's a good ol' beat-down on the undead. SPOILER Thoughts:

Spoiler

1) Seeing Sheila encounter the Mini-Ashes was funny. 2) I wonder if the vertical teeth on Ash's "healing scars" were a reference to the Evil Dead Rise book. 3) The Wise Man being corrupted by the book was, again, something we got a decade ago with Ash and The Army of Darkness. I'm not mad Fleecs is pulling so much from that series since I liked that run, but it's getting a little old at this point in this series.

Overall, not a bad mindless Deadite-smashing issue. 7.5 out of 10 (although it would get a 10 out of 10 from me purely because of Fleecs' cover alone).

 

[MaidOfKandar]

Yeah, up until the point I read, the Sheila storyline was definitely the most interesting and the one with the most potential to be truly great, which actually grew to frustrate me as they kept squandering that potential, dismissing every single interesting idea and rushing story development to the most boring, safe, derivative conclusions. I'm sounding like a broken record about this comic already, but I really wish we got each timeline as a standalone story instead of this multiverse nonsense. The Sheila story would make a great sans-Ash sequel to Army of Darkness. The 1993 stuff would make for an unusual but very interesting storyline in which Ash actually becomes the villain. And everyone here knows how much I always wanted a straightforward sequel to the original AoD post-apoc ending. Instead, we got this comic, that presents all of those interesting ideas, but doesn't actually do much with any of them and keeps getting in its own way constantly.

Spoiler: Spoiler!

I'm getting so tired of them hacking off one of her hands so she and Ash can have parallel "Chosen One" arcs. I know they did that with Mia but we eschewed it for Beth and I hope it continues Not to Be a Thing. My favorite part was her getting her agency back. Ash and the AOD is my favorite take on the material but man, so much of this is a retread. The original stuff - like Sheila planning to commit suicide by going to sleep in the cave with Ash before pulling herself out of it - is actually interesting.

The Early Internet stuff in the 1993 arc is at least interesting! But so, so much is derivative, and it is a disappointment.

 

[MCT28]

AOD Forever #12 thoughts:
I went into this issue thinking that things were going to be drawn out for the sake of the special "bonus" issue 13 that was announced while we were already knee-deep into this series... so imagine my shock when this actually concluded the story! And you know what... it wasn't terrible. I'm just going to put the rest of my thoughts behind a spoiler tag, because there's too much to discuss to leave exposed for people who want to catch-up.

Spoiler

So I'm surprised there was no "going back to the 90s and preventing all this from happening" plot... which means the 1993 Deadite apocalypse is seemingly permanent in this timeline. I'm kind of glad Fleecs didn't go that route, or I would just compare it to Army of Darkness: Home Sweet Hell (yet another comic to take inspiration from).
AND SPEAKING OF THE OTHER AOD COMICS....
I know we're living in an age where multiverse media is the hot new thing... but I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a little bit of a kick out of this Ash being responsible for kick-starting (or adding onto) the Evil Dead Multiverse after throwing the books into the portal. The Earth-818793 Ash and Sheila (representing the finale of Shop 'Till You Drop Dead), the 2022 AOD Versus Reanimator Ash and Herbert West (I guess it is Fleecs' way of reminding us that he worked on that series, too), and the older 818793 Ash in the Deathcoaster from Furious Road were all pleasant reminders of Ash's previous comic adventures... but the real shock came with the other cameos. Evil Dead Rise gets it's first proper acknowledgement in comic form with Monde Apartments (clearly based on this piece of concept art), and the Ash vs Evil Dead Jacksonville postcard is now blown-up to billboard size. I know it's not everybody's cup of tea, but I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff.

My last thought (in this post, anyway) is now I'm genuinely intrigued by what issue #13 is going to be. The text preview seems to imply it is just one story and not an anthology... so could we (finally) be getting an oversized issue with the adventures of Ash in 2093?

 

[MaidOfKandar]

I am Intrigued by this revelation - I need to read the last two issues and see how I feel!