In April of 1985, the first issue of the ground-breaking, twelve issue Crisis on Infinite Earths (Wolfman, et al, 1986) was published. This event, which was easily the biggest in DC Comics at that point (and for many years), saw the destruction of the “Multiverse”, an infinite number of parallel worlds, and the awkward establishing of one unified DC canon. Over the years, DC have returned to this concept again and again, retconning it, expanding upon it, and milking it to the point of excess but that doesn’t change how influential this massive crossover was. To celebrate this momentous event, I’ve been looking at multiversal crossovers every Thursday in April in an event I call “Crossover Crisis”.
Published: November 2007 to March 2008
Writers: James Kuhoric and Jeff Katz
Artist: Jason Craig
The Background:
Despite being regarded as one of the best slasher franchises, Paramount Pictures became embarrassed with their association with the Friday the 13th films (Various, 1980 to present) and eventually sold (some of) the rights to rival studio New Line Cinema. This meant that the long-awaited showdown between Friday’s iconic killer, Jason Voorhees (Various), and New Line’s Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) could finally emerge from years of Development Hell. Freddy vs. Jason (Yu, 2003) received mixed reviews but its nearly $117 million box office gross made it the most profitable entry in either franchise and talks of a sequel inevitably came up. Unfortunately, no follow-up emerged on the silver screen, primarily because the main idea involved including horror icon Ashley “Ash” Williams (Bruce Campbell) and no deal could be reached. We did, however, see these three horror heavyweights tangle in not one but two limited edition comic books published by WildStorm and Dynamite Entertainment, who had been regularly publishing Ash’s comic book adventures for some time. Based on Jeff Katz’s film treatment, Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash was praised for its covers and artwork and for its incorporation and expansion of all three franchises, though it was criticised for being somewhat predictable. Nevertheless, as alluded to, it was followed up by another clash between the three some two years later, one that sought to weave in even more lore from the franchises but was also met with somewhat mixed reviews.
The Review:
Our story begins five years after the events of Freddy vs. Jason and is narrated by the loquacious wit of Deadite-slaying, S-Mart employee Ash Williams, who not only relates that Crystal Lake has once again reverted back to its “Forest Green” moniker but is also now home to “Super Mega Ultra S-Mart”. Ash recaps what happened in the movie (unstoppable, undead killer Jason Voorhees was resurrected by dream demon Freddy Kruger and the two battled to the death at Camp Crystal Lake when Jason’s murderous ways defied Freddy’s wishes), and then reintroduces us to the two survivors of that epic showdown, Will Rollins and Lori Campbell (referred to as “Laurie”, for some reason), who have inexplicably returned to Forest Green because Laurie can’t shake the feeling that Freddy and Jason are still alive. Of course, basic horror movie odds state that this is a bad idea; both Will and Ash point out that it’s a bad idea, but Laurie won’t be dissuaded and, with snow caking the landscape, they investigate the remains of Camp Crystal Lake. Naturally, Laurie finds blood at the site and, moments later, is horrified to see Will’s eviscerated corpse strung up from the rafters, his entrails spilling to the floor. Hysterical and panicked, Laurie desperately tries to channel her survivor’s instinct, the special qualities that Ash bitterly remarks make such individuals special, attacking Jason with a buzzsaw and chastising his mindless killing, only to end up with a machete to the face as Ash sadly comments that, for better or for worse, the only true “chosen one” is him. Jason takes his newest victims back to his shack, where his beloved mother’s severed head has been joined by Freddy’s, a memento of his victory in Freddy vs. Jason. As we saw at the end of the film, Freddy’s spirit survived and, once Jason enters the shack, he’s immediately forced into a lucid dream state where he relives his childhood torment. He’s enraged when he finds Freddy nailing his mother, but Pamela soothes him, as ever, and convinces Jason that his new “daddy” not only wants to protect him from bullies but can also make him a “normal little boy” like he’s always wanted; all Jason has to do is go back to his childhood home and dig up the Necronomicon Ex Mortis that’s buried there.
With our returning characters summarily killed off, the story jumps over to the Forest Green S-Mart to introduce a new batch of horny, cliché teens; four slackers more interested in making crude dick jokes, pulling pranks on their supervisor, and giving oddball customers the brushoff. The four – Jarvis, Raoul, Davey, and Caroline (or “Carrie”) – are unimpressed to learn that a “senior housewares domestic engineer” is coming in to whip them, and the entire store, into shape for the holiday season. Of course, this is the “Chosen One” himself, Ash Williams, still sporting his robotic hand and embittered by both the influence the Necronomicon has over his life and the losses he’s suffered because of it. Still, he finds solace in kicking Deadite ass whenever they show up and the hope that he’ll one day get to destroy the book once and for all. Ash immediately puts the moves on some teens hanging around outside the S-Mart; as he’s reprimanded for his tardiness and shown around by the manager, the teens wander into the path of the lurking Jason, his vision twisted by Freddy’s influence and driving him into a killing frenzy. The screams attract Ash, and the cops, who immediately target Ash for being an out-of-towner but are forced to release him when the manager vouches for his innocence. Despite the event, Ash gets to work, unimpressed by the store’s presentation and the kids’ lethargic attitude and naivety regarding the dark forces lurking in the shadows. Naturally, Raoul and Jarvis mock his doomsaying demeanour, but Carrie is intrigued by his stories of cursed books and demons; just as he shares more of his experiences, she also clues him in on the local legend of Jason Voorhees, unaware that Jarvis and Raoul are listening in. When Raoul jumps in wearing a hockey mask and brandishing a tomato sauce-splattered hockey stick, Ash nearly kills him before Jarvis intervenes, further increasing the animosity between them and the unimpressed Ash. His mood lifts, however, when he not only sees the S-Mart sells the impressive “Chain Lightning” chainsaw but also when sultry Bree strokes his ego, convincing him to buy supplies for her camping trip, only to ditch him once he’s finished loading up her fancy sports car.
Meanwhile, Freddy urges Jason to continue towards his goal but the hulking killer can’t help but slaughter a group of carollers he spots in the forest along the way. Wouldn’t you know it, though, Bree and her shit-kicking friends are spending the night in the old Voorhees mansion, unaware that Jason is prowling outside. Ash rolls up soon after on the trail of the Necronomicon and immediately heads to the fruit cellar, ignoring the commotion upstairs as he assumes it’s just the kids getting laid (though it’s actually Jason ripping them to bloody pieces), and finally locating the book just before realising there’s a madman on the loose inside. Ash races upstairs and finds Bree, half naked and in shock, and uncomfortably slaps a kiss on her before delaying Jason with a shotgun blast and making a run for his Oldsmobile. With Bree in hysterics and the car refusing the start, Ash deflects Jason’s machete with his robot hand and is forced to bail when the monster wrecks his beloved car. Thankfully, Carrie suddenly runs Jason down as he’s throttling our hero and all three of them get to safety, much to Freddy’s anger. In Jason’s subconscious, where the hulking killer is little more than a terrified child, Freddy reiterates his mission to retrieve the book and gives Jason license to kill anyone who gets in his way, learning Ash’s name from the depths of Jason’s admittedly empty mind. Ash, Bree, and Carrie head to S-Mart, where Raoul and Jarvis are getting high, and Ash again chews the kids out for being macho assclowns. As Ash desperately searches for a solution in the pages of the Necronomicon, Jason waltzes through the front door and goes on a delightfully gory killing spree, forcing Ash to reload and rearm himself with his trademark chainsaw.
Round two between Jason and Ash goes slightly more in Jason’s favour, with Ash being comically battered around the shop, incapacitating him enough for Jason to tear out Bree’s throat and retrieve the book. While the survivors regroup, now convinced of Jason’s threat and Ash’s abilities, Jason brings the book back to his shack and Freddy reads those immortal words – “Klaatu! Verata! Nikto!” – and returns to the waking world once more. Ready to spread a new kind of nightmare with the book’s power, Freddy leaves, considering the two even, but surprisingly makes good on his promise to “fix” Jason. Ash and the others head to Carrie’s place where they take stock of the situation, with Ash even referring to Jason as a Deadite and the group agreeing that “someone” must be manipulating him; but, with little else to go on, they turn in for the night. Thus, Ash finds himself dreaming of being back in the cabin; he even has his old hand for all of five panels before Freddy’s claws burst from it. As before, he races to the work shed and severs the razor-fingered limb with a chainsaw and wry commentary, only to be stunned when his blood forms into tiny, mocking Freddys and then a full-size Freddy, who introduces himself to Ash and then, strangely, states his plan to have Ash and the kids bring him the Necronomicon despite the fact that he already has it. Regardless, Ash fights Freddy off and forces himself awake, discovering that whatever happens in a dream happens in the real world, which is bad news for Davey as he’s pummelled to death by dodgeballs in his nightmare. Relishing his returning strength, Freddy orders Jason (now little more than his obedient lackey) to go kill them so he (as in Freddy) can properly read the book, while Ash has the kids round up some supplies from the S-Mart before heading back to the Voorhees estate. Ash’s plan is for them to stay awake, lure out Jason, and bury him under his own house using explosives; he arms himself with Chain Lightning, steals “some sugar” from Carrie, and heads inside, leaving the others to carry out their part of the plan.
Unfortunately for the dumbstruck Raoul and Jarvis, Jason is a bit smarter now and doesn’t fall for their trap; he even taunts them with a finger wag before advancing on them. In the house, Ash is surprised to find Freddy manifested in the real world, suffering a shoulder wound for his arrogance, and even more stunned to find Freddy has already read from the book and enacted his plan to dominate both the waking and the dream worlds. Transforming to his demonic form and conjuring both ethereal Dream Demon spirits and miniature claws, Freddy prepares to cut Ash down but is surprisingly – and bafflingly – interrupted by Jason, now wielding two machetes, who randomly decides to turn against Freddy for no reason. Still, Freddy’s more than willing to oblige and conjures the demonic corpses of Jason’s many victims to swarm the hockey masked killer, with many familiar faces (even some who weren’t Jason’s prey) making a welcome return. Despite their numbers, and Freddy running him through with his own machete, Jason refuses to go down without a fight, but Freddy’s attention is soon turned to Ash when he finds the “Chosen One” has swiped the book during the commotion and made a run for it. In the forest, Ash is attacked by demonic trees and crows but quickly asserts himself with his chainsaw and shotgun, stumbling upon the bludgeoned remains of Raoul and Davey soon after. He’s relieved to find Carrie survived, however, but they’re forced to take shelter in the Voorhees house when the enraged Dream Demon looms over them from the clouds in an awesome visual. Ash frantically searches through the Necronomicon for the passage that will banish Freddy and Jason to the Deadite realm and discovers sketches of the two in the book’s pages, lending more credence to the “Jason is a Deadite” philosophy and only exacerbating Ash’s anger towards the book and all the suffering it’s caused. Ash entrusts the book, and the scared words, to Carrie and prepares to hold the two killers off, only to wind up tangling with Freddy’s nursery rhyme kids and watching, helplessly, as Carrie is taken away by Freddy in a recreation of the end of the original Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven, 1984).
Of course, Ash easily fights these apparitions off but, more surprisingly, Carrie is inadvertently saved from Freddy’s leering lusts by Jason. While he’s no match for Freddy’s God-like power, Jason is still switched on enough to snatch the book from Carrie before she can read the magic words, forcing Ash to blow his hockey mask (and half his rotten face) off to protect her. Ash then literally disarms Jason to retrieve the book, but Jason simply jams his machete blade into the stump and swats Ash out of the house, through a window and into unconsciousness, as the estate collapses on him and Freddy, leaving Carrie to run for her life when the demonic Freddy bursts forth demanding his book. After savouring the chase, Freddy gleefully mocks her by cutting himself in a perversion of the Holy Communion and reclaims the book, only for Jason to suddenly return and, despite Freddy’s taunts and impressive light show, splits his head in two with his machete. Naturally, Freddy quickly recovers, freezes Jason with a puff of bloody air, and prepares to use the Necronomicon to send him far away. Just then, Ash comes barrelling in in his bizarrely repaired Oldsmobile and runs Freddy down before beating the piss out of him and blowing his nuts off with his shotgun. Ash’s bravado is nullified when a recovered Jason enters the fray and causes Ash to slip into the icy waters of the frozen Crystal Lake. Freddy duplicates himself to momentarily overwhelm Jason and their fight is interrupted (…again…) by Ash, who breaks free from the ice and blows a hole in Jason’s chest and takes a swipe at Freddy with his chainsaw, only to be quickly overpowered and manhandled by their supernatural strength and powers. Luckily, Carrie finally gets her shit together and reads the passages, opening a vortex that sucks Freddy into the Deadite realm. Although Jason manages to resist the vacuum, he’s forced back to the depths of Crystal Lake by Ash’s Oldsmobile but, regardless, the threat is summarily ended. However, while he revels in this victory, Ash expresses scepticism that the two – and the Evil Dead – can ever truly by defeated and, indeed, the final panels not only show that Jason is alive in the frozen Crystal Lake but that the Necronomicon also foreshadows a future confrontation between the three!
The Summary:
Oh my, is this story quite the glorious mess! First of all, I have to say, while the covers are indeed striking, the interior artwork widely fluctuates between issues and is often almost incomprehensible. Although Will and Lori barely resemble their film counterparts, Ash, Freddy, and Jason are all rendered exactly as they appear in their films, almost to a fault as Jason Craig blatantly copies poses and images from Freddy vs. Jason in some panels. Sometimes, characters are depicted in a quirky, exaggerated manner almost on the verge of caricature; others, they’re a mass of angles and colours and blobs and things appear very rushed. You can guess which style works best for the story. Second, there’s the writing; Ash’s narration is a nice touch and is a unique way to fill in any blanks and to convey his overriding character arc of being this cursed “Chosen One”, but the narrative is kinda all over the place at times. Will and “Laurie” return only to be killed off right away, the new characters are dull and simply there to add to the body count, and a lot of the writing annoyingly pokes fun at the tropes of the Friday the 13th franchise rather than embracing them. I can’t help but feel the story might’ve been better served by having Will and Lori survive; maybe they also work at the S-Mart and they could’ve delivered some of the exposition, and died due to the power boost Freddy and Jason receive here. Instead, we’re left with a couple of jock dickheads and some slutty girls who mock Ash at first and then fall for his charms as soon as the bodies start piling up.
Speaking of which, Ash is depicted quite fittingly here; he’s both bitter and tortured and snarky and proactive, openly telling his horror stories to anyone who’ll listen even when there’s no context or reason for him to and immediately jumping into action whenever a threat emerges. He’s never short of a quip or biting remark and bombards both his undead enemies and his smarmy teenage cohorts with snappy insults whenever he can; he also makes sure to spout all his familiar catchphrases, often when slicing and dicing, and comes up with a decent enough plan to get rid of the two monsters, even if he does underestimate their abilities. Yet, he’s also a complete moron; he easily falls for Bree’s deception, arrogantly assumes he can best Freddy and Jason since he’s killed Deadites before, and is easily distracted by whichever shapely piece of ass is in his view at that moment. The best parts of the story are when he’s matching wits with Freddy, with the two trading more barbs than blows, and going toe to toe with Jason, with Ash’s unique abilities giving him just enough edge to at least hold his own against Jason’s superior strength. Similar to Freddy vs. Jason, Freddy is more of a manipulative presence here; weakened, he must manipulate Jason once again, often using the form of his beloved mother, to restore his power and, consequently, claims only one victim in the entire story. Yet, his threat is constantly emphasised; the Necronomicon promises to increase his power a thousandfold and enables him to bring his dream powers to the real world, and nowhere is this more apparent than in him assuming his demonic visage about halfway through the story. Unfortunately, only the reader is truly aware of Freddy’s threat for the majority of the book; characters are naturally only aware of Jason since he’s a local legend, though this doesn’t diminish Freddy’s importance since he constantly pops up to chastise Jason or make lewd advances towards the characters before enacting his diabolical plan.
Of the three, Jason kinda gets a little shafted. Sure, he builds up an impressive kill count here and delivers the story’s most gruesome moments (his wholesale slaughter of the S-Mart customers and employees is a notable highlight), but I didn’t like that he was reduced to Freddy’s pawn once he delivered the Necronomicon. Freddy supposedly reenergised Jason’s brain cells with the book, but we see little evidence of this; sure, he’s a bit smarter and seems a little more aware of what’s happening, but it’s not enough for me to say he’s never shown that level of intelligence before. It’s also incredibly baffling to me that Jason just randomly turns on Freddy; there’s no explanation for this and it just comes across as a bit forced and a way to avoid coming up with a good reason to have them fight again. The fights between the two, and three, characters are pretty good; they’re surprisingly evenly matched despite Jason’s supernatural strength and Freddy’s increased powers and their battles are generally interrupted by characters waking up or interjecting themselves, but there was some meaty, bloody action whenever they got into it. Sadly, I’m not sure it’s enough to really elevate this story; it’s a fun glimpse at what could’ve been in a potential Freddy vs. Jason sequel, but I definitely think another pass was needed at the script and a few of the issues needed addressing. Primarily that the story really is just a retread of Freddy vs. Jason but with elements from the original Evil Dead films (Raimi, 1981 to 1992) thrown in, but also…Freddy has the Necronomicon so why does he need Ash the others to get it? Why does the story flip-flop between calling it Forest Green and Crystal Lake? How did Ash know the Necronomicon was at the Voorhees house? Still, I liked the visual of Crystal Lake covered in snow, the callbacks and references to each film and certain events from each franchise, and the visual of the three going at it, I just think it needed a little bit more to really elevate it to must-read territory.
My Rating:
Pretty Good
Did you enjoy Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash? What did you think to the artwork and the characterisations? Were you disappointed that Will and Lori were offed so quickly? Did you like the connection between the Necronomicon and Jason’s origin? Would you have liked to see these three horror icons tangle on the big screen? Which film in the three franchises is your favourite? What other horror crossovers would you like to see? Drop a comment below or on my social media to share your thoughts and feel free to check out my other reviews of both franchises, and the rest of my Crossover Crisis content!
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