Freddy Krueger meets his match

[cyberghostface]

One of the comics published by Wildstorm's 'New Line Horror' imprint was a Nightmare on Elm Street series by Chuck Dixon. It was a mixed bag but it had some good moments, the highlight of which was the fourth issue. 

In the first three issues, there was a subplot with a little girl who, being in a coma, could lapse back and forth between Freddy's world and ours without being hurt. At the end, she got a heart transplant and came out of the coma, but as this issue shows, her abilities didn't go away.





So the issue goes like this for a bit, with the little girl constantly harassing poor Freddy and generally making his life miserable and preventing him from carving up teenagers.









Cut for legality (the entire issue wasn't about Lacey's antics, after all) was a subplot with Freddy selecting a teenager on the "outside" to kill Lacey for him. He fails, and is mortally wounded by the police. The teen considers his fate to be a better alternative than falling asleep and risking Freddy's wrath.

At the end of the issue...

Comments

[ozaline]

Heh I like this twist on the Freddy mythos.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

I never get tired of seeing Freddy get owned by her.

[tcampbell1000]

It's a nice idea for a page or two, but it seems like it would get one-note very very quickly. Then again, Freddy himself seems to me like a fairly limited concept stretched out way too far by the old horror movie market, so maybe I'm not the right audience.

[candescencearia]

To be fair, the same can be said for most horror icons as well, though Freddy and Jason are extreme examples that have been spread excessively film over several films each for the sake of milking them for cash.

Though they're also weird examples in that each of their first films are rather different from the rest - Friday the 13th's first film had Jason's mother as the killer and Jason didn't even get his iconic hockey mask until the third film. And the first two Nightmare On Elm Street films were darker and had Freddy's personality be rather different from the hammy wisecracker he is in films not helmed by Wes Craven. Amongst other things for both examples, you get the idea.

[mrstatham]

Freddy basically got by on adjusting the 'dream-killer' concept to include characters who could actively oppose him using similar abilities, and by the time that got trite, Wes Craven came back with a smart concept featuring an adjusted take on the character. But there was a lot of neat concepts and silly kills that you could put together with the concept, and the early plots were fairly solid - the oft-maligned Freddy's Revenge, for instance, tackles ideas of sexuality and the like fairly interestingly, as well as Freddy manipulating someone into becoming something like him.

But the general take away was that the sillier Freddy got, the more iconic he became and the less scary the films actually were. Conversely however, the Bay-produced remake kicked out any sense of black comedy or humour, and was the worse for it.

The same happened with Friday the 13th to a lesser extent, although despite the snobbery and moral hand-wringing of certain reviewers (here's looking at you, Siskel and Ebert, who actually put out the *addresses and contact details* of the filmmakers for the Friday series - what the fuck), some of the films - most notably I, III, IV and VI - were pretty good for what they were.

[janegray]

Siskel and Ebert, who actually put out the *addresses and contact details* of the filmmakers for the Friday series - what the fuck

Seriously???

What the hell is wrong with people.

[deepspaceartist]

To be fair, this was likely before the internet and doxing were things. So contacting such people required time, effort and money, and the info only went out to a relatively small number of people, thus making modern internet level harassment and threats unlikely. When Siskel and Ebert did it it probably only resulted in a handful of phone calls and sternly worded letters.

Still a dick move, but not the life-destroying asshole move it would be today.

[mrstatham]

They actually did it on their TV show, which would have had plenty of viewers at the time. The first Friday movie also resulted in the same kind of farcical picketing from overzealous parents and the like that dogged Silent Night, Deadly Night (another interesting slasher flick with very well done characterisation). So.. Yeah. As much as Siskel and Ebert were held in incredibly high regard - and in some instances rightfully so - it was a total dick move, alongside their apparent inability to recognise that a series was hitting the marks it was aiming for very well. Their review of Friday Part IV, for instance, is incredibly ridiculous in it's doom-mongering.

[dustbunny105]

Okay, someone doesn't know what a zebra is and I don't think that someone is me.