By Sonia Aurora
Oh Ash, how I love thee…let me count the ways…
But first I have one bone to pick… my purchase of Evil Dead Issue #4 went unshipped for 4 months (I swore I pre-ordered it), and then I realized it had not only been published, but I never got it, and now it was out of stock.
Damn, damn technology. (And thank you, Ebay).
I won the bid and shelled out the dough – I needed to know what Mark Verheiden and John Bolton were going to do with the movie I loved so well.
And so, with the final issue finally in my hands, I dove in.
I re-read Issue #3, wanting to recapture the familiar, yet unfamiliar, retelling of Ash’s tale. Familiar in that I knew where this story was heading, having worn my VHS copy to a nub. Unfamiliar in that, with the exception of Ash’s distinctive chin, the other characters were updated incarnations of
So #3 begins with Scotty standing over Shelly’s bloody body parts, and the ensuing burial.
Issue #3 was, overall, just filler, a means to getting to the end of the story (Issue #4). There was nothing overly outstanding to me in this particular issue: the artistry was still impressive and eerily real at some points, the lines, even the non-ripped-from the script ones still felt familiar rolling off Comic Ash’s tongue, with Bruce Campbell’s cadences echoing in my head. Little changes here and there – Scotty going off into the woods and meeting his deadite self- within the familiar landscape – Linda giggling like a maniacal little zombie girl, licking the knife of blood “like a kid licking the frosting off a birthday candle.” We get some minor flashbacks – not as detailed as my favorite in Issue #2 when we get a background filler of Shelly’s human demonic self before the Kandarian demons got to her- but you do get a greater sense of how Ash really loved Linda, a greater sense of struggle when he has to kill her, how he stalls. In many ways, the comics have served to give a greater emotional connection to these characters.
And so Issue #3 ends with Linda’s beheading, and I went to Issue #4 – dessert (I hoped).
Now Ash is alone, at least alone with his thoughts and with a growling, shot up Cheryl, and a decapitated Linda in the vicinity of the house. Ash is now fully transformed to his survival-man self, not caring about shooting Cheryl, trying desperately to keep his sanity in a house that is trying to swallow it – and him – whole. His revelation becomes burning the book and that should destroy the demons that were trying to get into the house, and the ones that had reanimated Scotty. And Ash’s cheeky comment that “Of course, since I’m here to tell it, you probably already know how it finally turned out.”
Yes, as Evil Dead fans, we know how it, and the next two tellings/sequels turned out. But Issue #4 has a nice, interesting twist by the end. As in the film, Ash exits the cabin to a brand new day, birds and sunshine and normalcy…going to his car…turning around…screaming…
Only to be woken up from a dream while in his car, having just arrived at the cabin, a new Linda waiting impatiently outside.
Could this be the perfect segue and explanation from Evil Dead 1 to Evil Dead 2? A nice smooth transition from comic to film, something that makes it easier to understand that the sequel was a straight sequel and not a retelling/sequel? I’ve never minded the Evil Dead 2 recap, but I love the idea that though I was so emotionally involved, especially in this comic form, to the Evil Dead story, only to now suppose that Cheryl, Shelly, Scotty and the “original” Linda were figments of Ash’s dream.
Either way, the 4 book breakup made me want to unspool my VHS tape (yes, I still own a VCR) and indulge in the original film yet again (and again, and again….)
Dream on, Ash, and live on.
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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.
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Aspiring screenwriter and seamstress, Sonia's dream is to write life-tweaking films while product-placing her own line of handbags. In 1999, she wrote, co-directed and co-starred in the short film Dr. Lovestrange, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bug, a satirical homage to Stanley Kubrick set amidst the panic of Y2K. She is working on her next short about the Mayan Calender that she hopes to finish before the end of the world. Ever the late bloomer, she finally started a blog chronicling her misadventures as one half of a long distance relationship (http://llddr.wordpress.com). She still struggles with which picture to kiss before bedtime: her boyfriend's or Bruce Campbell's. And, in the interest of time, she'd like to start thanking the Academy now. 
