olddude's Army of Darkness #1 review

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    Random stuff, needed more space

    I have to say that because I really wanted to like this issue. The "Evil dead" trilogy ranks among my favorite films because it is unapologetically funny mixing crude humor with splatter horror, it's the ultimate b-movie trilogy of all time. But though it does not appear to be well structured it is actually very well planned. And that's the secret. Here I got the sense of a book that randomly throws stuff at the reader without reason or explanation and that's what killed it for me.

    So the book's first and biggest problem is actually structure. The story of Ash appears mixed into her present condition between her capture from the Egyptian slave traders and her encounter with Cleopatra. Sadly gives the book a rather disjointed feeling. more like reading scattered comic pages than an actual book. Cleopatra also serves virtually no purpose, she is more of a vessel in order to help us get to Ash's second part of the story. Another part that's awkward is the alien, we get a part of his back story but his purpose remains a bit unclear. Also despite the fact that the script shoves many different themes into a storyline (aliens, egyptians, modern age character) it fails to blend them together. It all feels random, instead of Egypt we could easily be in France and Cleopatra could have been a french queen without changing anything. Also the battles are too short because of all these events happening in twenty pages we get to see Ash just transforming her arm into a mace and punching some zombies and that's all. Very light on the action. One last thing is (male) Ash. The story feels like it rushes itself so that the characters can meet up with him. I thought that at least the Egyptian background would serve a bigger purpose (like see some Gods or monuments other than a generic pyramid) but it looks like the egyptian setting is done. Too bad.

    The artwork is ok though nothing too spectacular that could save this average story. Ash is nice and the alien looks cool and so on but nothing seems original. Plus it look really clean, I would have expected it to look more dirty and violent, after all it is based on a cult splatter movie.

    I can't help but feel that this is a book that desperately needed more space, pages and editorial guidance. As it is it feels like a rushed attempt to shove 3-4 plotlines in the main story so that the reader can meet with (male) Ash in the ending serving no other purpose. A blunder.

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