Army of Darkness Ashes 2 Ashes # 1C Templesmith Nick Bradshaw Evil Dead Rise Mov

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Army of Darkness Ashes 2 Ashes (2004) #1C

Published Jul 2004 by Devil’s Due
Templesmith Cover
by Andy Hartnell, Nick Bradshaw, & Etienne St-Laurent
Full Color, 32pg

He’s back, Baby! Featuring characters from the film, Army of Darkness, this first issue finds Ash forced to leave behind the S-Mart when a face from the past recruits him for another go-round with the Necronomicon and its Deadite minions! Ash gets a “do-over” to set right a new problem caused by his misspeaking of those notorious magic words, charged with the unusual task of returning to a certain cabin in the woods on the fateful night he first learned of the existence of The Book of the Dead!

Ash has returned home from 1300 AD… a bit too early, as in he and Linda haven’t even left to go to the cabin yet. The Wise Man from 1300 AD has come to the future inform Ash of his mistake, but Ash sees it as a way to save Linda from becoming a Deadite. The pair race off to the cabin to hopefully beat the slightly younger Ash there, but get delayed when Ash remembers that the shortest way to the cabin (a bridge) was destroyed by the evil force lurking within in the woods. After taking the long way around, Ash and The Wise Man find that they are already too late to save Linda.

While looking for the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis in the cabin, the younger Ash confronts his slightly older counterpart. The older Ash realizes that there’s no point in trying to reason with his younger-self, so The Wise Man opens the time-portal with the Ex-Mortis and sends the young Ash to 1300 AD. Now that they’ve got the Necronomicon, Ash and The Wise Man make a plan to destroy the book once and for all, but to destroy it, they need to take the book back to its birthplace, a temple in Egypt.

When the two arrive just outside the temple, they find that they picked up a hitchhiker while they were at the cabin: Ash’s severed hand. The hand stabs The Wise Man in the back, killing him instantly. The hand scurries off into the temple, leaving Ash alone with no clue on what to do next. The hand then connects itself to some skeletal remains it finds, and a new Evil Ash is born. After Ash completes a series of puzzles inside the temple, he finds the new Evil Ash and his army of darkness waiting for him. As Ash is swarmed by deadites, he realizes that he probably shouldn’t have taken on this army all by himself. When it looks like it’s the end for Ash: the slightly-younger Ash, Lord Arthur and Henry The Red (and their respective armies) suddenly appeared out of a time vortex and start kicking Deadite ass.

There’s a big battle for awhile, then Ash uses the gas from his chainsaw to create a fire, which burns up Evil Ash and the Deadites. The slightly younger Wise Man tells Ash that once everyone is safely back through the time-portal, throw the Necronomicon of the present inside so he can take care of it. Of course, Ash gets distracted by something (Sheila) and completely forgets about throwing the book into the portal before he rides off into the sunset, leaving it in the Egyptian desert.

Nick Bradshaw’s art style is very cartoonish and colorful. If ever they decided to make an Evil Dead animated series, I do hope that they take inspiration from Bradshaw’s interpretation of the characters as featured in this series. And not just the characters, his backgrounds are amazingly detailed as well. His attention to these little details in this cartoon-like world is amazing, there’s always something to look at in the background or foreground, most of them being “easter eggs” (ex. Freddy Kruger’s glove in the workshed, the corpse of “Indiana Jones” outside the temple, a quick two panel cameo from the laughing deer head from Evil Dead 2).

Andy Hartnell’s dialog for Ash seems in-character with the Ash seen in the Army of Darkness film. It’s not hard to imagine Bruce Campbell saying these lines, although that’s because about 40% of Ash’s dialog in this comic is either an iconic line from one of the Evil Dead films or a slight variation of an iconic quote (ex: “Good, bad, I’m the guy with both chainsaws!”). Andy Hartnell did something right with this series since apparently it grabbed the attention of the writers for the Ash vs Evil Dead television show. Several elements that originated from this comic have been featured in the TV show, the main ones being the name (episode eight of AvED is titled Ashes To Ashes), a new Evil Ash growing from Ash’s severed hand, and Ash going back to the cabin to try and prevent his friends from dying. Ash vs Evil Dead will also pull from other Army of Darkness comic storylines, but I’ll talk more about that when we get to those respective stories.

It’s definitely the most “lighthearted” of Dynamite’s Army of Darkness books. Would I recommend it to anyone who has never seen the Army of Darkness film? No. The story has so many callbacks and references to events from the Evil Dead films that someone just picking up this book out of curiosity would be very confused. Would I recommend it to anyone who has seen the Army of Darkness film? If you are a fan of the Evil Dead series and curious about the comics, this is a pretty good place to start.

I just finished reading this and I really couldn’t put it down. Nick Bradshaw’s art is perfect and I can’t picture the comics being drawn by anyone else. The story fits into the already ludicrous Evil Dead storyline perfectly and every fan who reads this won’t see it as anything less than a perfect continuation to the story of Ash and his war on the Deadites.

Speaking of the story, the writing is top-notch here, with crazy twists occurring to stop Ash at every turn and great humor that will have you smiling as you read every blood-soaked page. This is a really fun comic, and every Evil Dead fan who loves comics or remotely enjoys reading should make an effort to pick this one up.

Whoa: Sam Raimi And Bruce Campbell Reunite For EVIL DEAD RISE
Almost four decades after the original!

WOW, this is big news! Forty years after Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead blew the doors off and left us wanting more (which we got with the genre-changing Evil Dead 2, followed by Army of Darkness, Fede Álvarez’s 2013 reboot and the 2015-2018 Starz series Ash vs Evil Dead), Raimi’s reuniting with his star Bruce Campbell and producer Rob Tapert for a brand new film, Evil Dead Rise, on HBO Max – partnering with New Line! Isn’t that a nice little jolt of nostalgia right to the heart?

From today’s press release:

Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert and Bruce Campbell – the acclaimed filmmaking team behind the iconic “Evil Dead” franchise – will reunite with horror house New Line Cinema nearly 40 years after the Studio’s landmark release of their seminal shocker for the highly anticipated next chapter in the saga, “Evil Dead Rise,” for HBO Max.

Moving the action out of the woods and into the city, “Evil Dead Rise” tells a twisted tale of two estranged sisters, played by Alyssa Sutherland (TV’s “The Mist” and “Vikings” ) and Lily Sullivan (“Picnic at Hanging Rock,” “Jungle”), whose reunion is cut short by the rise of flesh-possessing demons, thrusting them into a primal battle for survival as they face the most nightmarish version of family imaginable.

With Tapert producing, and Raimi and Campbell signing on as executive producers, along with Romel Adam, John Keville and Macdara Kelleher, the new film is being written and directed by award-winning Irish filmmaker Lee Cronin, who was hand-picked to take the helm by Raimi, Tapert and Campbell after earning widespread praise from critics and fans alike for his feature directorial debut, the 2019 chiller “The Hole in the Ground.”

Said Raimi, “I’m thrilled to bring ‘Evil Dead’ back to its original home at New Line 40 years after the release of the first film. The company’s history as pioneers of horror speaks for itself. I’m equally excited to be working with Lee Cronin, whose gifts as a storyteller make him the ideal filmmaker to continue the enduring legacy of the franchise.”

“At its core, ‘Evil Dead’ is about ordinary people overcoming extraordinarily terrifying situations,” added Campbell, whose embodiment of the ‘Evil Dead’ franchise’s reluctant hero, Ashley J. “Ash” Williams, has propelled the actor/filmmaker to international icon status across generations. “I can’t wait for Alyssa and Lily to fill the blood-soaked shoes of those who have come before them and carry on that tradition.”

Said director Cronin, “The ‘Evil Dead’ movies filled my brain with terror and awe when I first saw them at nine years old. I am excited and humbled to be resurrecting the most iconic of evil forces for both the fans and a whole new generation.”

Welcome back, Ash. Let’s go.

Near mint, 1st print. Bagged & Boarded.