Friday the 13th - A Killer Read I must say I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Being a realistic Friday the 13th fan, I was anticipating this graphic novel to follow the same slash/gratuitous nudity/slash again formula that we've all come to expect from our beloved hockey-masked vigilante....and it does to a certain extent. However, the book does offer more than that. The illustration is great and the story is well written. The characters are more interesting than they are in the movies. You actually care about them. There is a deep and creative backstory revolving around the terrifying history of Crystal Lake, which offers an explanation as to why Jason is the way he is. This would make an excellent entry into the film series. If only Hollywood were listening.....
Excellent and faithful to the Jason mythos M. Gaines has decided to build another camp at Crystal Lake, thinking that, as children tell scary stories around a fire, Crystal Lake was a natural choice. He hires young adults to fix everything in the camp. Some of them look for money, some only want to party and few know that Jason Vorhees was here and what that serial killer did.
Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti obviously like horror movies. Well let's say that they like most of pulp styles (they've written dark horror in the beginning of their run on "Hawkman" or kung-fu / explotation story with "Daughters of the Dragon"). I was afraid that Friday the 13th would only be a "work for food" gig. Happily, it's not the case and writers succeed in planting their own savoir-faire in the story. Their skill goes far beyond shock-value and every character has his own history and problems. Dialogues are always smooth to read, Gray & Palmiotti style.
Adam Archer was nearly a stranger as an artist for the comic-book industry. You can find his work on Batman Strikes, Supergirl or the webcomic-book for Heroes but I only read the latter. His work has a realistic style proper to the horror genre and having read so much horror comics that weren't very well drawn, I'm very happy with Archer's work who must have learned a bit or two of inside anatomy.
I'm not an ultra-fan of the Friday the 13th franchise because I always thought that it wasn't enough in term of gore. And Wildstorm publishing those comic-books wasn't reassuring. Let's say that writers are filling their work with a lot of smashed skulls, spilling guts and blood. A nice work indeed for horror-movie fans & comic-book lovers.
An Awesome Treat For The F13 Fan, And An Excellent Comic Book Collection With the film series that started in 1980 having apparantly ended with 2003's Freddy Vs. Jason (the next F13 movie looks likely to be a remake rather than a sequel), it's a heavensent treat to have an offscreen project as great as WildStorm/DC's first six issues of their Friday The 13th comics unleashed, collected here in the inaugural F13 Trade Paperback. There's some wild (and successfully executed) trekking outside of traditional Friday territory here, but really I think that it's forging all these new ideas, Combined with staying faithful to the heart of the movie series, that makes this volume so vital. I think I'm willing to consider this book part of official Friday The 13th continuity; it certainly deserves - in my opinion - to be there more than Jason X.
Among the riskiest moves taken is extending the Friday the 13th story way back before 1957 and the drowning death of Jason Voorhees, coming up with new, unrevealed history. It would seem to be have the potential to misfire, but it works. Some examples (and these all come from early in the story, so it shouldn't spoil anything) - Jason wasn't the first - and anything but the last - to drown in the waters of Crystal Lake, and the camp he was at was not the first camp on the lake's shores. The first camp, although few people around Crystal Lake want to talk about it, opened in 1935, and like the more famous camp of the fifties, burned to the ground a year after its opening. And for the victims to have been claimed by the lake, Jason is only one of over a hundred and fifty, something nobody anywhere near the lake wants to think about.
This brings to mind a good question that's occurred to everybody as the movie series grew in number: why on Earth does anyone go near the place, let alone build a summer camp there, when there've been so many murders that just can't be ignored, no matter how much the authorities try to tell people that Jason isn't supernatural, or that most of the murders are done by copycats, or whatever. For this entry in the series, there's a simple and cynically believable rationale: the new camp managers want to capitalize on the legend. Stocking up the camp with shirts emblazoned with 'I Survived Camp Blood' for sale, and replicas of the legendary hockey mask on sale, you can see how if this was all real, somebody might actually come up with the bright idea of trying something like this. So the camp is being built up anew by a crew of teenage/twentysomething summer workers, the late spring is beautiful, and disaster is waiting to strike.
The characters they've assembled are pretty interesting. You can start off liking one of them, and they go and do or say something so low or assinine you dislike them, and later as the going gets tough they'll come around and start to seem not so bad again... there's swerves with most of the characterizations like this, and it goes hand in hand with the air of mystery built up for a couple of the characters. It builds up a nice slippery slope where you're often not quite sure what's really going on under the surface. The story evidently takes place after "Freddy Vs. Jason", but - perhaps because of the massive damage he took in that one - Jason's power level isn't on par with where it was in FVJ or "Jason Goes To Hell", more like in "Jason Lives" or "The New Blood". Strong but quite a bit below maximum, capable of short bursts of fair speed but generally rather slow, able to take enormous damage but often needing a few moments to recover from it instead of just plowing right through it like in JG2H or FVJ. Most interestingly, there seems to be a follow-up to how in FVJ Freddy reawakened not just Jason's body but, accidentally, his mind - Jason appears to be in the early stages of being able to think. In this volume it's unclear on what path that's going to take him, but it's a tantalizing thought.
The ending issue of this series is pretty out there in suggesting an origin for the strangeness of the lake itself. It would have worked brilliantly in an original tale that wasn't part of a pre-existing series, and I think it worked well here too, but it's going to take a while for the future tales to confirm it. That is, this element can be part of the mythos as long as it doesn't come to dominate it. And I still think Jason would most likely have risen without this particular hook from the past, but it's certainly innovatative.
Written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray (Hawkman #s 28-49; Monolith; The Hills Have Eyes - The Beginning) who are establishing themselves as two of the premiere writers in comics, especially on the more macabre, darker stuff. Adam Archer, who I don't think I was familiar with before this series and who I guess must be a relative newcomer(?) handles the pencils and does some dynamic things that really help the flow of the story - I like the way, for instance, things can be moving very slow, tranquil even, then a sudden intense burst of violent action, and then return very quickly to an air of seeming normalcy. Overall, the interior art wasn't quite on the level of the cover arts by Ryan Sook (Seven Soldiers: Zatanna), but Sook's rather exceptional. Archer needs a little more work on some of the facial shots, that's about the only place where an occasional chink in the armor of the art creeps in. And it's not every panel, or a serious impediment to the overall package.
This is an essential for the Friday The 13th fan, it's better than several of the movies (and I'm really into all the movies, except, again, Jason X. And even that one had a few good things about it), it lacked the utter implausibilities that haunted a coule of otherwise strong movie entries (like "Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan"). I had high hopes for this series when it came out, and it exceeded them. Among the best F13s.
Adding to the Mythos You know him!! You love him!! The man....the legend.....Mr. Jason Voorhies.
You know how he died. You know how he came back. You even know how he got his mask. But do you know.. how many others have died at Crystal Lake?? ...Have drowned in her icy waters?? Do you know how many others Crystal Lake has brought back? Do you know how long the killing has been going on? Do you know how it started? Do you know that it started waaay before Jason??
This series answers these quetions. And in doing so, adds to the Friday the 13th mythos. Sure there are naked chicks, teenage dialogue, and lots of juicy mutilations. (This is Friday the 13th after all) But there is something else here. Something darker. Legend. If this comic was a Friday the 13th movie instead, it would easily be my favorite of the series. This was the best of the horror series that Wildstorm put out. The others just don't compare. (Especially not "Nightmare on Elm Street" I don't know what happened with that series) The art is spot-on. The characters are what you've come to love and expect. Their dialogue is juvenile, but suprisingly enjoyable. The writing keeps things moving, it never gets stale, it keeps you guessing.
I don't know, I just really enjoyed this series. As a long-time fan of the movies, I was expecting the same old song and dance here. And it is, don't get me wrong!! But it's got a few new moves. It's nice to see an old series that still has a few tricks up it's sleeve; that Jason hasn't gotten rusty with age. If you're a fan of the movies, you won't be disappointed. And if you hated the movies.......What are you doing here?!?!
So sharpen that old machette, and hang up the holiday corpses, 'cause Jason is back in town baby!!!!!!!!!!
MORAL OF THE STORY: You just can't keep a good guy down.
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