Comics
Ash Williams Gets Married This July!
Dynamite Entertainment cordially invites all you Deadites to the wedding of Ash and Sheila in the pages of “Army of Darkness: Ash Gets Hitched” this summer. July marks the 10th anniversary of the “Army of Darkness” comics at Dynamite, and they want to mark up the anniversary as one that counts for the characters. The issue comes from the creative team of Steve Niles and Nacho Tenorio.
I’m not sure what to make of this. My initial reaction is apathy. What say you?
From the press release:
April 18th, 2014, Mt. Laurel, NJ: Dynamite is proud to announce that Ash is going to tie the knot this upcoming July in Army of Darkness: Ash Gets Hitched #1. Written by the best-selling comic writer, Steve Niles and interiors by Nacho Tenorio, this monumental event comes with covers by the who’s who of comic artists today: Jae Lee, Lucio Parrillo, Francesco Francavilla, Nick Bradshaw, Arthur Suydam, and Stephanie Buscema!
In Army of Darkness: Ash Gets Hitched #1, Ash and Sheila are reunited and Ash vows they will never be separated again. Can evil stop evil? This will be the question Ash has to answer, now that he has unleashed the Faceless Man on the land.
“I think fans of the films will really enjoy what we’re doing in Ash & the Army of Darkness,” says Army of Darkness: Ash Gets Hitched writer Steve Niles. “It was a dream come true for me to create the sequel we never got and I hope fans enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Now we head into the next chapter, the marriage of Ash and Sheila. This is pretty huge for the AoD universe because it means Ash is going to stay in the Dark Ages and be a father and husband. It’s going to be a very strange and fun trip.”
“Ash has always been a very important character at Dynamite, given Army of Darkness was our first book launched back in July of 2004,” says Dynamite CEO / Publisher Nick Barrucci. “We’ve had a great relationship with MGM over the last 10 years and are grateful for their support and our ability to continue with such an iconic character and a great license. As we continue to celebrate our 10th Anniversary in July, it was very important to us that Steve Niles, someone who is an incredible talent, would be the writer of this milestone story continuing his stellar work from Ash and the Army of Darkness, and be the person to write such a defining moment in the life of Ash!”
Steve Niles is an American comic book writer and novelist, known for works such as 30 Days of Night, Criminal Macabre, Simon Dark, Mystery Society, and Batman: Gotham County Line. He is credited among other contemporary writers as bringing horror comics back to prominence, authoring such works as 30 Days of Night, its sequel, Dark Days, and Criminal Macabre. Steve currently writes Ash and the Army of Darkness for Dynamite Entertainment.
Army of Darkness: Ash Gets Hitched #1 will be solicited in Diamond Comic Distributors’ May Previews catalog, the premiere source of merchandise for the comic book specialty market, and slated for release on July 9, 2014. Comic book fans are encouraged to reserve copies of Army of Darkness: Ash Gets Hitched #1 with their local comic book retailers. Army of Darkness: Ash Gets Hitched #1 will also be available for individual customer purchase through digital platforms courtesy of Comixology, iVerse, and Dark Horse Digital.
Comics
[Review] Graphic Novel ‘Tender’ Is Brilliant Feminist Body Horror That Will Make You Squirm & Scream
Beth Hetland’s debut graphic novel, ‘Tender,’ is a modern tale of love, validation, and self-destruction by way of brutal body horror with a feminist edge.
“I’ve wanted this more than anything.”
Men so often dominate the body horror subgenre, which makes it so rare and insightful whenever women tackle this space. This makes Beth Hetland’s Tender such a refreshing change of pace. It’s earnest, honest, and impossibly exposed. Tender takes the body horror subgenre and brilliantly and subversively mixes it together with a narrative that’s steeped in the societal expectations that women face on a daily basis, whether it comes to empowerment, family, or sexuality. It single-handedly beats other 2023 and ‘24 feminine horror texts like American Horror Story: Delicate, Sick, Lisa Frankenstein, and Immaculate at their own game.
Hetland’s Tender is American Psycho meets Rosemary’s Baby meets Swallow. It’s also absolutely not for the faint of heart.
Right from the jump, Tender grabs hold of its audience and doesn’t let go. Carolanne’s quest for romantic fulfillment, validation, and a grander purpose is easy to empathize with and an effective framework for this woeful saga. Carolanne’s wounds cut so deep simply because they’re so incredibly commonplace. Everybody wants to feel wanted.
Tender is full of beautiful, gross, expressive artwork that makes the reader squirm in their seat and itch. Hetland’s drawings are simultaneously minimalist and comprehensively layered. They’re reminiscent of Charles Burns’ Black Hole, in the best way possible. There’s consistently inspired and striking use of spot coloring that elevates Hetland’s story whenever it’s incorporated, invading Tender’s muted world.
Hetland employs effective, economical storytelling that makes clever use of panels and scene construction so that Tender can breeze through exposition and get to the story’s gooey, aching heart. There’s an excellent page that depicts Carolanne’s menial domestic tasks where the repetitive panels grow increasingly smaller to illustrate the formulaic rut that her life has become. It’s magical. Tender is full of creative devices like this that further let the reader into Carolanne’s mind without ever getting clunky or explicit on the matter. The graphic novel is bookended with a simple moment that shifts from sweet to suffocating.
Tender gives the audience a proper sense of who Carolanne is right away. Hetland adeptly defines her protagonist so that readers are immediately on her side, praying that she gets her “happily ever after,” and makes it out of this sick story alive…And then they’re rapidly wishing for the opposite and utterly aghast over this chameleon. There’s also some creative experimentation with non-linear storytelling that gets to the root of Carolanne and continually recontextualizes who she is and what she wants out of life so that the audience is kept on guard.
Tender casually transforms from a picture-perfect rom-com, right down to the visual style, into a haunting horror story. There’s such a natural quality to how Tender presents the melancholy manner in which a relationship — and life — can decay. Once the horror elements hit, they hit hard, like a jackhammer, and don’t relent. It’s hard not to wince and grimace through Tender’s terrifying images. They’re reminiscent of the nightmarish dadaist visuals from The Ring’s cursed videotape, distilled to blunt comic panels that the reader is forced to confront and digest, rather than something that simply flickers through their mind and is gone a moment later. Tender makes its audience marinate in its mania and incubates its horror as if it’s a gestating fetus in their womb.
Tender tells a powerful, emotional, disturbing story, but its secret weapon may be its sublime pacing. Hetland paces Tender in such an exceptional manner, so that it takes its time, sneaks up on the reader, and gets under their skin until they’re dreading where the story will go next. Tender pushes the audience right up to the edge so that they’re practically begging that Carolanne won’t do the things that she does, yet the other shoe always drops in the most devastating manner. Audiences will read Tender with clenched fists that make it a struggle to turn each page, although they won’t be able to stop. Tender isn’t a short story, at more than 160 pages, but readers will want to take their time and relish each page so that this macabre story lasts for as long as possible before it cascades to its tragic conclusion.
Tender is an accomplished and uncomfortable debut graphic novel from Hetland that reveals a strong, unflinching voice that’s the perfect fit for horror. Tender indulges in heightened flights of fancy and toes the line with the supernatural. However, Tender is so successful at what it does because it’s so grounded in reality and presents a horror story that’s all too common in society. It’s a heartbreaking meditation on loneliness and codependency that’s one of 2024’s must-read horror graphic novels.
‘Tender,’ by Beth Hetland and published by Fantagraphics, is now available.
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