Acting against their own best interests – again.
Creative Staff:
Story: Mark Rahner
Art: Jethro Morales
What They Say:
It’s on! Boomstick vs. fangs! The battle you’ve always wanted to see between Ash and Vampirella – sort of. Make that Ash and a monstrously transformed Vampi, as they tear through the medieval castle!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While expectations were never high to begin with when it came to this crossover, my main hoping going into it was that it would be fun. I haven’t read other Army of Darkness books but I’m familiar with the movie to say the least, so the humor was going to be the driving factor while combining that with Vampirella’s dry wit and lack of wanting to deal with Ash seemed like the perfect combination. The first installment did a lot of time just in setting up where Ash is and how things unfold for him there in regards to the larger deadite fight that he’s involved in, but we did get Vampirella showing up at the end, at least briefly before she turned all giant deadite monster on us while retaining her personality underneath it all.
And for better and worse, that’s what basically makes up this whole second issue. With Vampirella in this form, a bit easier to anger and definitely hungry, all Ash does is increase both of those aspects of her as he tries to kill her or at least get her to stop following him. It’s largely a race through the castle with her chasing after him, though after awhile she realizes he’s not really worth it in a sense and that has him just throwing assorted things in the dining hall at her in a vain attempt at trying to drive her off. What becomes curious about it for Ash, in his slow to process way of course, is that while he continues to use his pop culture references in order to cope with the craziness in his life, he realizes that she’s understanding some of them and using a few herself. That’s something that finally gets through his head enough that the two end up talking.
Which in turn does eventually lead to her getting back to normal, though it doesn’t help too much in some senses. While Ash is definitely keen on her swimwear look, and he realizes it’s his fault that she ended up like she did due to his botched incantation, things are not looking good for her even still. Because of the nature of the people of the time, she’s quickly labeled a witch and is to be killed. There’s a few variations to it that goes on here, to much humor overall, though she doesn’t really reveal what she is. She does at least deny being a witch, which is certainly true. It turns in expected way though and it’s no surprise that Ash gets put on her side for a bit, which will lead to the next round of silliness. But you really want to smack the regular folks here in positions of power because their level of fear keeps them from winning in a way, as Vampirella mentions that she knows the deadites plans having been linked to them. That their first instinct is to kill her? Pure human.
In Summary:
The fun with this installment is definitely just in the whole chase sequence between Ash and Vampirella. Morales captures the look of her in this form as there’s an almost boredom kind of feeling coming out of her, if not for the fact that she’s just annoyed with Ash’s antics considering he caused a lot of it. The dialogue is fun if simple and it has a good flow about it. The book is actually a very fast read up until the last few pages gets tied down in a bit more dialogue, so it’s definitely worth a second read just to take in the artwork in more detail since the story carries you through fast. I just wish Dynamite’s color design would let the details shine through a bit more rather than everything being so utterly darkened.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: August 12th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
