Cavalcade of Awesome

In 1989 Marvel comics released the magazine Freddy Krueger’s A Nightmare on Elm Street.

The magazine had gorgeously painted covers by Joe Jusko.  The interior art was in black and white and done by Rich Buckler and Tony DeZuniga.  Tony DeZuniga also worked on the awesome MGM’s Marvelous Wizard of Oz magazine I’ve talked about before for my Oz series.  The interior stories were written by Steve Gerber.  The magazines were published around the release of Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child.  At the time, comics were coming under fire for being too violent and Nightmare 5 was getting protests in LA for this very reason.  This general backlash caused Marvel to decide to cancel the magazine after issue #2.  Marvel wasn’t receiving pressure from anyone and the magazine actually sold fairly well, Marvel just wanted to avoid any problems so they quietly folded the magazine.

It’s a shame the magazine was canceled.  The story was pretty interesting.  The first issue even has a few pages devoted to its own version of Freddy’s origin involving Amanda Krueger’s entrapment, beating and rape within the walls of a mental hospital.  The art is pretty good too, especially in the first issue.  The second half of the second issue, though, the art becomes a little uneven and a little inconsistent.  Sometimes it’s nicely inked and sometimes it looks like pencil drawings.  A little weird.

Check out two samples of the art.  On the left is a nicely inked page from early in the issue and on the right is a page that looks more “pencil-like” with very little inking. You can click the images to see them BIGGER.

It goes on like that for the last 10 pages or so. Sometimes only one panel on the page will have the “pencil” look. I guess they knew the mag was being canceled and just rushed it out.  Which makes sense since the second issue of this magazine is extremely hard to find.

Also inside the second issue are two pin-ups by Bob Hall. One is full page and one is used on the “Send Fan Mail To” page.  Click them to see BIGGER.

At the back of the second issue is a promo for the never released third issue.

However, I guess Marvel changed their mind about the above image as the cover because if you go here you can see Joe Jusko’s never used cover art for the third issue and it looks very different.

So a sad end to what could have been a very popular and interesting magazine series.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

This entry was posted on October 18, 2012 at 9:10 am and is filed under A Nightmare on Elm Street, comic books, Freddy Krueger, magazine, movies, pop culture with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2012, comic books, Freddy Krueger, Halloween, holiday, magazines, Marvel Comics, Nightmare on Elm Street. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.