Tai Freligh reviews Evil Dead 2: Beyond Dead by Dawn #1 from Halloween ComicFest…
Evil Dead 2: Beyond Dead by Dawn #1 picks up right where Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell’s movie left off. “Dead” Annie Knowby gets plunged into Hell. Armed with the Kandarian Dagger and the Ex-Mortis, Annie fights off hordes of Deadites (and Ash’s severed hand!) in her quest to save her parents souls! But will the book and the dagger be enough.
The plot of the first issue of this three issue series is pretty simple. After breezing through the backstory of Annie’s dad finding the book of the dead and then all of them ending up in the cabin from the first movie, Ash and Annie get sent to Hell after trying to banish the demon from the book. They must fight demons and devils and find a way to defeat them and get back home.
This was an okay read… not too long or complicated. The artwork is excellent and it’s a fun little story based on the Evil Dead franchise, but it fails in that it concentrates on a new character, missing the elements that make the series so great – namely Bruce Campbell’s Ash. His character gets relegated to the sidelines with only a few lines of dialogue, two of which are just “groovy”. I get that the first issue is a freebie and is meant to tease the three issue series enough to get my interest, but I’m not sure I’d pay money for the second issue unless I knew it had more Ash and less Annie.
Evil Dead 2: Beyond Dead by Dawn is available in comic book shops on October 29th for free.
Rating: 6/10
Tai Freligh is a Los Angeles-based writer and can be found on Twitter.
Originally published October 28, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
