It’s Evil Dead.  In space.  Usually space is where movie franchises go to die.  Jason X (Jason in space), Leprechaun 4: In Space, Hellraiser 4: Bloodlines (in space) and Leprechaun 5: In The Hood are a few examples.  Except that last one, while technically not in space, is worth mentioning.  Because it has Ice-T in it.  Also, I think, a gangster makes a gold grill out of the Leprechauns gold.  So, that’s kind of the biggest hurdle to overcome.  Do you like Evil Dead/Army of Darkness?  Do you like things occurring in space?  If you answer “yes” to either of those questions then you can probably add a point to the final score. I didn’t read issues 1 or 2 but I don’t think I really need to.  That’s the nice thing about Army of Darkness, if you’ve seen the movies you can pretty much get the rest from context no matter what the medium. Ash find himself in space due to universal McGuffin, The Necronomicon.  The Deadites, evil zombie/demon things, want what’s on the space station and Ash wants to stop them.  His motivation is pretty much defined as wanting the opposite of whatever the Deadites want.

It’s a fun read.  Ash’s voice is more or less accurate and there’s a good mix of horror/comedy which is pretty much the defining trait of Army of Darkness.  All the right bullet points are addressed.  Ash is sarcastic/badass/goofy all rolled into one.  The Deadites get a new chant (“Stars in our eyes”).  Evil Ash is there and fused with the Necronomicon.  Ash gets his “Groovy” moment when he assembles an exoskeleton out of junk parts in a storage bay.

The best part for me though was as I was thinking that “Stars in our eyes” had replaced the chant of “Dead by dawn” from Evil Dead 2, Evil Ash let’s Ash know that it was Ash’s destiny to be dead by dawn and that Ash’s dawn had passed a long time ago.  The perfect one liner, badass and referential.  The comic doesn’t do anything new, it doesn’t evolve the franchise in any way but if you’re a fan it does a good job of keeping those fan feelings alive.

Score: 3/5

Writer: Cullen Bunn Artist: Larry Watts Colorist: Aikau Oliva Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment Price: $3.99 Release Date: 2/4/15 Format: Mini-Series; Print/Digital