2 out of 5

Gerber for sure has macabre on his resume thanks to Man-Thing and Son of Satan and some classic runs on classic characters like Tomb of Dracula, but still, he’s not really the first name that one would associate with horror.  When he did dip into the genre, he tended to lean more toward psychological curiosities (with the randomness of things like Howard filtered out) – although wasn’t shy on violence when it was part of a narrative.  So while it’s sort of surprising to see him attached to a movie series we generally relate to slashers, the hallucinatory elements of Freddy give Gerber enough room to tinker with some ideas.

But this 2-issue series – which was apparently Marvel’s top-selling magazine but they canceled without official explanation (the contributing creators guessing that it was cut off before inciting ire for its ‘mature audiences’ subject matter) – ends up being hampered by something that’s proven a flaw in Gerber’s story constructs over his career… 2-part stories just ain’t his bag.  3 issues, fine.  One shots, fine.  But there’s something about the half-n-half setup that generally seems to cause his plotting to stumble, regardless of the length of the individual issues.  It’s mirrored pretty perfectly here – several characters and a fairly complicated setup introduced in issue 1, with issue 2 tossing some grand plotting sweeps onto the pile that can’t carry much weight thanks to the limited story space, leading to a sudden climax that’s as suddenly over as the ‘The End’ that appears in the final panel.  So going into the story (issue 1), thing always seem better than they should be, especially for licensed material like Freddy… but it falls apart in issue 2 pretty early on and then can’t recover.

Gerber is not well assisted here by his artists, issue 1 split between Tony DeZuniga and Rich Buckler’s pencils, Tony taking over fully for issue 1 with both issues ‘finished’ by Alfredo Alcala.  Now DeZuniga and Alcala have worked with Gerber on various Marvel titles before, including, I believe, Man-Thing, so I can speak to the quality of their work.  However, something was totally amiss here.  Maybe it was the combo of the artists, maybe it was working from existing character templates, or having to stick to a more realistic style, but every panel is stiff, and some pages jarringly switch between a hatched inking style and a softer ‘photo realistic’ sketch look… sometimes panels even combining the two.  When we can close up on a character for an emotion, it works, but otherwise the pages have a sort of pantomime feel to them.

I’m avoiding the plot because, having only seen the first film and not in quite some time, I’m not sure how much is Gerber and how much was from the films, though wiki reports these issues would fuss with movie continuity…  But we’re basically following a doctor and patient’s attempts at controlling their dreams (‘true dreaming,’ I believe they call the technique in the story) in order to combat Freddy.  Some more logical elements are nice – the doctor prescribing a dream suppressant, the stupid politics at the hospital where this is taking place – but, as mentioned, its like the timetable gets compressed for issue 2 and we’re rushed into an unsatisfying conclusion.  So, overall, more of a novelty than a worthwhile read, though the interior pin-ups by Bob Hall and Sam Kieth are pretty badass, as are the Jusko covers.