ARMY OF DARKNESS 1979 #1 – Review

In ARMY OF DARKNESS 1979 #1, available from Dynamite Comics on September 8th, 2021, Ash Williams travels back to mean streets of New York to stop a gang from using the Necronomicon to take over. CAN YOU DIG IT?!?

The Details

• Written By: Rodney Barnes
• Art By: Tom Garcia
• Colors By: Dinei Ribero
• Letters By: Troy Peteri
• Cover Art By: Jason Shaun Alexander
• Cover Price: $3.99
• Release Date: September 8, 2021

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Was It Good?

I love Ash Williams, Evil Dead, and Army of Darkness, AND I love Walter Hill’s The Warriors (1979). When you put those two properties together, how could you possibly go wrong? Answer — You can’t.

It’s a mashup of well-known film properties that works better than I expected. When the gangs of New York gather for a peace summit (sorta), every gang’s strange identity seems outlandish against the backdrop of one of the greatest cities in the world during one of its most crime-ridden periods in history.

Gangs with names like ‘Vikings’ and ‘Mechanics’ dress to match their gang identity, and it would be comedic if it wasn’t so dangerous. Now, toss in the wise-cracking Ash Williams whose as tough (or tougher) than any gang and cracks wise at the silliness of their outfits, you wind up with an entertaining blend of lethal danger and black humor.

Garcia’s art is great in this issue. Whenever you depict real-life actors, you either go for realistic or representative to pull it off. Garcia goes for the latter and it suits the action, wizardry, and Deadite killing just fine.

The one down point is the lack of period authenticity in the costumes for the gangs. Their outfits feel a little too modern and don’t quite capture the 70s feel. It doesn’t hurt the story, but if the point was to put Ash in a specific time period, you wouldn’t know which period from the art. If anything, the styles look closer to mid-80s punk.

Overall, this issue makes two great tastes that taste great together.

What’s It About?

[SPOILERS AHEAD – Click here if you just want the score without spoilers]

The story begins in NYC in, 1979 during the events of The Warriors (1979) when the gangs begin to assemble for Cyrus’s speech. In this reality, however, a new gang, The Warlocks, arrive on the scene to make their presence known. The Warlock’s leader is holding a strange book and he uses it to melt any gang that opposes his pronouncement that the Warlocks are taking over.

Cut to today. Ash Williams is interviewing for a job as a lumberjack. Despite answering truthfully to the interview questions, he gets hired anyway and dreams of settling down to a normal life. Before his first day on the job kicks in, a magic portal opens up and sucks him in.

Back in 1979, One of the surviving gangs, the Half Deads, sees a portal open up in the middle of the street. A man with a chainsaw hand is tossed out, and the gang assumes he’s somehow connected to the evil magic of the Warlocks. The Half Deads capture Ash and bring him back to a hideout for interrogation.

We conclude the last act of the book with a very bizarre Q&A, a Deadite attack, and the most unusual reading of the Miranda Rights you never saw coming.

Final Thoughts

ARMY OF DARKNESS 1979 #1 seamlessly blends two great film properties to give us the crossover we never knew we needed. The action is kinetic, the quips come fast, and to answer the main man’s question — YES, I DIG IT!!!

Score: 9/10