Dear Watchers: an omniversal comic book podcast

If you're hearing this, you found a real to real in a cabin in the woods, and you've uploaded it to the Internet to hear the magical words. Welcome to Dear Watchers, an Omniversal comic book podcast where we do a deep dive into the Multiverse.

We are traveling with you through the ancient stories and legends that make up an Omniverse um of fictional realities. We all love.

You.

And your watchers on this journey are me Keto, Warrior.

Princess, Me Rob, and this is my boom stick. And by boom, I mean microphone boom, because I'm speaking into a microphone.

Okay, just leave it at the original. And it's bad enough as it is, but then you make it worse.

Well, that's what I'm here for, to always make everything worse. And I think people know who we'll be discussing today, some iconic characters. But before we begin today's trip, Gita, what's new in our little section of the multiverse?

Well, we are currently underway on our Marvel Spec Bundle giveaway. So if you're interested in a bunch of free Marvel comics that are our speculation picks for upcoming MCU um things, those comics can be shipped to you if you follow the instructions that were given in a recent episode. Thank you again, as always, to all of our patrons and supporters who just started getting our two year anniversary birthday gifts that we sent to them to thank them for being supporters of ours. So that's been a lot of fun. And the last thing I'll say is our social media the social media landscape is changing day by day, but we are everywhere. We like interacting with people. And as much as a lot of these companies and platforms are horrible, to both of us, personally, that we think they're rotten and terrible, we still show up on them because we want to interact with people who listen, and it's how we've connected with people. So you can always find us everywhere. On threads, on Blue Sky, on every single thing that is made or yet to be made at, uh, Deer watchers.

Mhm. And you can find us online, which is you found us already because you're listening to this episode. But if it's your first time listening, we have three parts of our journey today. Origins of the story, what inspired this other reality? Exploring multiversity. We dive deeper into our alternate universe and pondering possibilities. We examine the impact and what's followed or coming in the future.

And remember, you can join our other patrons by finding our coffee that's Kofi.com, Dearwatchers, or just go to dearwatchers.com and click join.

In other words, give us some sugar, baby. And with that, dear watchers welcome to episode 105, and let's check out what's happening in the Omniverse um with our travels to today's alternate universe. Today, we take a trip through the portal at the back of our neighborhood S Mart to find out the answer to the question, what if Zena, the warrior Princess, met Ash of Evil Dead and fought the army of Darkness?

Indeed. What if and this alternate Earth that we're going to travel to is from a Dynamite Comics crossover? We have talked about another Dynamite Comics crossover universe with our special guest David Avaloni. When we talked about Alvira, we interviewed him and covered one of her series. Uh, back on episodes 45 and 46. This Earth has appeared again multiple times. But we're going to only talk about the first volume of it and more on that later. First, some background on the two franchises. So why don't you start us off. We'll go chronologically with army of Darkness.

Yes. So really more so than army of Darkness? Going back to The Evil Dead, which is the brainchild of childhood friends, writer director Sam Raimi, producer Robert Tappert, and star co producer Bruce Campbell. Funny enough, it was actually going to be called Book of the Dead. But a distributor said if you say book in the title, people are going to think they have to read, call it Evil Dead. And they all hated that title. But of course, that's what stuck.

What a funny story if it's true. And wait, how did the three of them meet? Did they go to college together?

Well, Sam and Bruce knew each other from growing up, from being kids in Michigan. So they were super young. And I think they know how Rob got in later. Yeah, I think they met later.

Rob is the important one in my story that I'll share in a minute.

But they were all making movies and short films before they started to make The Evil Dead. And the original franchise focused on Ashley Ash Williams as he battles Evil Deadites, who are often the possessed bodies of his friends that had been unleashed by the Necronomicon. The Book of the Dead and the.

First they did not create.

Yeah. No, they did not. That goes back to HP. Lovecraft. And probably he maybe took it from someone. But the first film, The Evil Dead premiered in 1981, cost $375,000. And it follows a group yeah, super cheap. They literally did make it in a cabin in the woods. It's not a set. It's, uh, actually in Tennessee. And it follows a group of students who unleash this demonic entity while they're staying at this cabin. And none other than Stephen King saw an early screening of it and called it, quote, the most ferociously original film of the year. They put that on the poster and it propelled king was at the height of his powers then. So it propelled it to big success. Made almost $3 million.

Ferocious original thing created that year.

What else is there?

1981.

Oh, not your birthday.

Year I was born.

That's true. Did you, Stephen King, give you, uh, a quote, too? But yeah, with big, big success. So then a sequel, Evil Dead, Two Dead by dawn, came out of 1987 and for that film. Raimi and his new co writer, Scott Spiegel. They really brought their love of The Three Stooges to the style of the film. And it's kind of a comedic remake of the original. Maybe the first recall. We were just talking about this with some folks on Twitter. Yeah.

I don't even know because it's so weird. Yeah, it's seemingly just a remake. But then later, I think they try to fit it in as an actual sequel. Um, and funny, this is where you.

Get the iconic chainsaw hand and stuff like that, that's not in the first film. And then we get a third film, really. Focus of today army of Darkness, which was released in 1992. Greatly increased budget. It sees Ash travel back to the Middle Ages.

Bizarrely talk, uh, about what it sees in just a few minutes.

Yes, and bizarrely, it was actually given an NC 17 rating. They had to cut a couple of little things out of it, which you watch today. It's like, how is this NC 17? And they also had post production issues. They shot a new ending. There was some legal stuff with Dino De Laurentes anyway, that didn't do super well at the box office. They were developing more sequels that never got made. It wasn't then until 2013 that we got another recall, question Mark, which was directed by Fetty Alvarez. Then the original team returned for the TV show Ash versus The Evil Dead, which ran for three seasons on Stars. And most recently, just this year in 2023, lee Cronin directed a new film called Evil Dead Rise. And there's already more talks about kind of continuing the current chronology. There's also talk about an animated movie that would bring Bruce Campbell back because he said he doesn't want to play the role in live action anymore. There's been a few video games, including a new video game about to come out, and even a, uh, musical.

It's a musical, yeah. Ah, it's weird because it feels like there's a good amount of stuff for it, but it doesn't quite have something like Nightmare on Elm Street, where there are ten films or whatever, friday 13th, where there's a dozen films. So it's an interesting franchise in that it's ever present, but it's obviously been more tightly controlled, which probably has to do with the folks who own the rights.

True.

They the creators.

Yeah, those three guys still own it. It's not like you can go to a spirit Halloween and get Evil Dead socks in the same way you can get Jason socks and stuff like that. It hasn't been franchised to death there. But what was your background with, uh, army of Darkness and Evil Dead?

Uh, I was never a fan of any of them, actually. And so I probably didn't see Evil Dead. I watched all three maybe 20 years ago at this point, and I hadn't really paid much attention to them before that. And I really didn't care for the third one and found the first one boring. And the second one was good. But I really disregarded army of Darkness since this is, uh, our focus on this episode because I didn't understand what it was doing. I saw the Evil Dead musical because I was just intrigued and thought it would be fun.

And it was like a blood splash, right? Don't they give you a poncho or something?

Ah, the first few rows had to wear like, protective clothes or whatever. And now, as I've grown to appreciate exactly what they were doing, because I don't think I appreciated it when I first saw them, I've grown to enjoy it more. You and I watched odly, uh, we watched the first season of Ashworth's Evil Dead and never continued. It was hard to get at that point because it's like on Stars or whatever. It was on. So we have to go back and do that. It's fun. And then watching army of Darkness for this episode was the first time I'd seen it since. I appreciate what they're doing. And it is so wacky and fun and it's so perfect in terms of our show and what we look at because we'll talk about what it does in a few minutes. I know it because it is ever present in the world. People dress Ash at every single Comic Con or every single Halloween convention or something. So I know it. I don't have a long history of loving it. I do not like the modern ones. But army, uh, of Darkness, I'm somewhat new to appreciating, I'd say, how about you?

I first saw the films back in high school or maybe middle school. And, uh, it's never been my favorite of the horror franchises from this era. But I do really like them. And as a kid wanting to make movies and making my own movies with friends and stuff like that, this was always this fabled thing of how they raised the money. And they shot a Spec film first called, I think, Deep in the woods. And one of the first things I can remember getting off of LimeWire was downloading that because you couldn't watch it. Obviously, there was no YouTube then. So to illegally download to watch this Spec film that they made. So it was never my favorite franchise. I always remember the Evil Dead, Two Dead by dawn, that poster, that kind of smirking skull there. And I did like army of Darkness a lot just for it being so fun. But I think because the series is so disparate in its tones that it was never top of mind for me. And like you said, then, kind of revisiting it in more recent years with Ash versus Evil Dead, with the new films, which I haven't really loved. So I'm very familiar with it. But it's never been the top. And there are fans. There's a documentary called H*** to the deadites about some of the fans that are super obsessed with this franchise. So that's neither of us. But there are people out there where this is like the tip top of horror franchises for them. Yeah.

And you had just rewatched army of Darkness.

I did.

Too long ago. And then rewatched it again for this episode. So very fresh for you. But Rob Tabert with Sam and Bruce went on to do something seemingly very different. But I'd argue not all that different.

When you see Sam Raimi's photo, when he goes to cons it's Spiderman. It's the Evil Dead. It's Dr. Strange. But this next thing is never really included in those photo montages.

No, it should be. So Zena Warrior Princess is of course the famous kick a** ancient warrior who debuted on the syndicated TV series Hercules the Legendary Journeys over three first season episodes in 1995, before launching her own series that September 95. Her series ended up running for six syndicated seasons, 134 episodes until June 2001. It was syndicated all over the world, actually. Over 100 countries.

Wow.

Because I get what syndication is, I don't fully get what syndication is. So I understand it's like, distributed differently than had this been, I don't know, like an NBC, uh, show or something, which I imagine wouldn't have been in 100 countries, especially in the 90s.

Mhm.

So her first appearance is in Hercules. We'll talk about who gets the credit for that. But Zena was created by Rob Tappert with Sam and R. J. Stewart. They are the developers of the show. The show ended up doing better and lasting longer than its originating show, Hercules. By 1996, it beat Hercules. That's the end of its first season. It's beating Hercules in ratings. It beats Baywatch, the other syndicated show, in ratings, and then finally, in 1997, it beats the ratings champ, which was Star Trek Deep Space Nine, to become, um, the highest rated syndicated show.

Wow. And then these shows we were talking a bit about before this episode, these shows don't really seem to exist anymore. These syndicated dramas, of course, there's talk shows and stuff like that.

And for people who are even less familiar than us, I guess what we should say is a syndicated show is a show like no network is making. There's a studio who's making it and then selling it to different networks. So in one area it might have been on Channel Nine. In one area. It's on channel eleven. Another area, it might have even been like the Fox and Times a day on Saturdays. Yeah. And so it would be on Saturday night, Sunday morning, Sunday afternoons, all different times. And so the series was created when Hercules debuted, and they were already talking about doing a companion series at some point. Rob Tappert had already pitched the Warrior Princess, evil Warrior Princess arc that ends up being Zena and Hercules. And the producers at the network said she was supposed to die at the end of that. And the producers said, well, why don't you go for it? Try to develop that into a series before someone copies your idea after they see it, even though we think women aren't going to sell as well as Hercules. So stay in Hercules. And the series did great. Had a ton of guest stars, famously for today's episode. Bruce Campbell, ted Raimi, of course, who shows up in, I think, all of his brothers things. And perhaps the person who became the most famous after this is Carl Urban was in it for quite some time. It spawned conventions. One of the official one is coming back in January 2024 in La. And I really want to go. It also spawned video games, an animated film. It had tie in novels. We actually previously talked to an author of one of the tie ins, Marcy Rockwell, episode 65. And there were many rumors of reboots in the 2000s, or was originating with a live action movie that was apparently in development. And then the most official green light was in 2015 and 16. NBC confirmed this reboot was in the works, or recall. It wasn't totally clear what the deal was going to be, but it then got canceled. And they confirmed it got canceled. Lucy has said that there are a lot of weird rights issues with it. I'm assuming because it's syndicated, probably different companies own different pieces of it. And, uh, so that's all I'll share about Zena. Both Zena and army of Darkness have long histories of comic books, and we'll talk more about that when we get to that in our segment and in future episodes. But before we move on, what was your background with Zena?

So both that and Hercules, I did watch a bit growing up, but they were never appointment television for me. And you say Sunday afternoon, they were totally like, I'm opening up a comic book and there's nothing else on TV, and I've exhausted all my VHS tapes and okay, Zena's on. I'm going to have that in the background while I read or I draw. That was basically how I came. So I probably watched like a dozen episodes of that and Hercules, but I never seeked them out. And maybe also because of the syndication, I never really knew what time they were on. It probably hopped a bunch of different times as opposed to if it had been a proper network TV series. And then, of course, especially queer culture, you just always hear, I mean, I think so much more so than Hercules. Just the blank, the Warrior Princess is just such a thing that's still so much in our culture decades later now.

Yeah, well, it's an archetype of a quote unquote, strong female character in a lot of ways. I loved Zena from the day it was born, so I started watching it right away. I was watching Hercules already. I had known hercules through the first season. So I'd seen the Zena episodes zena started and I just fell in love. I mean, at this point, I'm a teenager, I'm, um, older, um, but I still am home for whatever reason. Sunday afternoons, I guess, doing homework or doing something, I have no idea. And I would watch it every single week. And often my mother would watch it with me. My mother, who is going to be listening to this episode, uh, as she does every single week, would watch Zena with me every week. And so that continued through high school. And then I left for college and sort of abandoned the last season as it aired. But then this is one of the first shows that I remember collecting on DVD. It was a big deal. The box sets were really expensive. You had to mail order them even I don't even remember. It was complicated. They had tons of bonus features and bonus discs and all this stuff. And so I collected it that way. Rewatched the series, then through to the finale, which I had watched the finale, but hadn't watched the last season. And I just love it. I've read almost all or probably all of the comics that have been out for Zena. I love Lucy Lawless because of Zena. I probably like Bruce Campbell because of Zena.

And we should also say, too, that Lucy Lawless and Rob Tappert, the co creator, are married in real life and met doing this show. And all of these Sam Raimi, Rob Tapper, Bruce Campbell, things are so everyone is working together all the time. Lucy was on Ash versus Evil Dead.

He's on Ash versus Evil Dead. And then you see again, it's why Ted Raimi is in quite a major role in Zena. You see all these people all the time popping up, which is so much fun. So I am really excited for this episode. You and I have been planning it for a long time. We had thought about doing it as like a big anniversary episode, but here we are, normal episode.

Okay? So let's grab our metal discus and throw it, hurl it chakrum and hurl it into origins of the story. And first up today is the film army of Darkness, released by Universal Pictures and produced by Dino De Laurentes Communications, Renaissance Pictures and Introvision International from um 1992.

It's directed by Sam Raimi, who wrote it with Ivan Raimi, and it's produced by Rob Tubbert.

Mhm? And Ivan, I believe, is a dentist. Like, I think he did this in his spare time.

That's fun. So, yeah, let's talk army of Darkness for a few minutes in our origin of the story. I think I'll start. What struck me, rewatching it. And again, this is what I said about having done this show now, is that it is just a multiversal movie, mhm? It is just this attempt at, ah, like, let's take this character and just drop him in something else, and who cares? And we don't need any explanation. It doesn't matter. We have an easy magic away explanation because we're dealing with magic anyway. So I just love that they're just like, let's see what ash is like in kind of a medieval movie, kind of a Monty Python movie. So I like that. It also brings in a bit of a Monty Python humor about medieval ages. But it just really struck me that this was part of me wonders if they imagined a series of these where they could just drop ash into some other setting at some point. I do an ash in cavemen movie, do an ash in ancient Greece movie. Just start dropping them in different movies.

Yeah, well, I mentioned in the beginning that they reshot the ending because the original alternate ending was going to have ash. And you could actually watch it on YouTube. It was going to have ash ending up in a futuristic desolate landscape. But they thought this was too negative, that he's still trapped in time. But right to what you're saying, I thought, okay, you then put ash in, like a Mad Max movie in the post apocalyptic future. And that's another movie right there. And I know they were trying to do other movies after this, but because this didn't do too well at the box office, it was very expensive. It didn't happen. But I think totally the thing that works best for this is the fish out of water, him commenting the entire movie, basically nonstop on everyone there. And that it's this great character, because he thinks he's better than everybody else. And he's constantly putting down the people.

From this, uh, middle age arrogant, without being obnoxious, and speaks to just how good Bruce Campbell is in acting this role, that he is not annoying, but should be.

I don't know.

There's something that just works about it. And that helps, I think, the whole franchise. But this movie in particular, it really gets to shine.

Yeah. And you said it's basically a multiversal movie, which is so true, because a big part of this movie is he has to say these magic words, which are actually the same magic words for the movie. They there stood still. And he constantly is messing up the last word. He can't remember what it is, and he's flubbing it. And it does all these mistakes throughout the movie, and he ends up back at the end of the movie in kind of his universe. But something has changed. Like the deadites have still followed him there. So it really is that kind of classic multiversal thing, uh, or time travel thing, where, oh, you do one thing wrong and it has all these ripple effects throughout time that you might not be aware of.

Yeah, I agree. But without being I think this is why it works so well, because it's not needlessly complex. It's a very simple story. Even though it has these Sci-Fi fantasy and horror elements, it is straightforward and simple and keeps it tight. And I think that helps it work so well. It's also fun watching this in the context of multiverse of madness, of course, because you see Sam's fingerprints on that and why totally. I liked that movie so much just because it is so remarkably similar. It's kind of funny actually, having rewatching army of Darkness, even with the, uh, final Battle being on this stone tower in the middle of nowhere and all the skeletons being assembled. And it's just like, wow, you really dead. Doctor made it homage to himself.

Yeah, the dead Doctor Strange is the climax of that movie. Definitely has some, um, aesthetic similarities to all the corpses here. And I think I just love the whole movie is funny. But once the kind of the skeletons rise, of course, in the other Evil Dead movies, the deadites are scary also because it's your loved ones that have been transformed. And here we have some Deadites, but they're kind of to the background, actually, because then the main things are like these skeletons and they're all just like puppets. It's kind of like watching a ah, Muppet movie or something because they all had to have big jaws and silly voices. I think this movie and every single line that Bruce Campbell has from Sam and Ivan Raimi and maybe Ad lived by himself, I mean, they're all just complete classics.

Well, and we should say, and spoiler alert, if you haven't watched this movie and you want to now, 32 years later, you'll be spoiled. But the villain is an alternate version of Hem. So that also makes it somewhat multiversal in that there's that scene, that great scene, which becomes really important, actually, in the comics that we read, where he gets for whatever, totally for no reason. He just in a mirror. Gets split into a bunch of little ashes in the mirror and one of them survives to become the arch villain mhm that is going to battle. And so it's fun in that way.

Strong connections. But before we get to our comic, let's stay in ancient times, but a different ancient times. We have Hercules, the Legendary Journeys season one, episodes 912 and 13 from 1995, and Zena Warrior Princess season one, episode one, also from 1995.

So we watch these four because again, they are her origin. Zena Lucy Lawless, in fact, appears in Hercules as a different character before becoming Zena in episode nine, and then returning for the two part finale of that first season before going on to her own series. So we watched all of these to get a real sense of her. The Hercules episodes are directed by Bruce Seth Green, seth Green's father and director of Buffy, also and Jack Perez. Written by John Shulian and Peter Bieliak. So John Shulian technically writes the first Xena Warrior Princess, but again, it's Rob Tappert's story that he's done. When we get to the Zena series, it's Story by Rob Tappert with Tell play by RJ stewart. So the two of them, as I mentioned, developed the show with Sam and it's directed by Doug Leffler. So what did you think? This was your first formal exposure to Zena, her origin? I know you didn't even know that she started as a villain.

Um I had no idea. And in fact, I was reading then on Wikipedia that another actor was supposed to play Zena. She hurt herself and Lucy, who I guess was there already, because in New Zealand, the other actor was from America, stepped in. And in fact, I guess Zena was even not, uh, supposed to have dark hair, but because, as you said, Lucy was already playing this other character, they were like donkey dye your hair that way we know it's not the same character. It's amazing. Could you picture Zena as a blonde? It would be so different.

Yes, it would be.

But yeah, I think I really enjoyed the Zena episode a lot more than I enjoyed the Hercules episodes, because some.

Of it is Kevin. Sorbo, uh, he's a horrible, horrible person. But even aside from that, he's very bland. He's not very bland as is the.

Person, no offense to the person who's basically his sidekick on that show.

Is a little more fun. It's just that you saw the episode where he's getting seduced by Zena, so he really doesn't have much to do other than be ridiculously in love with Zena.

Yeah, mhm, but then on the Xeno ones, there's a lot more humor, I think, that they kind of put in. I still think the show works best when there's this another, uh, third banana kind of that's involved. I kept watching them thinking, okay, on these shows you've got Luke and Leia, but we don't have a Han off.

Well, you do. It's either Ted Raimi or Bruce Campbell.

But they're not on every episode.

The vast majority of episodes bring in the third banana. Or sometimes it's the guy that we meet in the Hercules episodes who's playing like the gay Broadway type that we liked. He shows up on Zena too. So they do always get a, uh, foil in to make it real fun. I think what is so striking to me about Zena the show, before I talk about the character the show is that it is army of Darkness. It's so camp, mhm, and it's a different version of camp because a it's TV, b it's fantasy, it's trying to do action a little differently. But the show is so ridiculous at times. And yet also and this might be why army of Darkness and Evil Dead appeal to people so much, is it's taking itself seriously too. It's not being silly for silly's sake, it's being silly to give the audience a good time. But it's also telling you a real story. And Xena story. Is actually more complex than I'd say. Army of darkness. There is a serialized story which is also quite unusual in syndicated shows other than the Star Trek, but there is an arc to everything that's happening. There are characters you meet that change and evolve and return and all these things, but it's doing that while also having just a ton of fun. Sometimes. It, of course, introduces the musical episode. It's one of the first I think it is the first show, really, to do a musical episode that, of course, then Buffy copies and sitcoms copy and countless other shows copy. So it just has fun and that's really cool.

Well, and I think one thing I liked about the dynamic between Zena and Gabrielle on, um, the episode is Zena is very much playing like the straight man. She's taking it seriously. She's acting a little bit from the medieval time, a little bit, but Gabrielle is a little bit more anachronistic as well, some of the ways that she speaks. So it is a much more fun dynamic than on the Hercules show between the two of them, where they're very much both kind of acting in this very stayed kind of style.

Yeah, I think also, Lucy, I think, is just electric. There's something about her. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's that she just has nostalgia for me. Although I feel this in Battlestar Galactica, uh, she's like a Bruce Campbell where you can't not look at her when she's on screen. There's something really magnetic about her. And I think that makes the show work so well is that she is just so fun to watch. Even when she is being serious or sincere or intense or dramatic, there is something so fun to watch about her. And then when she gets to have fun and be comedic or be sarcastic, uh, it just really is appealing.

I totally buy her, too, as this kick a** character. And I think sometimes when we're watching some of more modern Marvel movies and stuff like that, and there's a character fighting it's like sometimes the female actors are so spindly. I totally believe that she's leaping around and kicking everybody's a**.

She's big.

Yeah, you get that sense there.

And she's gorgeous, but she's big. And she does a ton of her stunts. Of course, there are really famous stunt people working on the show, too, but she does a ton of her own because you see her doing a lot of the martial arts, doing a lot of the sword fighting, you see her doing so much of it. And then, I think, as a character, I was struck rewatching this for I don't know, I've watched this at least probably half a dozen times these initial episodes. She's so well developed from the beginning. Outside of there's, of course, the sexist trope in it, of the way she's seducing Eolis in the Hercules episodes on her show, you get rid of that a bit. And in fact, I'd say she's quite sexually empowered. She's not Asexual, but she's also not being used in the same she's not using sexuality in the same way that they have her in the Hercules episode.

Well, there's a scene in one of the Hercules episodes where her and Hercules also just sleep together off camera. And it really just felt like it was completely tagged on at the end because these characters have had no chemistry and really very pretty minor interactions in real life, too. That's very believable.

But I just was surprised at how well developed she is from the onset that she is this villain and that she doesn't get redeemed through magic or through brainwashing. That gives her so much depth right there. When you think about we've talked so many times in Marvel movies, in any movies, really, how important the villain is and how well defined the villain's intentions need to be in order to connect to them, even if they're horrible. I think it's really cool and gives a lot of depth to Zena that she's killed thousands of people. And then her arc is, okay, but I'm good. She always did it with a moral code, and now I'm going to stop killing and I'm going to start doing good. But I have to deal with the fact that this was my past. And I, uh, think that is so cool that it's there from right away.

Yeah. It's a great driver for the series of why she is doing this. Why are we following her on her adventures? Because the Hercules it's not really specifically stated, why is he out doing all this good, and I guess just saving.

A town from, I don't know, some.

Because he's Hercules, uh, here with Zena. And it's like, oh, she's redeeming herself for all these horrible things. And in the first episode of her own series, we get that her mother is rejecting her. The town she grew up in is rejecting her because they were like, you were this awful person. And I think there's some connections there too, between her and the Ash character as well, because Ash is always doing these bad things. Ash is always the cause of the problem. He doesn't always realize it. Uh, unlike Zena, he doesn't realize it. Maybe it's a male female thing there. But at the same time, that's why Ashes then needs to come to help everyone, because he goes, well, I kind of partially caused this issue. So there's a connection there between those two characters.

Well, he also has a clear moral code. Even when he's reluctant, or when he's being a doofist, or when he's even doing something that he shouldn't be doing, you can make sense of it. And he's ultimately a good person. And so, yeah, I agree with those connections. So let's find out what happens when they meet.

Yes. So we are going to jump into our portal through our Book of the Dead and explore multiversity and guido. I think before we get into today's issue, you have a little bit of history on these franchises and comics, because I know whenever you go to the comic book store, you always see army of Darkness everything. Still, you do.

And we're going to talk. All right, so what we read today, which Rob will share the title of in just a moment, is Volume One. And there are actually three different volumes of it. There are follow ups to it. And so we decided that since there was so much to discuss with each of these franchises on their own, what we just did, we're going to focus on these franchises and their history in comics in a future episode. So we'll do an in depth history of them in comics when we hit the volume two crossover down the road in an episode. But real quick, just for some context before we get into today's, army of Darkness had some Dark Horse comic adaptations of the movie come out parallel to the movie. But it's in 2004 that Dynamite gets the license and starts featuring the title in its own book and then does a number of crossovers, some before Zena, and then some continuing after Zena through to within the last few years. Zena, meanwhile, in the 90s, has a lot of top comics adaptations. Dynamite gets the license in 2006, which leads to this crossover a short time later. So a whole lot more on the comic book history of these characters to come in that future follow up episode.

Yes. This issue is army of Darkness Xenawarrior Princess, Volume One from Dynamite Comics known as Xena versus army of Darkness, volume One. Why not? And the story is titled Battered and Bruised. As in Bruce Campbell. And this was released March yeah, exactly. Released March to July 2008.

So it is written by John Layman and Brandon GERWA. There's art is by Miguel Montenegro colored by Zona with J david Ramos letters by Simon Boland The editor is Joseph Rybant. There are chapter titles for one, two, three, and four. They are I'm just sharing because they're kind of clever. The Grimaced Fairy Tale, Autolic Likeness Adventures, which is funny because the character in Zena is Autolicus. And uh huh. From these ashes and the best laid plans So very clever chapter titles. We're going to do a summary because this is not super accessible because Dynamite doesn't have the license anymore of, I think at least Zena. I'm not sure when the last army of darkness is. They might have lost that license, too, but definitely Zena. And so we'll do a quick summary and then we'll get on to our analysis. So Rob, why don't you start our summary off?

Sure. When in army of Darkness, multiple little ashes are created, one of those little mirror mhm one of those little ashes dubbed ash.

It yeah, but do you get that?

I don't know, do I?

S***. That's why it's dubbed Ash.

Okay, thank you. Oh, gosh. Okay, well, Ash it escapes with his own little copy of The Necronomicon into the land of Zena warrior princess, the Mini Namrakan. Yes. And there we meet Zena, her companion gabrielle and Autoclite. Autolicus. Autolicus. Thank you. The king of thieves, who looks a lot like Ash because he was played by Bruce Campbell on, um, the Zena TV show.

Yes. But back in his own time, the real Ash is working at Esmart, is summoned by the wizard from army of Darkness, Ian Abercrombie, to once again save the universe. And he travels to Zena's world. But in this world, Ashit has conquered the fairies and dubbed himself their leader. And he has armed them with shotguns and chainsaw hands, using the nephronomicom to transform them essentially into little dead eye fairies.

Mhm. And then we get a series of Shakespearean comedy of identities, as the real Ash is mistaken for Atolicus, and vice versa. But Zena, Gabrielle and everyone who they want to kill them both, basically. And they both resemble, of course, the evil Ash, which everyone is also fighting against because he's destroying all of their villages. And Zena and Gabrielle soon realize that Ash is not Autolicus, but they partner with him anyway as they continue on their adventure.

And eventually they're separated. Zen and Gabrielle are arrested. Ash and Autolicus finally meet up, rescue Zen and Gabrielle. Together, they all team up to defeat Ashit and the deadite fairies. They have a quick detour at the end, though, because he can't pronounce the words correctly. They end up in prehistoric times and fight a dinosaur. And then the story wraps up. So, how did you enjoy Xeno versus army of Darkness, volume One?

Why not? I thought this was, uh, a lot of fun. I think it really captured the tone, especially of army of Darkness. I would say it's more of an army of Darkness book, an Ash book than a Zena and Gabrielle. They're, I think, a little bit more off to the side, but they I.

Don'T think that's true if you count Autolicus, because you get a lot of Autolicus stuff. It's just that you don't know Autolicus from the team.

I'm just putting him, though, as also another version of Ash last Bruce Campbell.

Basically very similar, uh, character and role.

And Gabrielle are definitely the straight men to the ashes to Bruce Campbell characters.

All the Bruce Campbells?

Yes. But what about you? You had read this before.

No, I had not read this, because I wasn't an army of Darkness fan and because Dynamite art is always very rushed. I feel bad. I don't want to criticize the artists because I think that if I had to guess, dynamite just rushes the h*** out of them or underpays them. Because it is universally true in the vast majority of Dynamite books that the art feels very rushed. To me, it feels incomplete. So I'm never drawn in, uh, unless there's a story I know is going to be good or there's something I really want to take in. And since this was army of Darkness, I had bought one or two, but I didn't end up reading it or sticking with it. So, no, this was my first time reading it as well. And it is fun because of all those little references. Even the fact that it starts off with this one that came out of the mirror is really fun. I think Autolicus's personality is exactly from the TV show, so I appreciate that. It's clear to me the writers know these properties well. Even bringing Ian Amber, Ian Abercrombie, and having that be the way he goes back in, and then like army of Darkness, it's a quite simple story. Mhm. That's just fun and silly at times. They play with the Bruce Campbell thing a lot, but it doesn't ever feel too obnoxiously. Like wink, wink, nudge nudge.

Yeah, and he wasn't as a character. Ash, there is a female character in army of Darkness, but she doesn't really have too much to do. So it is interesting to actually partner Ash with strong female characters because, of course, he's constantly trying to sleep with both Cena and Gabrielle. Just flirting. Flirting, sure. But it's good to have those strong female characters to bounce off of, which they then had a couple of great characters on the Ash versus Evil Dead series. Um, after this, maybe this was even kind of an inspiration of like, oh, we got to put him with a strong female character.

With Lucy.

Yeah, with Lucy, even.

Exactly. Keep them together. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And even just the dialogue is so spot on for all of them. You can hear him saying the lines. You can hear her saying the lines, you can hear Gabrielle. So I think that it is great for fans of these two things. I think if you're not a fan of army of Darkness, I could see why I wasn't interested in this. Because, mhm, it requires you to be a fan to appreciate what they're doing. Otherwise it's not I'd say it's probably not a very fun crossover. It, uh does there's some crossovers i, uh, don't know, marvel versus DC. I don't know. There's some crossovers X Men Teen Titans, where I think you could probably appreciate it even if you don't know one of the franchises that well. But this is not that. This you have to know both franchises, I think, in order to really appreciate yeah.

While I don't know Zena Super well, I know the Bruce Campbell persona, which is really what you need to know because so much of the humor in this comes from that character. I mean, the overarching character that he's played in so many different things that have that kind of that vain, glorious attitude there. But M, you mentioned at the top, Guido, that we've covered another Dynamite book, the Alvira books. And I actually would thought this reminded me a lot of that because you were talking about how well they captured the tone of the characters. And I think that's something about the Alvira books. But then also kind of going back to what we said about Ash as a character, just sticking that character in various things and having the humor come from that, that's something that the Alvira books do really well. So this maybe almost felt like a ah, predecessor to some of that. And I feel like they refined it even more with the Alvira books.

Yeah, I agree. And yeah, I think Dynamite likes to do that. We know from talking to David, who was the creator of The Twilight Zone meets the shadow for Dynamite comics and the Betty Page series, which has a whole multiverse thing and she's encountering. So I think it's a great model because Dynamite does do so much licensed property stuff. It's a great model for them to do these kinds of team ups and crossovers. We'll explore them a ton on future episodes because there are so many that we could cover that incorporate franchises well, well outside the bounds of what you would expect. Uh, so yeah, I think it's fun and it's a fun model. And it could be one of the earlier examples. As I mentioned, there's other army of Darkness crossovers. Even army of Darkness crosses over with marble zombies. That's the series we'll probably have to cover one day. So there's all sorts of crossovers. This is not the first, but you're right, it is very proto for the stuff that ten years later, ten to 15 years later they're doing with Elvira for.

Sure. Okay, well, let's move into our final segment. Let's say the magic words together. Clap. Two. Barrata necktie. Uh, it's pondering possibilities. So Gita, what are we talking about for our pondering possibilities and are they groovy?

Well, as I mentioned, there are future volumes of army of Darkness versus Xena. There are also other volumes of army of Darkness crossing over with other things. All of those are things that we will cover eventually on various episodes. So for today, I thought since we're just getting started with these two huge mega franchises, these properties, that we could talk a little bit as we ponder the possibilities of the potential for each franchise. Do we want to see it cross over with other things? Do we want to see them cross over again even beyond the two future volumes we know are coming? Uh, so before we dive in too deeply, I'd say why do you think these two crossed over in the first place?

Let's start there. Well, mutual, Bruce. Well mutual. And Rob and Sam.

Yeah, but they weren't involved in the comics, right?

True. Well, I think going back to you think of army of Darkness, he's trapped in medieval times. Zena is basically in medieval times. There is a lot of shared DNA there in those two worlds, ancient times, but there's wizards and all that, so I can kind of see those two things. But then you can also introduce the fairy. The Zena has mythological creatures as well, which they don't really have in army of Darkness. So that gives a whole extra context. So I think it just is playing in that same sandbox again.

Yeah, well, and I think tonally I mentioned this briefly in our introductory, uh, segment, but I didn't go too in depth in the first segment. Tonally they're very similar to me, I think, especially when you get Zena at its campier. But even that first episode, which is perhaps one of the less humorous, there are very serious episodes of Zena, but that is one of the less serious ones, less humorous ones, more serious ones. There are these moments, especially in the action sequences, that are just like the skeleton fight at the battle at the end, where it's just totally absurd. There's just ridiculous flips off of things happening, and it's played for laughs. So I think tonally and obviously that is because they share the same creators, I think it makes sense for them to cross over. Tonally and then you do have the added benefit of Bruce, for sure. Totally. Yeah. I think that's why and I think we both think it worked. So I don't know. Do you think it would work with other things? Now we'll read other army of Darkness crossovers. Neither of us have read them right. I bought you the reanimator one, but I don't think you ended up reading it.

No, but that would work, too. I'm also wondering the other character that comes to mind would be an army of Darkness Buffy crossover, which you get, again, the strong female character. But you also can easily get the book, um, of the Dead into the Buffy universe and kind of have him battle vampires as well. I would love to see him because he's so snarky. And then you've got a lot of the snark of the Scooby gang. I think that could really work well together.

Yeah, I don't think she'd tolerate him very well. Zena is used to him because of autolicas. Yes.

Uh, well, she's got Spike, though, right? So she's also spike is a little.

Asheresque, I guess that could be, uh, now. So, moving away from crossovers army of Darkness, do you think we'll end up with another army of Darkness movie? Whether it's as a sequel to the reboot recall stuff that's been happening, like Evil Dead rise, do you think they'll go toward that direction? Do you think there'd ever be just another army of Darkness or a recall that would be separate from Evil Dead? Or what do you think the future of army of Darkness could be?

Well, I think if we see another live action Evil Dead movie, they're going to continue in the vein of the new movies which have been super serious. It's strange that they are almost both the 2013 and 2023 yeah. Have almost no humor. Which is funny because even while the first movie, the first Evil Dead movie is not funny, it's now become such a known for its humor. So I don't know, maybe they just think Bruce isn't in it. We're going to keep it serious. I think they're going to keep those movies small and serious. Maybe they'll add some humor. That would be nice. But I think they'll keep them small. And they have been talks about maybe an animated movie bringing Bruce in. He does not want army of darkness. I think that would be a really fun kind of army. And the plus because then you could bring in all of the special effects and everything that's very you could have that.

You could do the Ash teleporting to different places.

Totally. That would be a great series.

Easily. And yeah, it wouldn't matter what else is happening. You could just have fun with that. Could be a TV series, actually.

Oh, I think that would be a great cartoon. Pirates. And you can bring in Krakens and those sea monsters and stuff like that prehistoric, which we get a little bit of here in the comic the future, or even back into something like the 1920s or 1930s, maybe World War II, all those things. It would be really fun. I love to see that as an animated series.

Do you think there's a live action army of Darkness in our future?

No, I don't think so. And uh, Bruce has been pretty adamant that he wants yeah, but he's been even without someone. I don't think so. I mean, I don't know. I think they're smart enough to know that he is the thing that people love about the movie. And to put someone else into it would just not be as successful. Do you agree?

Yeah, I think I agree to a certain extent. It's obviously DNA is all in like Sean of the Dead or totally John.

Dies at the, uh, end zombielands.

These horror comedies that tell a real horror story and have this kooky protagonist at the core of them and sort of transpose fish out of water kind of thing. So I think that it's been done. So I guess remaking it without Bruce just then starts to feel iterative like it's just coming after those things. I don't think we'll see army of Darkness.

And what about Zena? Because you mentioned that there have been talks of reboots, but nothing has ever really happened.

No. I mean, it was green lit. It was Javier Grio Marshwash, the, uh, producer from Lost who went on to do a ton of other stuff. He was show running it. He had said that they were going to be queer, that they were going to be explicit with it. It was not totally clear if Lucy was possibly going to show up in some other role, whether it be like an older Zena, or whether it just be like a mother and there's a new Zena. None of that was clear, but it was fully in pre production and then got.

Scrapped.

I don't know. It's a little Buffy esque in that I think it would be really hard to do without, uh, making it a recall now. I think we're in this age of the recall, where it's a sequel, but it's sort of rebooting. I think there's potential in that. But I don't think you could do it without Lucy Lawless, honestly. Um, without Lucy Lawless as Zena. It's too recent. And same with Buffy. You can't do a Buffy without Sarah. Michelle geller as Buffy. I think you'll lose a lot of people. You'll lose me, you'll lose the world that was built. That is what we all love about these characters, is that they live in this really well developed, interesting world. And so, even if the point is to get past Lucy as Zena and have some new character, you need Lucy asina in it, um, to move the story forward, I think.

Yeah, I definitely agree. But I do think the big difference is for Buffy. I would want to see how Buffy has changed and aged over time, and I would want to see what is Buffy at her current age and everything, all the baggage that comes with that. With Zena, I think it's a little bit more open because, of course, we'd be seeing an older Zena.

But I think you don't know how the series ends.

Okay. I don't know how the series ends. Spoiler for everyone.

Uh, 23 years later. Spoiler. She dies at the, um, end.

Okay, well, Buffy dies various times. Yeah. Okay.

They'd have to resurrect her and then explain that she aged.

Walt dead. But I think if we saw Buffy, we'd want it to be the tone of the original, but see her now, I think Zena, because it was a little bit more of a blank canvas, I think in some ways, you could do it ultra serious, like big money, which I don't think we do. You could go ultra campy. You could do it that way. I think there's a lot of room to pivot and play with that series.

Yeah, I agree. I don't know what the future holds. I mean, clearly the rights issue got cleared up enough for NBC to put this into pre production. But as we've learned from all sorts of scrapped projects happening recently, once a project is scrapped, it actually makes it even harder for the next person. Because then you have someone else's ideas or development, work and money that was put into it and all these weird, strange Hollywood things where then that person needs to get paid back before it can move forward. So, I think the 2016 scrapping of Zena probably has set us back for quite m some time. I don't know that we'll see Zena again.

Animated would be a really fun route to go here, though, too, because it would be a lot cheaper. And you could basically ignore the ending of the original if you wanted, because you could have Lucy be the same age or be older. Like, you have a lot of flexibility there.

Well, Lucy has told fans to ignore the ending when they say that they really don't like it. She's said to ignore it, although it's actually quite a good ending. There's more to it, and it's really important why it happens. So it's a great story that they tell, but she has told fans when they say they're so unhappy that it ends that way, she said, well, then.

You can just ignore it. Now, we could see Hercules, uh, Buffy crossover with Christy Swanson as Buffy. Her and Kevin could get really along.

I think that studio that just released the Jim Caviziel human trafficking movie is.

Getting ready to they're working on it. Yeah. Dean Cain. Superman back, too.

Exactly, Kevin. Sorvo. Hercules. Christy. Swanson. Buffy. Dean kane.

Superman.

Oh, God. Oh, please. So we will talk about these properties again. I mean, there's so many ways we could talk about them, not just with volume two and volume three, but we can even get into there are full on multiversal Zena episodes. There are episodes where she comes to m modern times, and there are wacky wacky things in Zena that we can play with. And we have comics to revisit a lot with these franchises. So you'll be hearing about Zena and Ash again sometime. Hopefully you enjoyed it, because that is a wrap. And we don't have any other giveaway this week. We still have a few in our Summer Centennial giveaways, but if you're looking for our active Marvel Spec Bundle giveaway, I highly recommend you listen to the last few episodes.

And I have been Rob.

Thank you for listening to your watchers.

I have been Edo Warrior Princess. The reading list is in our show notes and you can follow us on all social media platforms at dear watchers.

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