Nightmares on Elm Street


Nightmares on Elm Street is a six-issue comic book limited series set within the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, set chronologically between ' and '. It was written by comic book writer Andy Mangels and published bimonthly throughout 1991 and 1992 by Innovation Publishing. The first two issues revolves mainly around Nancy Thompson's fate following her murder by Freddy Krueger in , while issue three through six deals primarily with the return of Alice Johnson and her son Jacob to Springwood. The comics are considered to be canonical to the franchise.

Plot

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The first issue, set in 1990, centers around Cybil Houch, who starts to have nightmares about Freddy Krueger in which she recognizes 1428 Elm Street, the old house of her former college roommate Nancy Thompson. She is a "ripperologist", and as such Freddy poses as Jack the Ripper in her nightmares. Freddy also invades the dream of Priscilla Martin, a third roommate of Nancy and Cybil, and murders her. Seeking for Nancy in phonebooks turns up nothing for Cybil, but Dr. Elizabeth Simms is able to explain to her that Nancy died three years ago, and that Dr. Neil Gordon might know more; Cybil calls him. Rising up, she faints from sudden blood pressure drop and starts dreaming and has to watch as Freddy kills her boyfriend James, but before Freddy can kill her too, Nancy intervenes and saves her.
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In the real world, Dr. Gordon had reacted to Cybil's phonecall alluding to Freddy Krueger and arrives to help her, allowing Cybil to tell him about her encounter with Nancy. They enter Cybil's dreams, where Nancy explains that because of Kristen Parker's dream powers, she died in body three years ago but her soul was set free to ascend into "the Beautiful Dream", a domain of the dream world that Freddy cannot control, and that she has hidden Neil's dreams from Freddy to protect him. The two women concludes that Freddy has likely used Cybil and Priscilla as bait to lure Nancy out of safety. After some dangerous encounters with Freddy in the dream world, they are saved by a girl who claims that Cybil will be her mother, meaning that she is pregnant. The comics reveals that there is a third dream plane where unborn children spends their time dreaming. The "dream children" attacks Freddy, lambasting him for trying to take Jacob earlier and declaring that Freddy doesn't belong there. However, Cybil passes out again from morning sickness and immediately has another nightmare where "Jack the Ripper" attacks her with a scalpel as she calls out in vain for Nancy to help her again.
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In 1995, six years after the events of , Alice Johnson returns to Springwood, bringing Jacob with her, who is portrayed as possessing both a heightened intellect and maturity and psychic powers such as telepathy. Her father Dennis has passed away, hinted to be due to Freddy. It is revealed through dialogue that during this time, Cybil had died of eclampsia, while Dr. Gordon as her driver suffered a car accident trying to rush her to the hospital. He has now been rendered comatose and keeps dreaming of Freddy trying to kill him, but Nancy keeps on protecting him. Most of Elm Street is boarded up and nonvacant, with one more house now joining that state. Alice meets up with her old friend Yvonne Miller from The Dream Child, who's now a policewoman. Devonne Gable, a mysterious, traumatized woman, is working for Freddy who is after Jacob again, but he rescues Alice when Freddy tries to manipulate Dan Jordan to trick her. Jacob then meets up with Devonne.
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Jacob and Devonne heads to the Springwood cemetery, where Dan's body is buried, as are Devonne's parents and sister. Jacob tries to use his powers to bring Dan back, but senses that Freddy still has his soul. Jacob "zaps" Devonne and goes into her dreams of her childhood trauma, where he finds Freddy. Freddy tries to coerce Jacob into helping him escape the confines of Springwood in return for Freddy bringing Dan back to life, even allowing him some "father-son" time with his father Dan Jordan's soul. Meanwhile, Freddy sends Devonne out to kill Alice, who had searched out Yvonne at the hospital for help in finding Jacob. They try to enlist the help of Nancy's spirit by speaking to Neil Gordon's comatose body, which Jacob sensed earlier was being protected by Nancy.
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Alice's words stirs Neil's body, who says she needs to go into the dream world to link up with Nancy. Alice convinces Yvonne to drug her unconscious. Devonne enters the hospital only moments after with a machinegun, slaughtering her way to get to Alice, but Yvonne shoots her fatally in the chest before she can kill Alice. In the dream world, Alice meets up with Neil. Freddy tries to kill them by shattering all the glass in the "dream church" from the films, but Nancy saves them. In the dream world, Alice becomes her namesake Alice in Wonderland and encounters Freddy as a macabre version of the White Rabbit, while Nancy is interrupted by her father Donald's spirit. Neil joins up with his former patients, the "Dream Warriors", who resides in a sort of pocket universe within the dream world. Jacob encounters his father Dan Jordan's spirit in the dream world.
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Devonne enters a "dying dream" state and rejoins Freddy in the dream world. Dan explains that Freddy will bring him back if Jacob helps Freddy escape the confines of Springwood. Donald shots Nancy in the head due to Freddy's torment being too horrible for him to endure, and if he were to agree to kill his daughter, Freddy might release him from his bondage. Nancy however restores herself and says that she's changed, and that she can offer him his salvation. She frees the aspect of him that Freddy had imprisoned and sends his now complete spirit off to some unknown plane and continues. Alice goes through more Alice in Wonderland-themed vistas, and is eventually overpowered by Freddy in the guise of the Jabberwocky, while Neil leaves the Dream Warriors' pocket dimension and continues. Nancy tries to talk Jacob out of helping Freddy, pointing out that he was the one who killed Dan in the first place, but she has now entered Freddy's place and he now has power over her too. Devonne, finally realizing that Freddy was never going to keep his words and that she was only ever a pawn to him, turns against him and sides with Neil, Nancy and Dan in attacking Freddy. After Freddy's temporary defeat, Jacob uses his psychic powers to put his father Dan's spirit into Neil Gordon's body, who had rather wanted to join Nancy in "the Beautiful Dream". The three prepares to leave Springwood for good, with Alice asking Yvonne to come with them and leave the nightmares behind for good. Freddy is shown to reconstitute himself in the last panel.

Characters

Nightmares on Elm Street was Andy Mangel's third and first successful attempt to release comics within the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. The first was for Blackthorne Publishing, which gained licensing rights from New Line Cinema in early 1989. Eight issues in 3D based on the films and Freddy's Nightmares were planned, and a first issue was scheduled for release in April 1989, but around that time, Blackthorne began its downward spiral towards bankruptcy, and progress was frozen long enough for the publisher to fold before anything could be published of those comics. Andy Mangels had finished writing three and illustrated the first issue, but development ceased after that. The second attempt was with Marvel Comics' Freddy Krueger's A Nightmare on Elm Street series; Andy Mangels suggested a plot for its fifth issue but only two issues were released before it was cancelled out of fear of what critics might say about its violent content. After the box office failure of ', New Line Cinema decided to pull the plug on the film series, which they did in 1991 with ', which officially killed off Freddy for the time. Andy Mangels attempted to once again secure comics publishing rights for the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, and succeeded within eight monts. Dave Imhoff, who was head of New Line Cinema's licensing department at the time, had recognized comics as a cheap way of developing stories within a franchise without having to employ actors, film crew and special effects specialists. Thus, he was very receptive when Mangels approached him and expressed willingness to work on developing A Nightmare on Elm Street comics. Mangels also contacted Innovation Publishing, who told him that they might consider publishing his work if he could only secure licensing rights.
The comics uses the concept of "the Beautiful Dream", referenced in the ' film only through words spoken by Kristen Parker, but in Wes Craven and Bruce Wagner's original script, another penultimate scene was present in which Kristen asks Neil Gordon if the two still see each other and Gordon responds: "Yeah, we do. In fact, I'm seeing her tonight. That's why I'm in such a rush to get to sleep". This was also in the final script, but was omitted for the film.
The comics also references another omitted concept known as the "dream pool", originating from an unused screenplay for ' written by Craig Spector and John Skipp. Spector explains that the concept of the dream pool is a “purely Jungian notion, this place in the collective unconscious where everybody’s dreams link up. The unconscious is the back door to the mind, and the back door can swing both ways. If Freddy can get into people’s dreams via that door, it would be possible for Alice to get into Freddy’s dreams via the same route, and therefore into his past”. Spector elaborates that “The way we presented the dream pool was to have Freddy like an oil slick floating on the surface, a black, eternal force that needs to get back to the physical realm because that’s where the action is”. According to Michael De Luca, the dream pool concept was dropped as it made the story of The Dream Child too convoluted and with too much backstory. The dream pool concept was also used in the short story "Dead Highway, Lost Roads" by Philip Nutman in the non-canonical anthology book The Nightmares on Elm Street: Freddy Krueger's Seven Sweetest Dreams; Nutman had also been the author of the Fangoria article from 1989 in which Spector explained his idea of the concept.
Andy Mangels wrote his own fear of having his hand pierced by a sewing machine into the comics, for the death of seamstress Priscilla Martin, whom Freddy kills in a catwalk/fashion-themed nightmare. Mangels elaborates that "he utilizes her fears to destroy and does so with her sewing machine - the one thing she was not afraid of, in exactly the manner of my phobia."

Reception

Gavin Jasper on Den of Geek criticized the plot twists of both substories, of the pregnant Cybil being apparently murdered by Freddy as Jack the Ripper and of Dan Jordan inhibiting the body of Neil Gordon - in spite of the latter being a happy ending - of being absurd even by A Nightmare on Elm Street standards, but commended Devonne's character for " some life into an otherwise lifeless cast". In GoreZone, James Vance expressed that Andy Mangels did a competent job in the characterizations, but thought that many characters did not particularly resemble the actors who portrayed them in the films, but attributes this to licensing departments not always getting approval for portraying the likeness of every actor from the films.
Lewis "Linkara" Lovhaug states that the off-panel killing of Cybil's character and never mentioning her again makes the first two issues a waste, since the "Beautiful Dream" is explained all over again in the following issues; he also compares Cybil to Tina Gray in being a false protagonist to Nancy. He calls Patrick Rolo's art in issue 3-6 an improvement over Tony Harris' art in issue 1 and 2, stating that Harris had a more dreamlike style that worked well for the dreams but came off as too surreal outside of the dream world, while Rolo's more general art worked better for the non-dream scenes. Linkara also criticized the use of the Dream Warriors, saying their appearance was mere fan service and excessive exposition that served no real narrative purpose in the story, as Neil Gordon simply enters their domain, talks to them and then leaves. Similar to Jasper, Linkara also commended Devonne's storyline as the as best in the comic series.
Matt Molgaard on Horror Novels Reviews calls the series an "amazing tale" but still feels that there was more to tell, questioning why the story was so abrubtly cut off between issue 2 and 3; he also states that the lush colors are a welcome addition after the black-and-white Marvel Comics' Freddy Krueger's A Nightmare on Elm Street comics he reviewed previously. Mike Mitchell on Geek Nerdery also expressed similar sentiments about the abrubtness of the first storylines ending, but appreciates that Alice and Jacob's was continued and completed, while also giving Neil and Nancy a happy ending.
Similarly to Linkara, Cecil A. Laird of The Horror Show also expresses that the writers essentially gave the first two issues an Alien 3 treatment with doing a significant timeskip while only explaining the outcome of issue 2 in text and not mentioning Cybil again. Laird and Jaime En Fuego praises Tony Harris' " style" of the first two issues, saying that the style is very different from any other A Nightmare on Elm Street comic they had seen. They also notices that the comics are littered with other "easter eggs, such as the powerplant and man-faced dog from , the wheelchair from Dream Warriors and the pram from The Dream Child, saying that it "expands upon the world and mythology surprisingly well" and makes for an "easy extension" of the film series.