"Freddy Krueger's A Nightmare on Elm Street"
9/18/14
by: Protoclown

Back in 1989, Marvel Comics released a short-lived magazine format series called Freddy Krueger's A Nightmare on Elm Street, to which I would answer, yes, yes he is. The title would have been a lot less awkward if they'd gotten rid of the "A", or even the "Freddy Krueger's", but I guess they wanted to make it very clear that it wasn't a nightmare being experienced by Jason Voorhees, or Michael Myers, or you know, ALF. The series was written by Steve Gerber (of Howard the Duck fame) with art by Joe Jusko, Rich Buckler and Tony DeZuniga. To say that the series was short-lived is a tremendous understatement, as it was canceled after the second issue. The saddest part of all is that Marvel didn't cancel the series because of pressure from concerned anti-violence groups--no, they canceled the series out of fear that there might be pressure from concerned anti-violence groups. A textbook example of fear-based self-censorship if ever there was one.

Fortunately, we now live in more enlightened times, and these days people who pick up a book off the rack marked as a "mature readers" title are expected to wear big boy or big girl pants and be responsible for their own shit. Marvel got as far as producing a cover for the third issue, which you can see below, but that is unfortunately all that exists of what may have been.

Feast your eyes on these wonderful covers long and hard, boys and girls, because it's all downhill once you step inside.

The biggest disappointment you will encounter if you decide to read these books is that they are in black-and-white, which can sometimes work quite well for a horror title (see The Walking Dead for a modern example), but I think that Freddy's "anything can happen" dreamscapes would have been much better served in full color. Of course, we're talking about comic coloring techniques that existed in the 1980s, so then again it's not like it would have been anything to get super excited about. I do love that one of the first things you see upon opening the first issue is this smiling, manic image of Freddy with the caption "The Bastard Son of a Thousand Maniacs!". It brings to mind the idea that this picture was plucked from Freddy's senior yearbook, and this was the caption he chose on a dare, just to see if he could get it past the apathetic student editors.

I love how he appears to be picking his teeth with one of his finger blades.

Our story begins with an ambulance arriving at the home of one Roger and Patti Hayes, whose daughter Allison has been having some bad dreams, you know, the kind that usually result in murder (SPOILER: IT'S CUZ OF FREDDY!). The paramedics knock on the door only to be answered by a confused Mr. Hayes, who's clutching a bottle of booze and only seems to be vaguely aware that there's some kind of incident occurring.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Can't a man torture his own daughter in peace anymore?"

The paramedics push past the bumbling drunk and encounter the mother, who is frantic, but seems to have her shit together a lot more than her husband. He's so concerned about his daughter's well-being that he drops a snarky comment about how fucked up the situation is before taking another long swig from his bottle.

I'm gonna go ahead and nominate Roger Hayes for the Father-of-the-Year Award. Congratulations, Roger!

The paramedics burst into Allison's bedroom to find her all jacked up on the bed, covered in slash marks from head to toe, and her little tootsies have been burned as well. She's alive, but only just barely. Of course the paramedics naturally suspect that her parents tortured her and left her for dead like this, so they call the cops to come to the house and take Mr. and Mrs. Hayes in for questioning. They don't buy their story that there were "noises" coming from the bedroom and the door was locked from the inside, but they allow the couple to go to the hospital with a police escort to be with their daughter, who needs surgery. All of the available surgeries from the look of things.

She probably just rolled into the wall during her sleep or something. I know I've hurt myself before doing that.

We then cut to New York City, where we see Dr. Juliann Quinn talking to this guy named Doug and explaining to him that she's moving back to her hometown of Springwood, where she's accepted her dream job. She then enters her apartment building for her final night before moving back home and trips over a tricycle that some careless oaf of a child left parked right inside the doorway.

I'm sure there probably is a horror movie out there about tricycles coming to life and tripping people.
And if there isn't, now that the idea has been sent forth into the ether of existence, there soon will be.

She gets upset over the fact that somebody left this tricycle in her path just waiting to trip her up and hurt her, and she comments about how the management is going to hear all about this incident...as she walks away, leaving the tricycle right where it was, ready to kill the next poor unlucky chump who walks in. Yes folks, this is the kind of selfish asshole we are dealing with here. Once she's through the deadly trap, no further thought is given as to what more damage it might inflict!

"Tricycles in the hall! It's an OUTRAGE! I'm going upstairs to write a letter to my Congressman about this!"

Juliann then hears disembodied voices singing the "One two, Freddy's coming for you" song from the movies. She gets freaked out and the floor undulates beneath her feet, and as she arrives at the elevator, the voices start singing "We Are the World", and as they reach the "We Are the Children" part of the song, the elevator door opens and a bunch of zombie kids spill out in front of her!

Simple horror moment, or bold political statement against musical charity super groups?

The elevator children crumble to dust and the dreamscape melts away, and Juliann then finds herself standing outside of a house she doesn't recognize. The front door opens and a familiar silhouette stands before her. Freddy shoots a wave of fire at her and she jolts awake on her couch just as her cigarette embers begin to catch the couch on fire.

"Hello? Yes, hi! I'd be delighted for you to come in and tell me all about my lord and savior Jesus Christ!
Aww, no, where are you going? Come back! My soul needs saving!"

Then we cut to Allison Hayes's surgery, during which Freddy inevitably attacks her. While her abdomen is cut open, she falls off the table and her own intestines flail out and begin choking her, as one of the doctors morphs into Freddy and begins to taunt her. In reality she's still on the surgery table, but her vitals are dropping, she's twitching so badly they can barely do the surgery on her, and her lungs are filling with fluid. They're losing her quickly.

There are appropriate times for autoerotic asphyxiation. In the middle of surgery is generally not thought to be one of them.

And then Allison does something extremely badass: she wraps her own intestines around Freddy's throat and begins choking him. As he's reeling from that, she takes his hand and smashes it through an equipment monitor, electrocuting him and thus apparently putting him in "time out" so he leaves her alone while he recovers. The fluid in her lungs drains on its own and she miraculously pulls through the surgery, much to the universal surprise of her doctors.

"That right there is why I don't trust touchscreens, man!"

One of the surgeons (played by Vincent Price) comes out to tell her parents that she's a real fighter and that she's going to be okay (intense trauma and hideous scars aside). With this wonderful news, Mr. Hayes then turns to the police and basically makes the argument "See, she's going to survive so it couldn't have been us!"

"You see officer, we couldn't have tortured our daughter! When my wife and I aim to murder one of our children,
you'd damn sure best believe that we're gonna be competent about it!"

Meanwhile, Juliann is flying from New York back to Springwood, and she reads a letter she's received from a nun at the Our Lady of Sorrows mental hospital. She had written in inquiring about Freddy Krueger's mother, Amanda, because Freddy pretty much killed all her childhood friends, and the nun wrote back to tell her story. We see that story in a flashback sequence as she reads the letter (it's similar to the version we get in the movies, with a few details changed). Amanda Krueger was working over the Christmas holiday with a sparse skeleton crew and was supposed to go up to "The Tower", where the most violent inmates were kept. She goes up to deliver their medication, but wouldn't you know it, the sole guard up there has to leave for just a few minutes to take care of some emergency. He warns her not to under any circumstances go into "the cage" while he is gone.

"I'd stay with you while you go into the psychotic inmates ward, but I have a very important light bulb to change in the east wing."

Amanda gets bored while waiting for the guard to come back, so she prepares their medicine while she waits. And waits. And waits some more. And still the guard does not return. Finally she hears a cry come from inside the cell that distresses her, and she opens the viewing portal and looks inside to see the inmates all gathered around a prisoner who is screaming and pounding away at the floor with his fists. I love how the one guy there is saying "Pain o' the world; pain o' the world", because that's totally how real people talk.

The dangerously insane inmates used to love sitting around and talking about their feelings
as Joe Bob would hammer out a congo drum beat on the floor with his bloody fists.

So as you might imagine, when she decides to take pity on these poor wretches and enter the cell alone to give them their medicine, she gets attacked and they assault and have their way with her. That asshole guard never comes back and they don't return to find her for several days. You mean to tell me that nobody showed up to feed or medicate these inmates in all that time? What kind of bullshit crackerjack operation is this?

Nope, not even gonna dream of touching this panel with a funny caption. Sorry to disappoint, Jezebel.

While this is happening, one of the prisoners grabs the keys and gets away. I love how this seems to be a completely different person (note that he is bald) repeating "pain o' the world" over and over. This has absolutely no further bearing on the plot whatsoever. I just wanted to mention it because the "pain o' the world" thing is so bizarre.

This guy thinks he's pretty smart, but he's gonna regret tossing that key ring when he gets to the building exit and finds it locked.

During her time in captivity with the prisoners, poor Amanda is beaten and raped hundreds of times, and winds up pregnant with a child whose father is any one of these deranged madmen. Dr. Quinn (Medicine Woman) then switches from the nun's letter to a psychiatric evaluation of Frederick Krueger and continues the story there. After his birth, young Frederick Krueger is given up for adoption and winds up with Mr. and Mrs. Paul Strunk, who show what great parents they are by managing to hang onto him for less than 24 hours before he gets stolen from them. Careful Mr. and Mrs. Hayes... looks like you've got some stiff competition for the Parents of the Year award!

"Oh honey, a kitten! He's just adorable."
"Kitten? Jesus, Maude, you've been into the mushrooms again."

The first night the Strunks have young Freddy in their home, a couple of burglars come in to steal all of their shit. Mr. Strunk confronts them with his pistol in the kitchen but they get the better of him and end up killing him and his wife both. They find young Freddy in his crib (seems to have gotten quite a bit older during the course of that 24 hours, you'll note) and for some reason rather than leave him, they toss him in the loot bag along with all of their other prizes. Also, what kind of burglar actually carries a sack over his shoulder like that? And what kind of infant is going to keep quiet after being tossed into a bag presumably full of jewelry and other sharp, rattling valuables without making a peep?

I like to imagine the delight on their faces when they get back with their sack of loot only
to discover that it has magically transformed into a sack of loot and poop. Poopy loot.

These thieves then sell baby Freddy to a couple named Walter Fingle and Isabel Tront (amazing names!). Freddy's adoptive mother is a prostitute, and young Freddy goes out onto the street to try to find customers for his mother. A heartwarming tale for the holidays, this is!

Pro tip: If a creepy child emerges from an alley and asks you if you'd like to go out with his mom, just say no. I can promise
that following this advice will not come back to haunt you years from now as you lie in your deathbed.

Walter Fingle regularly beats the shit out of Freddy and cuts him up with his straight razor. So between that and having to go out and find guys who want to come back and fuck his mom, one can see where Freddy might not have had the most well-adjusted, normal childhood. In his early teens, Freddy decides to run away and strike out on his own, but not before brutally murdering both of his "parents" with Walter's straight razor, the same implement of torture that was used on him so many times. He carves "Rot in Hell" into Walter's chest before he departs.

Oh, don't be alarmed. They may look dead, but they always look like this after their kinky sex games.

Freddy then travels around living on the streets for a long while, and somehow during this time he learned to control his dreams. In these dreams he often would get off on killing women with a clawed hand. Because they couldn't come up with anything more imaginative than he just does the same things over and over.

I think I may have just found Waldo!

The document then talks about how Freddy kidnapped and killed a lot of the children in his neighborhood, which is detailed in the first movie, so they pretty much gloss over it here. I do love this sequence below though because if you changed the text you could totally see this as the most creepy Valentine Card ever made. You just imagined it, didn't you? And I was right, wasn't I?

Or a jeweler's ad: "Is your kidnapped plaything rebuffing your advances?
Get her a locket of love, and she'll soon be eating out of your hand."

Dr. Quinn then goes to her hotel to catch some Zs and in her dream she encounters Allison Hayes. The two have a nice little chat before Freddy bursts out of her, ostensibly killing her. Freddy then creates a bottomless pit in Juliann's bed, which she falls into with a scream.

I've seen this sort of thing before. The only one who can stop him now is Sigourney Weaver.

Juliann realizes that this is all just a dream and that she's in control, so she sprouts wings and flies safely back up to her bed. Except Freddy is still there waiting to kill her. He changes the venue to his favorite boiler room, but the phone rings with fortuitous timing and wakes her up before he can do anymore damage to her.

If you're fortunate enough to know how much Freddy hates Led Zeppelin, you can turn into one of their album covers and drive him away.

Dr. Quinn starts her new job the next day at Springwood Medical, only to find that her very first patient is none other than...ALLISON HAYES!! DUN DUN DUNNH! They are both quite shocked to see each other, and Allison tells her that the nurses keep trying to give her sedatives, which she refuses to take. Dr. Quinn completely understands that Freddy is trying to kill her and suggests that they try a technique for maintaining continuity of thought, where they will be able to control where their dream takes them by keeping their mind focused on a place until the exact instant that they fall asleep. Also, by holding hands they will be able to share the same dream because of magic or some such shit. Oh hell, I've seen the movies, there's no point in suddenly getting picky about the dream logic now.

Juliann couldn't help but compulsively practice her Humphrey Bogart impression whenever she met a new person.

Unfortunately, for some reason, these two decide that the best venue for their confrontation with Freddy is a very tall mesa in the middle of the desert, with no escape that doesn't involve a couple hundred of feet of falling to their death. But hey, it's okay, because Freddy won't be able to sneak up on them. Except that it's Freddy and they should both know by now that he can pretty much do any goddamned thing he wants to do in dreams.

"Oh, goddammit! Waking up on a mesa in the middle of nowhere again? That's it, I'm officially swearing off the hooch."

Juliann then points out to Allison that she doesn't need to be in her hospital gown, this is her (shared) dream, so she can appear however she wants to. So she adopts the guise of some lady wrestler she saw on TV once to make her feel and seem more badass. And wouldn't you know it, Freddy shows up like clockwork and turns the mesa into a wrestling ring.

If they had only continued the wrestling theme for the entirety of the second issue, this might have been the best comic ever written.

Freddy doesn't stick with the wrestling motif though (a damn shame) and quickly reveals that the mesa has become his gigantic head, and the two girls begin sinking into his quicksand-like brain as the first issue reaches its pulse pounding cliffhanger!

Well, I guess now we know why he always wears that hat everywhere.

As our fearless heroines are sinking into Freddy's brain, they become overwhelmed by a flood of Freddy's "mind sludge", which separates and threatens to drown them.

Freddy finances his nightmare terror machine by being a part-time swimming instructor on the side.

Juliann sinks into the sludge and ends up inside a large house full of the same zombie children she saw earlier in the elevator of her apartment. They sing the famous "Freddy by Numbers" song for a while before she gets bored and wanders off, looking for Allison. A mysterious zombie woman beckons her forward, saying that she thinks Allison is down in the basement.

You know, if a crazy zombie person ever pops out of a doorway and goes "Psst!" while beckoning me over... oh, who am I kidding,
I'm TOTALLY going to find out what kind of awesome thing they want to tell me!

Then my single favorite exchange of dialog in this entire comic series occurs (as seen below). Juliann doesn't find anything suspicious about this advice from a zombie out of nowhere at all, so she embarks down into the basement to find her patient... and dare I say... friend? No, they've known each other for one night. That's silly.

"Oh, Trish, you're the best! Polite even in death."

The basement turns out to look exactly like Freddy's boiler room, and Juliann swings around on a chain that's dangling out of nowhere. Yeah, you might ask yourself, "why is this chain here out of nowhere, and why am I swinging on it?" but come on, if you went into a basement and there was a chain hanging out of nowhere, you'd probably swing on it no questions asked too. However, given that this is a Freddy Krueger story, anybody who knows anything about A Nightmare on Elm Street was totally not surprised at all when the chain turns into a snake! Oh, gotcha Jools! She falls right into Freddy's waiting arms.

Say what you will about Freddy, he's a psycho, he's a murderer, and so on.
But when you're falling because of random rope snakes... ladies, he'll fucking be there.

Freddy corners Dr. Quinn and is getting ready to slash her to pieces when Allison makes her triumphant return from within the furnace! She has actually transformed herself into a ball of living fire and shoots out of the furnace to burn Freddy. FREDDY NO LIKE FIRE. FIRE... BAD!!!

"HADOUKEN!!"

After saving Dr. Quinn's bacon, Allison awakes in her hospital room, alongside Juliann. They find that Freddy has left them a note next to the bed that says "I'm holding your place in Hell!", signed "F". Dr. Quinn puts Allison on a prescription of Hypnocil, the drug that suppresses dreams, without approval from her supervisor at the hospital. She then calls her friend Morticia Dona Valencia, who knows all about mystical dream shit, because she is a practitioner and teacher of dreamstalking, which is basically what the Dream Warriors did in the third movie by learning to be masters of their dreams. Valencia tells her that some people can develop this power naturally, on their own, but these people can be dangerous because they are often unable to control it.

Really, I think that phone is the most unsettling thing about this whole comic.

Dr. Quinn then goes to speak with Allison and asks her what her first time seeing Freddy in her dreams was like. Allison has no personal connection to Freddy like the kids who grew up in the neighborhood, so Juliann is puzzled by why Freddy is stalking her. She tells her that the first time she saw Freddy in her dreams she was having a picnic with Mr. Bunny and then decided to go for a walk. She came across a signpost in the street that had four options on it: Smile Pool, Pretty Birds, Good Eats, and Grossness.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but to me the creepiest thing on this sign by FAR is the "Smile Pool".

She explains that she naturally chose "Grossness" because she was the kind of child who was always fascinated by nasty things that revolted other people, like bugs and dead animals and talking about her feelings and stuff. She eventually comes across a place called the Hideosity Bar & Grill. She explains that "hideosity" was a word that she and a friend made up to describe some of the boys at school so she walked inside and saw Mr. Dreamy Pepperoniface himself just hanging out in this bar full of freakish miscreants.

Ever since he saw Star Wars, Freddy liked to go to the Hideosity Bar & Grill and
pretend he was a space pilot hanging out in the Mos Eisley Cantina.

She turned around to leave (I imagine that the piano player stopped playing, accompanied by the sound of a record skipping as everyone in the bar turned to stare at her in the doorway), but Freddy had already taken notice of her and tried to keep her around. Young girl in a nightie? Just Freddy's type!

Freddy could often be found at the bar practicing some new techniques he learned in his latest Pickup Artist tip book.

She keeps trying to get away and he keeps blocking her path until finally he's like "fuck it" and he takes a slash at her with his finger blades, but they go right through her with no effect and she just walks away, leaving Freddy puzzled as to why his attack was ineffective.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEK! SHE'S A GHOST!!!"

A limbless, floating diaper Buddha explains to Freddy that she's just a tourist who took a wrong turn, and that Freddy couldn't hurt her because it was her dream that he was in, not the other way around. Because she's the one who found him, she was the one in control. A girl who can find him in her dreams and be in control of the situation? Nuh-uh, Freddy ain't having that shit!

I'm just gonna point out that the artist could have drawn anything at all here talking to Freddy.
Anything at all. I'm guessing this is the panel he was working on right after he found out they were canceled.

Dr. Quinn is later confronted by her boss, who tells her that the Hypnocil was not approved by him and he's going to take Allison Hayes off of it immediately. They get into an argument where she's all like "but dream psychos be trying to kill the bitch, yo" and he's like "LOL, that's fucking stupid, what are you, five?" and she goes home angry that her patient no longer has the protection of the drugs. She's stewing about office politics as she gets ready for bed and evidently falls asleep at some point, because Freddy shows up and he's in a very Presidential mood.

Murdering the children of the people who killed you is great and all, but Freddy
really found his true calling with his George Washington Sensual Massage Service.

And then Freddy stabs her in the stomach and she dies. She goes out with remarkably little fanfare considering how important she's been to the story up to this point. Of course, the fact that they knew they were getting canceled with this issue probably led to some quick rewrites.

"Has anybody found Sigourney Weaver yet? Seriously, she's the only one who can save any of these poor bastards."

Allison is deeply upset to receive the news that the one person she had who actually believed her and was helping her fight Freddy is dead, and she really poops her britches when she finds out they're also taking her off the Hypnocil. She basically resigns herself to death but somehow survives the next three weeks without a single Freddy attack. Her psychiatrist at the hospital is deeply troubled by the disturbing drawings she's been doing and wants to talk to her about them.

My god, what a disturbing set of perfectly normal drawings! The horror... the horror...

Allison is sitting there in her bed with her sketchpad thinking that the doctor doesn't know what he's talking about, saying her drawings are disturbing (the nerve!), when she accidentally falls asleep earlier than she intended. Oh no! She's sailing around a volcanic wasteland on her bed when she suddenly sees Freddy swimming in a molten pool of lava below. He invites her to join him in the hot tub for a grope, which she politely declines.

Awwww sheeeiiiittt. Things just got all "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" up in here.

Freddy tips her bed sideways with a swipe of his hand and she falls into the molten liquid. He kicks back and relaxes as she is supposedly burning to death, but she emerges from the crucible of fire a goddamn bona fide superhero! Okay, not really. But she does come out wearing a leotard, some boots, and some kind of weird needle cannon thing. So it's like she popped into Party City real quick and purchased some kind of generic superhero costume.

Hrmm... I'm pretty sure I remember this needle arm weapon from one of the Mega Man games.

She dives into the water (not really sure why since she appears to be flying in the panel above, and wouldn't that be a more efficient means of travel?) and starts chasing after Freddy and he's all like "Oh no, gosh, looks like it's curtains for me!" but she doesn't seem to catch on that he's just toying with her, and after he dives and resurfaces, she stabs into his hat with her needle arm, only to find that she's won a snake!

Oh, the old "snake out of a hat floating on molten lava" trick! A true classic!

Now naturally Allison does what any of us would do when confronted with a surprise snake: she bites the shit out of it. Unfortunately, whoops, Freddy has wizard illusion powers and it turns out that was her finger the whole time. But she's all like "Nuh-uh, bitch!" and she uses her dream control powers to regenerate it.

Hey, wait a minute! What happened to her needle arm weapon? If she'd only kept that on she wouldn't have bitten off her finger.

Suddenly a vision of the deceased Juliann Quinn appears and tells her that there's no winning in Freddy's dreams, you can't win, so there's no point in fighting and all that. Then she turns into a giant snake (Jesus, what is it with the fucking snakes in this book? I'm actually kinda surprised they didn't have a sequence in Freddy's backstory where he worked as a snake wrangler for a couple years) and attacks Allison, wrapping itself around her in its constrictive grip.

"Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?"

Freddy's just about to kill her when she screams "NEVER!" and blasts him with a wave of energy, and she suddenly reappears in her hospital room. She quickly turns to her sketchbook, realizing that in her dreams she can be anything she wants - even Freddy himself! So she pulls off drawings of Freddy's accoutrements like paper doll clothes and finds herself dressed for battle!

Okay, now this one she DEFINITELY got at Party City.

Freddy bursts through the wall and tells her that there's more to being his fabulous self than wearing designer clothes (I'm gonna call bullshit on Freddy here, as I've always thought that was clearly a Wal-Mart sweater). She may have the look, but she doesn't have the hate and the years of derangement, so she can't possibly go toe to toe with the Fredster.

If comics came with music, this scene would be playing Michael Jackson's "Beat It".

She slashes at Freddy once and yells at him and suddenly he's all impressed, thinking that maybe he was wrong about her, that she's got a sadistic streak and maybe she could get into dressing like Freddy and killing people after all. I have to admit I'm surprised that Freddy is so easily impressed... then again, most of his victims just cave in and die immediately because they can't do anything to defend themselves. I wonder though if Freddy has visions of them skipping glove in glove down the sunny sidewalk in their matching sweaters?

Freddy learns to his dismay that despite his frequent nickname "pizzaface", he in fact does not taste like pizza at all.

Freddy is either playing her, or he really has gone soft all of a sudden, telling Allison that he thinks they were made for each other, and then telling her to take his hand so they can rub razors. I really can't tell if the writer was trying to be funny here or not. This is a mystery that will probably trouble me to my grave.

Whenever two Waldos find each other, they must perform the razor rubbing mating ritual.

Oh ho ho! But it looks like Allison was actually playing him! She draws him close and stabs him in the chest with her copy of his very own clawed glove. Oh, Freddy, you poor old lovesick coot! See what happens when you stop being cynical? You get stabbed, that's what.

Hey, look guys! Freddy Got Fingered! See what I did there?

Freddy tells her to finish him off and she lunges forth and takes a slashing swipe at him!

The high-five contest at the annual Freddy Krueger Fan Club meeting was always a bloody affair.

But just as she makes contact, she wakes up and realize that she's attacking her doctor! She's in the hospital and she's been sleepwalking! Oh my, it looks like Freddy actually played her while he was busy getting played! Of course, it's not like it's a tremendously big deal... she's not actually wearing the bladed Freddy glove in real life. I mean, yes, technically it is assault, but she's also asleep, so does it really count? A little bactine and a My Little Pony band-aid and the doc's little booboo will be right as rain.

"Guards! Take this woman and throw her in the dungeon!"
"Um... we don't have a dungeon, sir."
"SILENCE, knave!"

So the doctor might be overreacting a little when he has her sent away to the secure ward and sedated. The orderlies drag her away and she begs and pleads with him, but he ignores her. The last thing we see as she's dragged away is Freddy's hat on the floor, signifying - MY GOD, this shit actually happened for REAL!?? Except that's hardly a surprise, as we already know by now that this shit is happening for real. A chilling ending this is not.

Also, it's been pretty well established at this point that Allison can hold her own against Freddy, so all that is likely to happen next is that she'll be sedated and go back to Freddy's dreamworld, where they will fight some more, but she's hardly doomed to a death sentence here.

Freddy, don't you know by now that internet nerds and neckbeards have given fedoras a bad name?
Time to change up and go for something like a stovepipe hat or perhaps a bowler.

I guess when you consider that they intended for this to be an ongoing series and they cut it off after only two issues, they probably did as good a job with the ending as you might expect. It's a shame the series didn't continue though... they actually pushed the mature content envelope pretty far for 1989, so it would have been interesting to see where else they might have taken the story, but then again, that's the very thing that ended up killing the book! I guess we'll only have our dreams of what might have been, eh?

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