E/R:

The best single season comedy of the 80's.

Hot Potato by Larry Hama

from GI Joe: A Real American Hero #1)

I will never understand why this story has never been reprinted. I think this is where I started to fall in love with the character of Scarlett, she was tough as nails and doesn't play around! She was no little frail to be sure! SHe actually pulls a gun on Snake-Eyes in this story AND makes allusions to committing suicide by saving her 2 last bullets for her and Snake-Eyes if they can't get out of the trouble they're in! On second thought, maybe THAT'S why they never reprinted this! Too adult for the kiddies?!

EVIL DEAD: The Series by Omarsnake

Episode: "Ash to the Infinite Power"

TEASER
FADE IN
as a young man runs from a cabin in the woods.
He is 16 years old, with dark, short-cropped hair and lanky, good-looking features.
And he is screaming for his life.
Behind him, a figure races up to the doorway and stares out at him. It is a husky man wearing a sheriff's uniform. His eyes glow red and black veins zig-zag across his face. "Dead by dawn, boy!" he drawls, taunting the youth, then laughs maniacally.
The young man leaps over the hood of the sheriff's car, marked "Spiegel County Sheriff" with the Tennessee state logo underneath. He throws open the door and dives into the driver's seat.
He looks around frantically, but finds no sign of keys.
At the door of the cabin, the demon-possessed sheriff jingles his keychain. "Lookin' fer these, sonny?" he yells, then swallows the keys.
The young man winces at this. "I shoulda paid more attention to all those movies," he mutters, looking through the car and trying to find a weapon. "They made it look so easy to hotwire a car..."
Something creaks and groans outside the car.
The young man looks up and groans himself. The trees nearby are uprooting themselves and starting to move toward him, their limbs bending in impossible positions to form would-be arms reaching for the car.
The young man throws open the passenger side door and runs.
Bullets hit the ground in front of him, and he pulls to a stop.
The sheriff is on the front porch, cackling as he twirls his revolver on one finger.
Beside him are a red-haired girl and a Japanese-American boy, both about 16 years old, and both with the same glowing-eyed, crazy-faced look of demonic possession about them. One of the Japanese boy's arms is missing and blood flows from the wound, but he doesn't seem to be paying any attention to that.
"Come on, Ashley!" the red-haired girl taunts. "Don't you want to come back in the cabin where it's warm and snuggly?"
"Warm as a steaming corpse," the Japanese boy adds.
"Steaming corpse! Steaming corpse! Steaming corpse!!" the two teens and the possessed sheriff cry out in unison, then turn it into a sing-song cry of "stea---meee-eeng co--ooorpse" over and over.
Ashley looks from them to the trees, which are stomping over and around the sheriff's car and heading toward him.
"Looks pretty grim, kiddo," a voice says.
Ashley spins around, and jumps back.
Standing behind him is an attractive woman clad in a stylish business suit and high heels. Her hair is jet black and long, with small red horns protruding from the hairline; her skin is blood red; and her eyes glow yellow. A demon tail flicks impatiently from side to side behind her.
FADE OUT. OPENING CREDITS ROLL

ACT ONE
TITLE CARD: "Ash to the Infinite Power"
SPECIAL GUEST STAR: Tyra Banks as Debri
FADE IN
As 16-year old Ashley stares at the demonic woman.
"Are you responsible for this?" Ashley asks.
"No," the woman says wearily. "You are."
The trees stop suddenly, and the taunting stops. Ashley looks at the trees and at the three possessed people on the porch; all of them are still, as if caught in freeze-frame. No wind blows, and the outside world makes no sound at all.
"You see, Ashley, you shouldn't have come to this cabin," the demonic woman says. "And you really shouldn't have turned on that tape recorder. Back in 1982, when your parents Ash and Linda came to this cabin with their friends, they started to play the recorder. It scared your aunt Cheryl, and she turned it off...."
"Yeah, I know," Ashley says. "They told me about it. Said this was a spooky place they were afraid to come back to. Wish I'd listened to em."
"There are some realities where the tape recorder was turned back on that night, and the spell recited on it unleashed the demons, who killed your mother and everyone else at the cabin except Ash."
"Killed mom?"
"Don't worry, tiger, your mom's alive and well, because in your reality the recorder wasn't turned back on," the demon woman explains.
The boy takes a few tentative steps back from the woman. "What does this have to do with you?"
"Nothing compared to what it has to do with you," the demon woman says. "So you felt compelled to come here, to the cabin where you were conceived way back in 1982, after your dad gave your mom a locket..."
"Yeah, I guess so," Ashley says. "I just always grew up thinking about the cabin, for some odd reason."
"And you brought your girlfriend Amy and your buddy Kasu along, thinking it would be a fun weekend in the woods."
"Yeah."
"But you played the tape recorder you found in the basement, abandoned for all these years, and now your friends are demons and the sheriff you called for help with your... what's the word?"
"Cell phone," Ashley says, shell-shocked.
"Ah," the demon says. "The sheriff you called for help with your 'cell phone' was possessed as soon as he walked in the cabin to help you."
"Yeah, that's the Cliffs Notes of it all. You still haven't explained why this matters to you."
"You're quite the survivor, Ashley," the demon says. "Just like your father, in those other realities."
"Thanks, I think."
"The boss man is NOT gonna like hearing about this," the demon says. "T.T.F.N., hotshot."
She vanishes in a burst of fire.
Ashley stares at the spot where she vanished. Then, he hears sounds again as everything around him comes back out of freeze frame. Ashley runs for safety as the trees close in and the possessed sheriff continues to take potshots at him.

CUT TO:
The GlobeCo Industries corporate headquarters in New York City.
It is a majestic metallic blue building, 30 stories high, its windows shining in the morning sun.
And somewhere in the basement level of the building, the demonic woman barges through a set of double doors.
Fisk follows closely behind her. "I tried to stop her, boss," he says apologetically.
Inside the darkened room, Lajos Szabo looks up from his copy of the Wall Street Journal.
Debri glances around. "Why's it so friggin' dark in here?"
She hits a panel on the wall, and the room lights up.
Fisk flinches from the sudden brightness.
"An unusual intruder, it seems," Szabo says. Through obnoxiously convenient camera angles, we do not see his face, only his thin, somewhat pale hands, the fingernails of which are immaculately trimmed. He is clad in a Navy blue Armani business suit with black shirt and thin white necktie.
"I don't know who this bozo is, sir, but..." the woman starts to say, then pauses. "What's with the goatee?"
"You don't like?" Szabo asks.
"You don't have," the woman says. Then she groans. "Aw, shit, I'm in the wrong reality! I thought I could find my way home without any problems."
"She's crazy," Fisk says. "Should I throw her out?"
"No," Szabo says. "I'm intrigued."
"Nothing for you to worry about, handsome," the woman says. "You see, I'm---"
"An associate of Lajos Szabo's from some parallel dimension," Szabo says. "And you've been off visiting other realities and were on your way home."
The demonic woman and Fisk exchange glances.
"You're good," the demon says appreciatively.
"I've been around long enough to figure things like this out," Szabo says. "Who are you, and what are you doing?"
"Sorry, fella, that's priviliged information for my boss, and he's in some other dimension."
Szabo walks back to his seat and drops into the leather chair. "Let's see, ten feet from the front doors and about thirteen feet from the south wall," he says, typing on his keyboard.
"Pardon the phrase, but what the Hell are you--" the demon starts to say.
Bright red lights stream out from hidden projectors in the walls of the room. The lights connect at odd angles.
"Containment spell," Szabo explains as the demon tries to walk through the beams of light but cannot.
"I've dealt with enough demons to know how to handle your type."
Seen from above, the beams of light connect to form a large pentagram across the floor of the room, with the demon woman in the center.
"You're VERY good," the demon says.
"Name?" Szabo asks.
The woman sighs. "Debri."
"Purpose?"
"Scouting the multiverse for ways to overcome Ashley J. Williams."
"Indeed?"
"You know I can't lie to you while you've got me contained in this thing," Debri says. "In the reality I'm from, you summoned me to travel the dimensional barriers in search of a world where Ash was defeated and brought under your command."
"And?"
"I've found worlds where he was killed, and worlds where he was driven insane," Debri explains. "But not one single world where you've managed to win."
"Since you're in the containment spell, I hope you don't mind if we chat about this in more detail." Szabo hits a button on his telephone. "Marge, bring in some tea," he says. "And Ms. Debri, what will you be having?"
"Got any goat's blood?"
Szabo smirks. "And Marge," he says, pressing the button again, "also some of jar 32 from my special collection...."
Debri looks at him curiously. "I'm surprised, if you don't have a demon like me in your service why would you have that lying around your cupboard?"
"Like the boy scouts say," Szabo replies, "be prepared."
FADE OUT.

ACT TWO
FADE IN
On Ashley J. Williams, tugging fiercely at his restraints. He is in an asylum, and a large, unpleasant-looking female nurse eyes him warily.
Several inmates, including an oily-looking man and a hulking American Indian, watch from the sidelines.
"You might want to calm down a tad," the oily-looking man says in a low, weaselly voice, "Nurse Ratchet is gonna call the goons if you don't...."
Ash stares up at the nurse, his eyes blazing with anger. "Kill them all," he growls, "must kill them all..."

PULL BACK to reveal that this image is being seen inside of a three-foot wide sphere that floats in mid-air.
Debri, the demoness, sits to one side of the sphere, sipping on a cup of red liquid.
Lajos Szabo sits at his desk, sipping tea, (though we continue not to see his face, owing to convenient camera angles). Fisk and Oracle, a painfully thin, elegantly dressed blonde woman with dark glasses, stand on either side of his chair.
"This is Ash of what I've arbitrarily dubbed 'Earth 3'," Debri explains. "He went out to the cabin with his college friends and his younger sister Cheryl, when Ash was just starting his sophomore year. His friends were massacred, his sister was raped by the local foliage and then possessed by the Evil Dead herself, and Ash was left certifiably insane."
"But not controllable, it seems," Szabo says.
"Less so than a sane -- so to speak -- Ash is," Debri replies. "Now, here's the interesting thing... no matter what time he goes to the cabin, it seems, that is when the professor has just completed his translations and been killed."
"Impossible," Fisk says.
"Improbable," Oracle replies evenly.
"The book involved varies," Debri adds. "In some realities, it is the Naturum Demonto, in others the Necronomicon Ex Mortis, in still others the Tome of Vile Shadows..."
"Fine works, all," Szabo says off-handedly. "Any of which contain demon resurrection passages that could prove troubling."
Oracle casts a curious glance in Szabo's direction. We do not, of course, see his face or any sign of a reply.
"Watch this one," Debri says, and she snaps her fingers. The sphere vanishes, replaced by another one.
In it, we see Ash with a chainsaw hand and a white streak in his hair, screaming "No!!" as Medieval soldiers kneel to salute him as their champion.
"In this reality... Earth 8... Ash went to the cabin a few years later than before, with a girlfriend named Linda as his only companion.... a different Linda than the one who accompanied him the first time around, mind you..."
"And what happened?" Szabo asks.
"He was tossed back in time where the people of Kandar accepted him as a savior from the heavens. He led them against the armies of darkness and won, destroying the Necronomicon Ex Mortis in the process."
"Destroyed it?" Szabo gasps.
Debri nods. "Then he was crowned King of Kandar and settled down with a beautiful maiden there. Their descendants caused untold havoc to the forces of darkness..."
Debri snaps her fingers. "Moving on to Earth-12," she says.
"Why not take them in order?" Fisk asks.
Debri rolls her eyes. "Some earths, the variations are too subtle to make a difference. Sometimes he had to cut off his left hand instead of his right, and sometimes he winds up with his teeth kicked out. I'm getting at the big divergences here. On Earth-12, Ash goes to the cabin even later than before, with another different girlfriend named Linda..."
"What is that, a fetish?" Fisk asks.
"He likes Lindas, I suppose," Debri says with a shrug.
The sphere shows Ash emerging from a dark cave and screaming in disbelief as he looks out at a post-apocalyptic world.
"Earth-12, you see, is almost identical to yours right up until he tries to return to his home time period," Debri says. "He goes back to Kandar, fights the deadites, woos a maiden, causes the army of the dead to arise, and beats them. But this time, instead of coming back to the present with an incorrectly recited spell that allows the deadites to follow him, he takes a sleeping spell and oversleeps, waking up after a nuclear holocaust."
Debri snaps her fingers again. "Earth 13, that's your world."
We see Ash stocking shelves at S-Mart.
"You know all the nuances of that one." She snaps her fingers. "On to the Earth-18 Ash, a real wild card..."
We see a new image: Ash is dressed in Old Western clothes, dueling against a deadite gunslinger. Ash has a golden cybernetic leg, a mechanical hand like usual, and an eyepatch. His opponent is dressed in black with a handlebar mustache and grey mottled skin; a decaying Wyatt Earp-type zombie.
Nearby, a pretty, young dark-haired woman watches the duel, holding her breath; beside her are Brisco County Jr. and Lord Bowler, two 19th-century bounty hunters.
"On Earth 18, you never stopped your attacks on Ash, so by modern day he had become even more unhinged than usual. He also lost a leg during a side-trip to post-Apocalyptic Moscow, met a vampire slayer --- that young woman you see near him --- in ancient Greece, and had a final duel with the vampire lord Usumgal in the Old West."
"A 'final' duel?" Szabo asks. "A vampire as old as Usumgal would be no easy target..."
Debri smirks. "Through clever trickery, Usumgal was killed retroactively, a few days after this duel with one of Usumgal's henchmen..."
"Retroactively?" Oracle asks.
"Long story," Debri replies.
"What makes this Ash a wild card?" Fisk asks.
"He travelled through time, more often than usual," Debri says. "I can't be sure he hasn't done more damage in other time periods. And the nature of time travel is troubling in a multiverse sort of way. Say reality is an ever-forking road. Each decision and random event leads it to branch out further."
"Like on Star Trek," Fisk says, then smiles sheepishly in Szabo's direction, obviously under a withering stare we cannot see.
"When you travel back in time, you are moving backwards on that road," Debri continues. "Which means, conceivably, in travelling forward you could end up in a different reality than the one you left. It's entirely possible that the Ash of Earth-18 could show up in my reality or yours, and wreak havoc on all concerned."
"Two Ashes, no waiting," Oracle says quietly.
Debri snaps her fingers again.
"There are also Ashes who were much younger when they first faced the Evil Dead, such as this one who stumbled across the cabin while on a fishing trip with his family..."
We see Ash, age 7, running through the woods with a deadite flying after him. He leaps up to grab a limb from a sapling tree and pulls it back, letting it snap so it hits the deadite in the face. This does not hurt the deadite, but confuses it long enough to give the boy a head start.
"Offspring of Ash who faced the Deadites in his stead..."
We see a shot of Ash Jr. from earlier in this episode.
"Better trained Ashes..."
We see Ash in clerical robes, with a crossbow holding silver arrows in one hand and a combination crucifix-dagger in the other, dodging as a hideous vampiric beastie lunges at him.
"Ashes of different temperaments..."
We see Ash with his hair died dark blue and cut into a mohawk; he wears a torn T-shirt with the "Anarchy" symbol on it and black leather pants, and he is wrestling with a squid-like demonoid creature.
Then, we see a bookish Ash clad in tweed and wearing glasses; he is in a library, dodging lightning bolts flung by a creature that looks like a bipedal skinned panther with glowing yellow eyes.
"Zombie-possessed Ashes..."
We see Ash, eyes bulging out of their sockets and dangling partway down his face, chasing a young woman around in the cabin.
"Ash-parallels from worlds where a different sperm resulted in a different person..."
We see a woman (special cameo by Jamie Lee Curtis) laughing maniacally as all the objects in the cabin around her come to life, all possessed by demonic spirits.
"Or where reality itself was sufficiently different for... er... different results..."
In a more log cabin-designed place, we see a bipedal Golden Retriever Ash as he faces off against an obese St. Bernard, the demon-possessed Henrietta that emerges from a trap door in the floor.
"The list goes on, and on," Debri says finally, snapping her fingers and making the sphere vanish.
Szabo strums his fingers on the desk. "So, what you're telling me is, no matter which world you've been to, he has never fallen in line with my desires?"
"Absotively," Debri replies.
"So your whole quest to find a way to beat him was a failure?"
"I wouldn't say that," Debri replies.
"And why not?"
"Because it's not for me to say, big guy," Debri explains. "It's for you... or, rather, the 'you' from my home reality."
"Agreed."
Szabo flicks a switch and the laser-light pentagram vanishes. "On your way, then. But if you DO ever find a way to beat him, I would appreciate it if you shared this information with me, as well as the 'Szabo' of your reality."
Debri salutes, then vanishes in a column of fire.
Szabo, Oracle, and Fisk watch this.
"Oracle, be a dear and document all the information we just heard," Szabo says.
Oracle nods and departs the room.
"So, does this mean we're gonna give up?" Fisk asks.
"Bite your tongue," Szabo replies. "Unless you'd rather I bit it out for you."
Fisk gulps.
"Somewhere, in the entire multiverse, there has to be a world where I am able to conquer Ash Williams' combination of fierce willpower, dumb luck, durability and pain resistance..." Szabo says, taking a long sip of his tea. "And I intend for that somewhere to be here."
Fisk's eyebrows lift, but he says nothing.
"You see, before this I was just competing against my own agenda," Szabo says. "And now, I have other... MEs... to compete with.. so I can defeat him before they do...."
Szabo finishes his tea off and flicks the empty cup into Fisk's hands.
"So nice to finally have worthy adversaries," Szabo says with a sinister chuckle.
FADE OUT.

END

Cracked Magazine's "Army of Dorkness" - An Spoof of Army of Darkness

My Wife's Journey to find her Birth family

My beautiful wife had her story RE: tracking down her biological mother/family published on the Daily Beast.

How I Used DNA To Find My Birth Family

My adoption records were sealed and I had few clues to my birth family’s identity. How a DNA kit broke my search wide open.

Last January, I sat cross-legged with the box in my hands, something inside me tilting and swaying, rising and catching in my throat.

“Ancestry DNA,” the box was marked—so official, so scientific, with little molecules dotting the cover.

This was IT. This bounty was going to be the end to a lifelong struggle that had consumed me for as long as I could remember. Inside the slick, sterile packaging lay the answers to the biggest questions I’d ever asked. My whole world was going to change now, in ways that I’d imagined in a thousand different scenarios.

I had always known I was adopted. I had also known I didn’t have a place to belong, people to whom to belong, or a soft place to land. I was raised by a J&B scotch bottle and a bottomless tumbler glass brimming with vodka-soda on the rocks. Containers of alcohol don’t love, don’t nurture, and don’t protect little girls, and under such conditions, said little girls grow like a badly-set broken arm.

I had no place and no people. Where was my birth mother? Where was my big brother? Did they know where my father was? Did I look like them? Did they have the same close-set, saucer eyes I had?

Do I have her eyes?

Alongside my mother and brother, my straggly long brown hair, pasty-white skin and big hollow eyes would match. If I matched, I wouldn’t be mismatched, and therefore, couldn’t be as ugly and inconsequential as I saw myself. People who belonged together could not be ugly, I mused in my misshapen logic, because only ugly people had no people. We somehow weren’t worthy, like the sock that loses its partner in the wash and is thrown into the mismatched sock bin until the other can be found—a pair made, good enough to return to the drawer with the regular socks. I was just a sock-bin sock.

I began to realize if hadn’t yet been found, I needed to set out to do the finding. I began to post flyers on poles in New York City. I asked random people in the subway who bore any resemblance to me if perhaps I couldn’t be theirs? Some Saturdays, I dragged a folding table all the way to the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a small tape recorder and my “Annie” cassette, and belted out the songs and held a sign asking if anyone had lost a baby girl in 1971. Surely someone would recognize my eyes, that my face was her face, too.

People stopped, curious, wished me luck. Several times I tied notes to the strings of balloons and let them fly out of my bedroom window, telling my birth mother and my older brother she’d had before me where to find me. The balloon had to land somewhere. I wrote on dollar bills and put them into circulation: “Melodye, born on [my birthday] in NYC…I am here. 212-xxx-xxxx.”

I was utterly plagued.

As I matured into a teen, my searching prowess developed.

I delved into the non-identifying information provided by my adoption agency, wrote letters, dialed random people I found in the White Pages across three Southern states, harassed the agency to help me beyond what was allowed by law.

When the Internet became a thing, my pleas were splattered everywhere a person could post. My words mingled with thousands of others whose postings all started in the same vein as mine: “I was born March xx ... in Bellevue Hospital. Seeking any member of my birth family…” This was followed by the small amount of details I knew about my mother’s family.

I was astounded by the number of other adoptees and birthparents who were out there, posting the same messages. I had never dreamed there were so many of us. I joined local and national adoption support groups, registered with every mutual consent registry I could find, sent letters to my agency to keep on file should my family come back for me there. When I was surreptitiously slipped the contact information for a fleabag “investigator” who was somewhat known in the New York adoption circle to have connections and ways to obtain information illegally, such as original birth certificates and other records, I gave him a call. He wanted $2,000 to find my mother and brother. I wanted proof that he knew what he was doing. He wanted to meet me in a seedy part of town to “try to work something out.” I told him in detail where he could shove it.

By then, I was living in a girls’ home in Newark, which severely hampered my search efforts for awhile, though I was able to go back and forth to the city from time to time. As I moved through young adulthood, I wrote to television talk shows, was called back by several, and was even lucky enough to have a private meeting with the producer of The Montel Williams Show, who tried to help in my search. But, as gracious as they all were, everyone hit a brick wall. There was just not enough information, and without the information, there was no show.

I began to realize if hadn’t yet been found, I needed to set out to do the finding.

Around 1996, I once got drunk and dialed a psychic hotline. The seer told me I would not find my family for 10 more years. “You’re a liar,” I slurred, followed by a string of expletives in the kind of spiritless desperation that comes from a drunk girl aware that she was a drunk girl trying to gain traction in her search with a dial-a-psychic.

Who was I?

I was raised to believe I had no right to know. My birth records were sealed by New York law, and I was assigned a new birth certificate and identity when I was 3 years old. I was told my birth mother had the choice to keep me as any mother had, but she chose not to, and therefore my rights to know anything more were relinquished with her signature, on papers I would never have the right to see.

I stumbled around for years, gathering minuscule pieces of information, sporadically outwitting people in the know to give me more knowledge than I had before. I learned my mother’s name was Diana. Her name was the first piece of information that gave her a definitive shape, like an out-of-focus photograph I couldn’t quite make out, but knew was her all the same. Her name was something I could hold.

Who was she?

When I was small, the image of my mother mirrored “Ma Ingalls” from Little House on the Prairie. As I got older, it diminished into less of a vision and more of a hope that she’d be found alive, and would even want to talk to me. My brother never changed from the image I had as a little girl. Right into adulthood, I imagined he’d love me, be protective of me in some way, have sentiments all his own unscathed by our shared history. He’d tell me we were innocents, and that the decisions others made for us had nothing to do with who we would be to each other. This seemed a reasonable dream, through the decades of collected maps, folders stuffed with notes, and records printed and photocopied year after year. Puzzle pieces.

This is how I found myself sitting as a middle-aged woman with that DNA box in my lap, feeling like that scrap of a girl again, filled with emotions I could not decipher. I opened the box carefully, and found the process simple. I filled a little tube with my saliva, capped it, mailed it off and waited six weeks for my life to change.

When my results were released, the start of the life that visited me only in dreams began. The results were only the beginning. I bounced off of the highs and lows, suffered tremendous disappointment from cousins (mostly distant) who refused to help, some even declining to speak to me at all. The lows smarted, and often far outweighed the warmth of the highs.

I glimpsed the girl I was when I was young: Ugly. Small. Invisible.

All I wanted now was to know. I wanted to know that my brother was okay. I wanted to know if my mother had ever gotten to see me the day I was born. I wanted to know if she held me. I don’t think I had ever been held as a child, or at least, could not remember a time when I was. If she had held me, I’d have that knowledge. It would be mine, and no one could ever say I wasn’t entitled to it or take it from me.

I wanted to see my mother’s eyes, to see if there was a message within them just for me. I needed to have a picture of her. I wanted so little by then. There were so many false leads, so many twists and turns.

And then I found a search angel by pure coincidence. I had befriended David’s wife, Shirley, on a Facebook ancestry group. Shirley took me home like a stray cat to her husband, who was a whiz at reading DNA and scientifically matching the possibilities to the ancestral “tree” we began to build for me. Among a host of moderately distant cousins matches (3rd or 4th cousins or greater), my DNA results yielded one “Close Family” and two “2nd Cousin” matches, the Holy Grail for an adoptee whose best hope was usually 3rd cousin matches or more distant.

I wanted to know if my mother had ever gotten to see me the day I was born. I wanted to know if she held me.

But these matches weren’t answering my emails. In fact, the matches took several months and a trick or two to track them down, and as we inched along, Dave spent hours and weeks and months working to rule people out, manipulating the DNA results to find where I belonged on my own tree. Shirley always stayed close by. For my part, I worked as obsessively as Dave did, sorting out the possibilities and the genealogy, building out maps of families and potential relatives who warranted a closer look. I never gave up, though I wanted to, because Dave and Shirley and our small group of supporters never gave up—including my husband, Dino. He went many nights with no dinner and spent a lot of time on his own during my search. He never complained and held me when I cried and soothed me. He is my best friend.

One day, I heard from the “Close Family” match. He was a younger brother, also adopted, with little information about our mother and family. We have been chatting ever since. He is beautiful, strapping, strong, and smart, and has given me two perfect little nieces and a sister-in-law. Then I met cousin after cousin. More doors opened, slammed shut, opened again, and Dave helped me weave through groupings of cousins and do-gooders who kept pointing us in the right direction. I started with just me on my own ancestral tree—a little box that bore my name but connected to empty boxes above that remained empty and nameless. Dave helped me grow it with our research to over 900 people related to me in one way or another. The boxes closest to me still remained empty, but the ones beyond those began to fill up.

I found several first cousins with receptive and engaging hearts, and myriad other relatives who can’t wait to meet me. I found and spoke to two younger sisters, and I finally found my big brother, the one I sought for 30 years, and he is what I had hoped: the kind who would watch you as you went down the street to make sure no one snatched your purse or bonked you on the head, the kind whose eyes would mist as he took in the sight of his little sister and heard of her arduous, decades-long search for him. More than I hoped, he is as lovely as my four other siblings.

My mother, Diana, died two years ago in 2013. I wasn’t leveled by this news, but cried for her when I was alone and able to process the loss and the “I’ll never get to’s...” It is, however, impossible to dwell long in this headspace. I have been ready to accept whatever was given, in whatever way the universe saw fit to give it. Everyone who knew her told me about my mother, regaled me with stories of her soft, blue-gray eyes, how she liked to help bathe her baby sister, how generous and kind she was.

I eventually got the picture of her I needed. I am now a part of the picture.

Because I do, indeed, have her eyes.

Freddy Krueger's Glove in "Evil Dead 2"

   Many a sharp-eyed fan has noticed that Freddy's glove appears in Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead 2" due to the in-joke history between Wes Craven and Sam Raimi, but how many of you knew it was in the filme TWICE?!

   The first time is above the door in the workshed.

   Next, it's in the basement when Ash goes to get the pages good, old, reliable Jake threw down there.

   Isn't that awesome?!

Just a lil meme I created!

Escape from New York parody from Crazy Magazine (early 80's)

Escape from Fun City

First REAL Official "Ash vs Evil Dead" Production news!

This week, production began on the highly anticipated upcoming Starz series, Ash vs Evil Dead, which has creators Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert and Bruce Campbell reuniting, this time in New Zealand, to bring fans a new iteration of everyone’s favorite chainsaw-wielding anti-hero.
Daily Dead had the opportunity to take part in a very special conference call with the trio about what we can expect from the first 10-episode season (and beyond), how Ash vs Evil Dead will fit into the overall Evil Dead universe, input into some of the new characters we’ll be meeting along the way and much, much more.
 



Ash vs Evil Dead will definitely be hardline horror but expect some quintessential Evil Dead comedy to show up from time to time: According to Raimi, Ash vs Evil Dead is definitely going to be an intense horror experience but when you’re working with someone like Campbell who has such impeccable comedic timing, of course you need to add in those comedic touches to the script. “We’re going back to the horror of the first two Evil Dead’s but then we’re going to be infusing this with the comedy from the second and third Evil Dead films,” explained Raimi.

Ash vs Evil Dead will take place in a slightly altered Evil Dead universe: While Raimi, Tapert and Campbell didn’t want to reveal any spoilers during our call (which we appreciated), what we did learn is that this new series will take place in modern days and will pick up somewhere after Evil Dead 2 leaves off. We will also see some similar locations to ones we’ve seen in the film series but fans can expect a modernized twist on them.

Ash will be fighting Deadites- and other types of evil entities too: As Tapert explained on the call, Deadites are of course an essential element to any Evil Dead story but Ash will also be facing other kinds of evil during the series, opening worlds of possibilities they’re all excited explore during the first and upcoming seasons of Ash vs Evil Dead.

When we catch up with Ash in the new series, he’s considered “damaged goods”: Campbell discussed the headspace of his character during the call, saying, “He’s not in the best shape, mentally, and that’s something that appealed to me as an actor. And the interesting twist this time is that now, Ash is in charge of saving the world which is huge.”
Raimi also offered up his thoughts on just where the character of Ash is now, after all this time. “Ash is no finer or nobler than he was the last time we saw him. His courage hasn’t been whipped up into a frenzy or anything; in fact, he’s pretty much at his lowest point when we first find him and it’s only through his actions that a hero is reborn within himself.”

Ash might be responsible for the return of the Deadites and the other evil forces that are unleashed: Raimi was possibly joking (there was a good amount of laughter involved) but it was mentioned during the call that Ash (in typical form) just could very well be the guy who rustles up the Deadites after they had been lying dormant for all these years. Nothing specific was mentioned but knowing Ash’s proclivity of forgetting key words to certain incantations.

There is the potential to see Ash get into a few romantic entanglements on Ash vs Evil Dead- eventually: While Raimi argues that his girlfriends are far unluckier, to say that Ash’s love life has been complicated over the years is something of an understatement. That being said, fans shouldn’t necessarily expect to see our favorite ladies man getting himself any sugar or indulging in some pillow talk right away on Ash vs Evil Dead, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen eventually either.  According to Campbell, when the time does come for Ash to cross paths with a love interest, it will be something that “makes sense within the overall story for the series.”

As with any Evil Dead story, there is potential for time travel down the road in Ash vs Evil Dead: Raimi talked about the fact that season one very much takes place during the present day but said he hasn’t ruled out the potential for any kind of time travel in the future, possibly as early as the end of the first season as they haven’t mapped out the final two episodes fully at the time of the call.

Ash vs Evil Dead will definitely have an overarching storyline but casual fans won’t feel alienated if they pop in for an episode here and there either: According to Tapert, there will be a lot to appreciate in Ash Vs. Evil Dead for both die-hard and casual fans alike. He also credited the 30-minute format as a way for them to be able to capitalize on the shorter format to keep the pacing brisk, much like the original films did.

Just because we’re getting an Ash vs Evil Dead television series does that mean we won’t ever see Campbell back on the big screen- or a possible sequel to Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead remake: During the conference call, Raimi was asked about how the new series affects the status of a sequel to the 2013 remake and Campbell cleared up whether or not fans can ever expect to see his iconic character on the big screen now that he’s set to take over the Starz network later this year.
“I loved the Evil Dead remake and I think Fede did an amazing job,” explained Raimi. “I genuinely love that movie and I do hope that one day we do get to make a sequel to it. I just think the one thing we heard from the fans, who all were really supportive of it, was that they were hoping to have Ash in it in some capacity. So we just thought the idea of a series would work and so we chose to go with Bruce’s character’s story for now. I do hope we can get back with Fede though and make another Evil Dead with him.”
Campbell added, “Another Evil Dead movie will always be a possibility either way. Nothing ever precedes anything so it’s always an option for us. I don’t think, even with the upcoming series, that we’ll ever want to shut the door on any possibility to play around in this universe.”

Ash vs Evil Dead becoming a reality was largely due to the fans insistence for more Evil Dead: During the conference call, Raimi discussed that regardless of whatever project he was working on or promoting over the years, the one series he would always be asked about was Evil Dead and when we’d see another installment of the cult franchise.
“The one thing Ivan (Raimi) and I kept being asked about over and over again was about the potential for more Evil Dead; it didn’t matter if it was Spider-Man or whatever, it always came back to Evil Dead. I tried to ignore it for so long just because I wanted to go out there and make different kinds of films but then I realized that maybe it was time to revisit it. So I went to Ivan and we wrote a number of different ideas up- ideas set in the future, ideas that picked up after the first Evil Dead or even after Army of Darkness but nothing was quite right for the big screen.”
“Plus, we know we have a smaller demo than a lot of franchises so it didn’t necessarily make sense to do a big, Hollywood movie. That’s when Rob suggested doing it as a TV show. The best thing about this series is Ash so why not use a format where fans can spend more time with him than a traditional movie would allow? Rob’s got a ton of experience producing in television and Bruce is a pro on TV so it all made perfect sense.”

Just because Evil Dead is coming to TV, don’t expect the showrunners to shy away from the series’ signature violence and gore: According to Tapert, the Evil Dead tradition of crazy gore and violence will live on in Ash vs Evil Dead and they’re working with special effects master Roger Murray (Evil Dead remake, 30 Days of Night) to create all kinds of gore-soaked madness that fans have come to expect from the series over the years, but with an updated twist of course.

Ash will not be battling against the Evil Dead alone this time around: Tapert also filled us in on some of the new faces to the Evil Dead universe and how they happen to fit into Ash’s world.
“In this incarnation, there’s a team that begins to form around Ash as he battles against Deadites and all kinds of evil,” said Tapert. “There’s Pablo (Ray Santiago) who’s a young immigrant that wants to be part of the American experience and ends up following Ash. Then, there’s Dana DeLorenzo who plays Kelly Maxwell; she’s kind of Pablo’s love interest but she doubts Ash and his motives at first so there’s some conflict. Eventually, she realizes there’s something bigger at play though.”
“Then there’s Jill Marie Jones who plays a police officer that sees something she doesn’t quite believe and it ends up causing some major problems in her career. She crosses paths with Ash and thinks he’s the one responsible for all the weird things happening. And of course we have Lucy Lawless who’s playing Ruby, a character that knows something about the Evil Dead and is on the hunt for Ash. There will also be other characters along the way but that’s the core team for season one.”

Raimi, Tapert and Campbell aren’t the only Evil Dead veterans returning to work on the Ash vs Evil Dead show:  Also returning are composer Joe LoDuca and editor Bob Murawski who are back to add in that certain Evil Dead flavor that Raimi and Tapert both recognized were essential to the series.

Raimi, Campbell and Tapert are in it for the long haul when it comes to Ash vs Evil Dead: During the conference call, Raimi reinforced the idea that everyone involved with this new Evil Dead project isn’t looking to kill some time between films and that they’re planning on Ash vs Evil Dead sticking around for at least a few seasons. According to Campbell, “I’m not planning on going anywhere else anytime soon. Taking on this series was a big thing for me and I’m taking it very seriously.”
“Bruce did make some supreme sacrifices for Ash vs Evil Dead so I can vouch for his dedication. We’re all dedicated to this show for the long haul,” added Tapert.
Raimi, who is directing the first episode but will be heavily involved with the series in an ongoing capacity, agreed with Tapert, “I feel the same way- we’re all very dedicated to the success of this show. We’re really loving this process and working together again. We all love this universe deeply and that’s why we’re here now.”

 ---------

The Malev Return (for the 1st time)

   Malev 6 returned in Gold Key Magnus: Robot Fighter #21. This time, it appears as a "nebulous ghostly something", which is a fine explanation for a being composed of Ectotheric Energy.

The two humans call this apparition the Space Spectre and it basically outlines it's ultimate use of Ectotheric Energy. Why they would ever go along with this is a discussion for another day.

The Ecto-Rob grows huge and Magnus, backed by the Ectotheric Energy from Willo's tribe, follows suit. They battle through North Am.



The History of Snake Plissken: Excerpts from the book of the film

I know that a lot of fans may not have been fortunate enough to have ever read the Mike McQuay book adaptation of "Escape from New York", so I figured I'd let you all in on Plissken's backstory. This was adapted from John Carpenter & Nick Castle's original screenplay.

THE FOLLOWING TEXT HAS BEEN SLIGHTLY REFORMATTED. I DID NOT CHANGE ONE WORD OF THE TEXT, BUT REARRANGED CERTAIN PARAGRAPHS AS SNAKE'S HISTORY WAS RECOUNTED IN SNIPPETS OVER THE COURSE OF THE ADVENTURE.

 







"Plissken had picked up the name Snake in the service, and it had stuck so hard that now there was nobody left alive on the face of the planet who knew his real first name. They called him Snake because he had a knack for slithering out of trouble. He commanded a search and destroy squad that had the best record of success in the entire Russian campaign. No one could figure out why the Snake did so well; but the Snake knew. Some people built things with their hands. Others could compose beautiful music or had a head for figures. Snake Plissken had a talent for making war. It was in his blood

He had been a hot shot college boy when they commissioned him as a lieutenant and sent him to the Russian front. Everyone had been real excited about the war when it first came around. It had been, after all, a long time since the last real confrontation and everyone needed to flex their ego muscles a little.

It had started small and built somewhere in the Middle East. It was the gradual build-up that somehow managed to keep the nukes out of it. There had been a conference in Stockholm early on, where the principal nations agreed to avoid the nuclear exchange to protect the nonaligned nations of the world. That was just a smoke screen, of course. In actuality, nobody wanted their *beep* blown away finally and completely.

So they decided on something else, something that sounded very harmless and sophisticated. They decided on chemicals. The chemicals were nasty. He supposed that there was no way of killing that wasn’t nasty underneath it all, but the chemical clouds that continually floated in the atmosphere killed in slow motion. No one was untouched by them. They rolled in quietly, odorlessly and tastelessly, eating away bits of brain cells and nervous systems as they did. The chemicals made people crazy before they killed them. There were crazy people running around all over the place. Lots of them. Millions of them.

Taylor had been with him that morning in the CO’s office in Helsinki when they first heard of the so-called “Leningrad Ruse.” It was early, bleak fall and the low, rolling gray clouds, distended with gas, were dropping a lethal acid rain onto ground already barren and dead from floating poisons. They were forced to go around for weeks at a time in their gas gear, speaking to one another through mikes in their masks.

So it was on that morning when they stood in a tiny office with a man from Special Projects named Captain Berrigan. At least, that’s what he said his name was. Berrigan never took off his mask, not even in the relative safety of that secured bunker. Plissken had always thought that to be a shame, for he never got to see what the man looked like; and he had thought for a long time that he would certainly have liked to find Captain Berrigan and gut him with his buck knife.

Captain Berrigan had told them that one of the Allies’ top Intelligence officers had been taken prisoner by the Ruskies and was being detained in Leningrad. He said that they had to go in and get him out before the man revealed secrets vital to the entire war effort. Plissken’s squad had been especially picked because of their phenomenal record. It was a great honor.

Neither he nor Taylor thought much of the plan; it sounded too much like suicide. But duty was duty. So early the nest morning, they went low over the Baltic Sea and hit Leningrad with the sun. There were fifty of them in Gulffire gliders screaming in at rooftop level, while air support drew fire on the east side of the city.

Leningrad was the Ruskie supply point, and was consequently the most heavily defended city in western Russia. Plissken and his people flew into the maelstrom, and it was far worse than any human mind could possibly imagine. He remembered it mostly as oranges-burning, sizzling oranges-screaming fire flowers.

Success was impossible. Survival nearly so. When it was clear to Plissken that they couldn’t get the man out, they plastic charged the building that he was being held in and buried him under five hundred tons of rock and plaster.

Sometime during the fighting a frag cracked Plissken’s left goggle, and the nerve gas went to work on his eye. Somehow he ordered the withdrawal and got back to base. It was like his whole head was on fire, bright orange fire. When the gliders touched down again, there were only two of them left. Just two.

He spent a month in the hospital before they even let Taylor come visit. The man was in a leg cast; his knee had been shattered in a crash landing getting back into Helsinki. He was pale like an albino when he came in, and his eyes were just as red.

“It was all a trick,” Taylor said to him there in that sterile hospital room. “A lousy, *beep* trick.”

It turned out that the “Intelligence officer” was actually a corporal in masquerade who let himself be captured to give false information. Plissken’s squad had been sent in just to lend the whole thing an air of authenticity. To make matters worse, it didn’t work. The man hadn’t fooled them for a minute.

Snake Plissken’s life began to change at that exact instant.

Plissken walked alone down the deserted airstrip toward the distant hangar, the hangar lights casting long, shimmering reflections on the lonely puddles beneath his feet.

There wasn’t a blackbelly in sight. Normally, that would have made him happy, but the fact that he was left unguarded made him feel that they accepted him as one of them. He couldn’t think of a single thing more disgusting to him in the whole world. It also tended to reinforce Hauk’s assertion that they actually had planted bombs within him.

There he was, Snake Plissken, going back off to war. Of course, he had never stopped going off to war. Every hour of every day of his life, Snake Plissken fought his battles. Sometimes they were internal, and sometimes they were wild and freewheeling like at the Federal Reserve. But the feelings were just the same.

None of it made any sense to him. What was one President more or less? What was one summit meeting? It was a President who decorated him after Leningrad, a President who thought he could buy his love and loyalty with a cheap slug of bronze and a bit of colored ribbon. It meant nothing to him. Less than nothing.

That was a different President, of course. How many had there been since - four, five? It didn’t matter; there were plenty more where those came from. When the medals didn’t buy him off, they offered him a high position in the fledgling USPF. When that didn’t work, they cut him loose, just gave him a discharge and sent him home.

Home.

Orange fire.

They had sent him home, but there wasn’t a home to go to. Some crazies had taken his home and held his parents hostage. The USPF didn’t care a whole lot about that; they just went in with their flamethrowers and took out everybody. They buried his parents together in a paupers’ grave, then the state took away all their savings. They tied them all together with the criminals and said that their money would be used for “restitution.”

The day that Snake Plissken came home, he blew up a state vehicle with a Molotov cocktail. It was the only thing that made him feel any better. He had done something of the like every day since then.

He felt the anger bolt through him and fought it back down. He needed his wits about him now.

It sometimes occurred to him that maybe he was crazy like the rest of them. Although crazy people, it seemed, would not realize that they were crazy. Everything would seem perfectly logical and natural to them. That was the one feeling that made him think he was still shuffling the right deck. He could look around him and know, really know, how out of control the whole business was."