Friday the 13th: How I Spent My Summer Vaction

Covers by Dustin Nguyen and Adam Archer, Peter Guzman and Randy Mayor. Images owned by DC Comics.



Over the years Friday the 13th's main character Jason Voorhees has been in a lot of films.




Over his 12 films, he's been his mother, a revenge driven zombie, a futuristic killer and rebooted back to the vengeful zombie.



However, film was not the only medium that held Jason. In fact the character has a history all his own in the comic book industry with various different comic companies before landing at DC comics in the late 2000s.



Friday the 13th: How I Spent My Summer Vacation is a two issue mini-series based upon the film franchise created by Victor Miller. The series was one of many published by the DC Comics imprint Wildstorm Comics.



The comics follows the short story of David Falkner, a child born with a bone disorder whose spending part of his summer vacation at Camp Crystal Lake fifteen years after the death of Jason Voorhees.



Our Protagonist



During one of Vorrhees' seemingly weekly murder rampages he meets young David but doesn't kill him. It seems that Jason sees something in the disabled child and ends up kidnapping him and talking across the state for some reason. Along the way Jason kills everyone in sight and David starts to understand the monster a little bit more.



Over the course of the two issues we also follow a drug addicted sheriff named Tanneyhill who tries to stop Jason only to kill several camp councillors. In his few moments of clarity he tries to pin his murders on Jason but cutting the bodies up himself. Shockingly the brilliant plan doesn't work.



While it might sound like a lot of story, it really isn't. In fact there's little plot of any note in these two issues.



While a Jason story doesn't need much set-up, we generally need to get to know the people he's killing.



Little character development is done for the main characters other than showing a deformed child get nearly drowned by bullies and a cop smocking crystal meth (sadly it didn't look blue). The rest of the story is dedicated to showing Jason kill people in different ways.



However, one thing this comic does having going for it is it's violence.Artist Adam Archer ends up giving Jason a couple gruesome kills in the two issues, although known more brutal than his first.



Jezus



Jason more ends up grabbing a sleeping bag with two naked councillors in it and slamming it against a tree much like he does in the seventh film. The image of his handy work (pictured above) is bit over the top but gets the point across.



Despite the violent kills, there's little drama due to the lack of characterization for the people getting axed.



Additionally while the violence is good for a horror comic, the overall art isn't that great.



The worst example being the main character David, who over the two issues has his bone issues seemingly cured by the artists lack of consistence with the characters faces.



I'm cured somehow, yeah!



Additionally many of the backgrounds are uninspired or just black. Altogether this project seems rushed and uninspired, like someone had to fart out a comic in under a week.



At this time DC had the rights to a number of horror film franchises and didn't really end up doing a lot with them of note, this is sadly just another of these examples.



Friday the 13th: How I Spent my Summer Vacation was published by Wildstorm Comics (DC Comics). The story was written by Jason Aaron, Penciled by Adam Archer and Inked by Peter Guzman.
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