This is about the one-shot from 2013. You might be looking for the similarly titled Army of Darkness vs. Re-Animator from 2004 or The Army of Darkness Versus Reanimator from 2022.
Army of Darkness/Reanimator is a 48-page one-shot released in October, 2013 by Dynamite Entertainment. It was written by Mark Rahner and featuring art by Randy Valiente.
Synopsis[]
Dragged into the time vortex once again, Ash Williams takes a hard landing as he's dumped out into hazy graveyard. By sheer happenstance, a medical doctor identifying himself as Herbert West notices the freshly concussed Ash lying on the ground nearby. Before Williams can get to his feet, West smacks Ash with a shovel, rendering him completely unconscious.
Ash awakens to find himself strapped to a medical table with West looming over him. When Herbert asks "the stranger" what his name is, Ash claims his name is Elvis Presley (or just "Presley" for short). As West releases the table's straps, Ash is shocked to see that the metal gauntlet on his right stump has been replaced with the flesh and blood hand of an African-American man, a crude surgery performed by West during the two weeks that Ash had been unconscious. Williams demands that West give him his Boomstick and the copy of the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis that came with him through the time portal, but Herbert has decided "Presley" will make an excellent laboratory assistant for the time being, and hidden Ash's belongings in an effort to keep him there. It is then that Ash discovers via a nearby newspaper that he's in Massachusetts, circa 1922.
Over the following days, Williams begrudgingly assists Herbert with his dirty work, mainly digging up graves and bringing the bodies back to the laboratory. Upon their return from their most recent trip to Potter's field, Ash hears a knocking at the lab door, only to open it and come face-to-face with the original owner of his "new" right hand: a cannibalistic, undead boxer named Buck Robinson. The zombie lunges at Ash and knocks him to the ground, but the assault is brought to a swift end when West pulls out a revolver and shoots the reanimated monster six times.
After the incident with Robinson, West reveals to Ash what exactly it is that he's working on: a formula that extends human life, a cure for death. He goes on to say that one of his earliest experiments was on the Dean of Miskatonic University, Doctor Halsey, after he succumbed to typhoid. The resurrected Halsey went on a rampage, killing and eating more than a dozen victims before he was captured by the authorities. West came to the realization that he needed to work on fresh bodies in order for his experiments to truly work, and became a medic on the front lines in The Great War. Herbert then shows Ash the talking decapitated head of his former commanding officer, Major Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee, sitting on a nearby desk under a sheet. The head looks up at Ash and begins to yell, begging Williams that he must kill West right now.
The following day, Ash's new hand begins to act on it's own accord, nearly attacking a woman at a movie theater. Williams races back to the lab and tells West that something's wrong with it, but Herbert is preoccupied with a new body that quite literally dropped dead upon his doorstep. Just after West injects the corpse with a does of his reanimation formula, Ash's hand begins to act up again and crushes the zombie's head with a swift strike. The hand then reaches out and grabs West by the neck, forcing Ash to grab a nearby hacksaw and lop it off at the wrist.
Several days later, West "abducts" Ash while he is sleeping and straps him to the medical table once more, preparing to inject Williams with a new iteration of his reagent. Before West can do anything, something begins to bang on the wall of the room next door. Ash asks West if he had touched the book that had come with him, to which West responds that he did, and used a spell found within the Ex-Mortis that would help him perfect the formula. An irate Ash tells West he didn't perfect the formula, the spell just turned the corpses into Deadites. West unties Ash from the table and gives him the rifle. As a hoard of re-animated/Deadite creations break through the wall, Ash finally realizes he's met Herbert West before, and West confesses that he used the Book of The Dead to go back in time from the 21st Century, and that he was driven mad from the experience. Ash begins to blast away at the zombies as they shamble towards him, only to notice they're not going towards him, just West. Williams continues to fight through the hoard until the undead finally claim their prize: the decapitated head of Hebert West.
Some time later, Ash Williams is sitting in a jail cell, being interrogated by the local authorities on what exactly happened at the laboratory. He asks them where exactly "a head case" like West would hide the Necronomicon, unaware that it's been placed under lock and key at the Miskatonic University Library...
Trivia[]
- This comic is a very loose and more comedic adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's original Herbert West-Reanimator short story from 1921, with Ash Williams taking the place of nameless narrator.
- Dynamite's Re-Animator #0 (a prelude story for the original Army of Darkness vs. Re-Animator crossover) is reprinted at the end of this comic.
Continuity Notes[]
- Ash mentions having met Herbert West before (Army of Darkness vs. Re-Animator and Prophecy).
- This would be the final Army of Darkness book set in the Earth-818793 continuity until the Furious Road series in 2016.