Before there was Chaos! Comics, there was Evil Ernie. And Evil Ernie begat Lady Death, and the rest is… Actually, the rest is carnage. Your Major Spoilers Retro Review of Evil Ernie #1 awaits!

EVIL ERNIE #1

Writer:  Brian Pulido
Penciler: Steven Hughes
Inker: Steven Hughes
Letterer: Ronald Cruz
Publisher: Eternity Comics (Malibu)
Cover Price: $2.50
Current Near-Mint Pricing: $275.00
Release Date: November 30, 1991

Previously in Evil Ernie: Eternity Comics debuted in 1986 and was known for a number of interesting titles. The original home of Ex-Mutants, as well as the second publisher to print Ninja High School, Eternity was rolled together with a number of other imprints (Wonder Color Comics, Imperial Comics, Malibu Comics, and a couple of others) into a unified Malibu imprint in ’87, but stayed as a sub-imprint of the Malibu brand, one that I remember for its adult properties. By far the most noteworthy of the Eternity Comics books, Evil Ernie begins the dreams of one Ernie Fairchild.

The first few pages of Evil Ernie #1 show an obvious influence of George Romero, with undead creatures running wild and a few survivors hiding in the wreckage. But when Evil Ernie breaks in and starts killing people with an axe, it’s clear that this is no mere NIGHT of the living dead. It’s a world of them, and Ernie is the most dangerous of all. When the last living human being begs to be spared, asking why he is doing all this, he crows that his murderous reign is “FOR LOVE!”

Enter Lady Death!

Ernie awakens from his dream of a pulchritudinous reaper to find a much grimmer reality. He’s locked up in the Clearview Mental Facility, where the chief doctor has declared him irredeemable, a monster who should be executed or, at the very least, locked away forever. (This he says to Ernie’s face, by the way.) Of course, given that Ernie killed nearly fifty people without any warning or any sense of remorse, it’s not that difficult to understand Doctor Price’s thoughts. The black-and-white comics of the mid-’80s were a mixed bag in terms of art, but this issue shows some remarkable depth and subtlety if that word can be applied to a gonzo horror story where death looks a bit like Nina Hartley and the main character is a zombie murderer.

Still, crusading Doctor Young believes that Ernie, with his tragic back story of parental abuse and murder, will be perfect for her new project, Neurotech, an implant that she hopes will cure his psychoses. Doctor Price disagrees, opining that only a bullet could cure Ernie’s problems. That’s grim. But, it’s gonna get grimmer.

It’s not quite clear yet what the prophetic dreams of Judy Young (Doctor Young’s little sister) mean, but given that she was the one being murdered in Ernie’s own dreams, it’s clear that something is up. As for Ernie, he’s excited to be “cured,” almost as though he knows that it won’t work.

The Eternity Comics Evil Ernie series was five issues long, and Malibu presented one more story, reprinting this issue with additional material before Pulido founded Chaos! Comics in 1994. As for Evil Ernie #1, it is the first chapter of an origin story, featuring very little of what readers would come to know as the “traditional” Evil Ernie, but it does give us a Lady Death who seemingly emerged fully formed, earning 3 out of 5 stars overall. Thirty years later, Ernie and most of the Chaos! properties are owned by Dynamite Entertainment, but Lady Death is still Pulido’s property, which makes sense. After all, she’s the impetus for the entire Chaos! universe, and the most impressive part of this issue.

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