Jason Voorhees’ friendship with Leatherface recontextualizes why Jason kills in the Friday the 13th films

A forgotten Friday the 13th The crossover makes sense with Jason’s slasher-style murder spree. It’s easy to look at Jason Voorhees’ ever-changing origin story and summarize his motivations for killing even his mother. Some will go a step further and argue that Jason’s story is about protecting children, but the bottom line is that Jason’s murder spree makes deeper narrative sense than is typically given credit for.

This fact becomes painfully evident when reading Jason vs.a three-part miniseries crossover between Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacreby Nancy A. Collins, David Imhoff and Jeff Butler. The series originally hit stores in 1995 to kill time before Freddy Krueger brought Jason back from Hell, as teased a few years earlier on the big screen.

About that, Jason vs. recontextualizes the zombie killer’s entire motivation for killing in the movies. Even better, this motivation is tied to classic tropes closely tied to the franchise and horror films in general.

Jason vs. Leatherface Makes Sense of Friday the 13th Deaths by Explaining that Jason Really Hates Joy

Voorhees is conditioned to destroy joy

Jason in Friday the 13th movies, especially after becoming a literal zombie, were framed as a mindless zombie, killing randomly, with no rhyme or reason attached. In some ways, this crossover comic pushes that narrative forward, but more than anything, it frames Jason’s deaths as being more targeted than that. Rather than being random, it suggests that Jason targets anything that resembles love and joy, the two emotions he was largely devoid of and deprived of. thanks to his deformities and his abusive father.

Jason’s hatred and anger stem from observing a life he never had the chance to live through the eyes of those who actively live it. This puts some of Jason’s most shocking deaths into a new perspective. After all, the Friday the 13th The films are filled with classic horror movie tropes like half-naked young men, premarital sex, drinking, and young people just having fun before being cut into pieces. On the surface, these are frequent visuals in the franchise because, simply put, they are classic horror movie tropes. But Jason really hates them because they feature one central element: positive human emotions.

Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Forgotten crossover, explained

Comics create an unexpected friendship between Leatherface and Jason

At the beginning of Jason vs. Jason Voorhees is trapped and chained at the bottom of Camp Crystal Lake, not unlike his situation in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood. This time, however, the lake is completely polluted, used as a dump by the large local corporation, Linhart Amalgamated. When the Environmental Protection Agency reports the corporation, the company chooses to dredge and then drain the lake. In the process, the workers unknowingly take Jason alive with them on their dump train. Unsurprisingly, Jason kills everyone on the train, resulting in an accident.

Coming out of the wreckage, the patriarch of Friday the 13th franchise roams Texas, specifically Sawyerville. It’s not long before he stumbles upon Nubbins’ “Hitchhiker” Sawyer stalking an unsuspecting victim, and not far behind is the Hitchhiker’s brother Bubba, bringing Leatherface and Jason face to face for the first time. They almost have a deadly confrontation – until Jason kills the would-be victim himself. Nubbins quickly befriends Jason on Bubba’s behalf, inviting the brooding hockey mask over to Sawyer’s house.

Jason becomes an empathetic character in the comics – all without dialogue

Giving emotion to an emotionless zombie

Like in the movies, Jason never utters a word (except for that scene in Part 8), so to compensate, the comics show Jason’s thought process through an omnipotent narrator. The narration highlights how Jason is confused about how to receive the Sawyers’ kindness, despite sharing the same admiration for killing. It is mentioned that Jason’s default mode of emotion is hate or anger, and when he feels neither, he doesn’t understand how he feels. This confusion increases as his bond with Leatherface grows. At one point, Jason stops Nubbins from bullying Bubba and helps him to his feet.

In a different moment where Jason comforts Leatherface, the narration reiterates that although Jason initially thought these emotions were new, in fact, they were healthy emotions he hadn’t felt since he was a boy playing with blocks. The narration goes further, saying that Jason kills “it carried no thought, only action. Those who dared to know love and life would be punished… and Jason punished them.”

Jason vs. Completely recontextualizes the classic horror tropes that make Friday the 13th To work

Creating stronger characters

Unfortunately for Jason, the party ended when he saw Nubbins intimidate Leatherface once again. In an effort to protect his new best friend, Jason attacks Nubbins and other members of the Sawyer family. This confuses Leatherface, who was created to protect his family no matter what. Seeing his friend distraught and unwilling to fight him, Jason lowers his defense in an unusual way. Pamela Voorhees’ special boy would soon regret this, as it leaves him open to Leatherface’s attack. Immediately afterwards, the narrator says the following on Jason’s behalf:

For the first time in his existence, Jason went against his nature. Instead of destroying, he chose to defend another. And this is how he is repaid. Jason thought he had finally found someone who understood what it was like to be different. Being separated from others. Someone like him. But as much as he was, Leatherface had one thing in common with the others. He was alive and living, he knew love, even if it was the love of a stunted and distorted family. And everything you love must die!

Beneath its surface, this miniseries manages to explain that many classic horror tropes exist within the franchise because teens having fun makes Jason’s blood boil. Anything that remotely resembles happiness, love or fun are enough to trigger Jason’s desire to kill. So when readers see sequences in which Jason kills teenagers moments after seeing them making love or playing at a campsite, these deaths are placed in a new context. Tropes like these are scattered throughout the franchise, and viewers can finally understand why.

This comic finally turns sometimes clichéd horror tropes into something character-driven. Jason isn’t just killing people for the sake of narrative or genre. He is conditioned to kill joy. An addition to the story like this forces the audience to watch the films with a whole new set of eyes. When Jason is confronted with the joy of Leatherface himself – a family that brings him comfort – it’s enough to drive Jason to kill, just as he would anywhere else. Friday the 13th film.

Jason vs. is now available from Topps Comics.