WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Maniac of New York #1 by Elliott Kalan, Andrea Mutti, and Taylor Esposito, on sale now.
Horror has always had a special place in the world of comic books, and slashers have always had their own special place in the world of horror. While the adventures of killers like Friday the 13th's Jason Vorhees or Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger have become iconic on the big screen, AfterShock Comics just gave horror hounds the Friday the 13th sequel they never knew they needed with Maniac of New York and its mysterious masked killer, Harry the Maniac.
On New Year's Eve of 2016, Harry introduced himself to the city in gruesome fashion, walking casually through Times Square and slaughtering 79 people before the carnage was over. In the five years since the first attack, Harry has gone on to become a fixture of the Big Apple, with sightings being reported on the local news stations daily as a way to help keep citizens clear of his blade as he's continued to slay victims by the dozen. The police have finally assigned a new director to the meager task force aimed at combatting the unstoppable threat that's been tearing through their streets for half a decade.
The city's surprisingly lax attitude to the rampant killer in their midst doesn't sit well with Task Force Director Gina Greene, and neither does the fact that no other cops seem to be taking the murder machine so lightly.
As Gina reaches out to her peers, she finds Detective Zelda Pettibone, a disillusioned cop who tells Gina that the Maniac isn't a case to be solved, but rather an undying curse that's been placed upon the city, not unlike an urban version of Jason and Camp Crystal Lake. However, Gina has a deeper connection to the killer, since he first terrorized her when she was a camp counselor at Glasswater Lake Camp in New Jersey. There Harry murdered Gina's boyfriend, all while she was helpless to stop him. Now that Gina is in a position to actually do something about it, she's hellbent on putting an end to the Maniac's madness, though that's going to be easier said than done.
In the same way that The Walking Dead explored what the world of a zombie apocalypse after a two-hour zombie movie, Maniac of New York is both an open love letter to the Friday the 13th franchise that plays out like a never-made sequel to 1989's Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. While that film is considered one of worst films in the franchise, Maniac of New York takes the conceit of an unstoppable slasher in New York and runs with it to an electrifying effect. Likewise, Maniac has evolved the idea of the final girl by turning her from a mere survivor to someone actively fighting slashers, much like the most recent Halloween reboot or Hack/Slash.
Where most slasher stories end don't last longer than a movie's running time, Maniac of New York takes a more expansive view of what could happen with an unstoppable slasher in a big city. Even though this issue gets close to the point where most slasher stories crescendo, there's still a lot of story to be told between Detectives Greene and Pettibone and Harry the Maniac.