This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at Cassie Hack, the horror superheroine who battles a long line of slashers as stylishly as Buffy fought vampires.
In Hack/ Slash stories, slashers are their own breed of monsters just like werewolves, vampires, etc. Tim Seeley created the series, which has been published by various indie outfits over the years.
HACK/ SLASH Vol 1 #1 (Apr 2004)
Title: Euthanized
Villain: Bobby Brunswick
Synopsis: This very first appearance of Cassie Hack starts off with a few-page synopsis of her origin story. In school, Cassie was often bullied by the other students. This caused her mother to snap and become a slasher called the Lunch Lady, who took to carving up the teens who had bullied Cassie and mixing their remains in with food at the school cafeteria. Our heroine was forced to take action, saving her mother’s last victim. The Lunch Lady killed herself but rose again as a slasher. This time Cassie had to destroy her personally.
Readers are now dropped into the main story, set years later when Cassie Hack has established herself as a roving heroine who battles living and undead slashers alongside her African American sidekick – the hulking, gasmask-wearing Vlad. He views Cassie like a daughter and wields meat cleavers and butcher’s knives in battle.
In this adventure, Cassie and Vlad clashed with Bobby Brunswick, a veterinary assistant killed by the boyfriend of the female vet he worked for. Bobby came back from the dead for revenge and also preyed on the city with the army of dead animals that he controlled. Continue reading
MYSTIC COMICS Vol 1 #1 (Mar 1940) 
B. Dynamic Man – Scientist Dr. Simon Goettler creates 
DEFENDERS Vol 1 #17 (Nov 1974) 
MARVEL PREMIERE Vol 1 #25 (Oct 1975) 
CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #17 (Oct 1941) 
LADY JUSTICE Vol 1 #1 (Sep 1995) 
LADY JUSTICE Vol 1 #2 (Oct 1995) 
VENUS
ASTONISHING TALES Vol 1 #25 (Aug 1974) 
RED NAILS – I always like to emphasize that – despite the way Marvel Comics’ 1970s and 1980s Conan stories kept the character’s name alive and introduced new generations to him – the Cimmerian was not a mere comic book figure. Iconic author Robert E. Howard introduced Conan on the printed page in his 1930s stories featuring the character. 
I. This first installment introduces readers to a blonde female pirate – Valeria of the Red Brotherhood. She is the only female pirate among them and is as notoriously deadly as the others. NOTE: Yes, this is the character that Sandahl Bergman played in the 1982 Conan the Barbarian film. That movie made her a standard thief instead of a pirate and – sadly – gave her the “ghostly return” scene that actually belonged to Conan’s true love Belit (Bay-LEET) from 
DEFENDERS Vol 1 #12 (February 1974)
Dr Strange, Hulk and Valkyrie are the only Defenders available who can be rallied to save the world from Xemnu. (I’d have thrown in Clea, too, myself.) Our heroes battle the alien, who is defeated and again seems to be destroyed in the explosion of a spaceship he made the enthralled citizens of Plucketville construct for him. 
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