Nightmares on Elm Street is a six-issue comic book limited series set within the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, set chronologically between A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989) and Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) .It was written by comic book writer Andy Mangels and published bimonthly throughout 1991 and 1992 by Innovation Publishing. The first two issues mainly revolve around Nancy Thompson's fate following her murder by Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, while issue three through six deals primarily with the return of Alice Johnson and her son Jacob to Springwood.
Plot Set in 1990, Cybil Houch has nightmares about Freddy Krueger in which she recognizes 1428 Elm Street, the old house of her former college roommate Nancy Thompson. She is a "ripperologist", and as such Freddy poses as Jack the Ripper in her nightmares. Freddy also invades the dream of Priscilla Martin, a third roommate of Nancy and Cybil, and murders her. Looking for Nancy in phonebooks turns up nothing for Cybil, but Dr. Elizabeth Simms is able to explain to her that Nancy died three years ago, and that Dr. Neil Gordon might know more. Cybil calls him. Rising up, she faints from sudden blood pressure drop and starts dreaming and has to watch as Freddy kills her boyfriend James, but before Freddy can kill her too, Nancy intervenes and saves her.
In the real world, Dr. Gordon had reacted to Cybil's phonecall alluding to Freddy Krueger and arrives to help her, allowing Cybil to tell him about her encounter with Nancy. They enter Cybil's dreams, where Nancy explains that because of Kristen Parker's dream powers, she died in body three years ago but her soul was set free to ascend into "the Beautiful Dream", a domain of the dream world that Freddy cannot control, and that she has hidden Neil's dreams from Freddy to protect him. The two women conclude that Freddy has likely used Cybil and Priscilla as bait to lure Nancy out of safety. After some dangerous encounters with Freddy in the dream world, they are saved by a girl who claims that Cybil will be her mother, meaning that she is pregnant. The comic reveals that there is a third dream plane where unborn children spend their time dreaming. The "dream children" attack Freddy, lambasting him for trying to take Jacob earlier and declaring that Freddy doesn't belong there. However, Cybil passes out again from morning sickness and immediately has another nightmare where "Jack the Ripper" attacks her with a scalpel as she calls out in vain for Nancy to help her again.
In 1995, six years after the events of A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, Alice Johnson returns to Springwood, bringing Jacob with her, who is portrayed as possessing both a heightened intellect and maturity and psychic powers such as telepathy. Her father Dennis (called Fred here) has died, hinted to be due to Freddy. It is revealed through dialogue that during this time, Cybil had died of eclampsia, while Dr. Gordon as her driver suffered a car accident trying to rush her to the hospital. He has now been rendered comatose and keeps dreaming of Freddy trying to kill him, but Nancy keeps on protecting him. Most of Elm Street is boarded up and vacant, with one more house now joining that state. Alice meets up with her old friend Yvonne Miller from The Dream Child, who's now a policewoman. Devonne Gable, a mysterious, traumatized woman, is working for Freddy, who is after Jacob again, but he rescues Alice when Freddy tries to manipulate Dan Jordan to trick her. Jacob then meets up with Devonne.
Jacob and Devonne head to the Springwood cemetery, where Dan's body is buried, as are Devonne's parents and sister. Jacob tries to use his powers to bring Dan back, but senses that Freddy still has his soul. Jacob "zaps" Devonne and goes into her dreams of her childhood trauma, where he finds Freddy. Freddy tries to coerce Jacob into helping him escape the confines of Springwood in return for Freddy bringing Dan back to life, even allowing him some "father-son" time with his father Dan Jordan's soul. Meanwhile, Freddy sends Devonne out to kill Alice, who had searched out Yvonne at the hospital for help in finding Jacob. They try to enlist the help of Nancy's spirit by speaking to Neil Gordon's comatose body, which Jacob sensed earlier was being protected by Nancy.
Alice's words stir Neil's body, who says she needs to go into the dream world to link up with Nancy. Alice convinces Yvonne to drug her unconscious. Devonne enters the hospital only moments after with a machinegun, slaughtering her way to get to Alice, but Yvonne shoots her fatally in the chest before she can kill Alice. In the dream world, Alice meets up with Neil. Freddy tries to kill them by shattering all the glass in the "dream church" from the films, but Nancy saves them. In the dream world, Alice becomes her namesake Alice in Wonderland and encounters Freddy as a macabre version of the White Rabbit, while Nancy is interrupted by her father Donald's spirit. Neil joins up with his former patients, the "Dream Warriors", who reside in a sort of pocket universe within the dream world. Jacob encounters his father Dan Jordan's spirit in the dream world.
Devonne enters a "dying dream" state and rejoins Freddy in the dream world. Dan explains that Freddy will bring him back if Jacob helps Freddy escape the confines of Springwood. Donald shoots Nancy in the head due to Freddy's torment being too horrible for him to endure, and if he were to agree to kill his daughter, Freddy might release him from his bondage. Nancy however restores herself and says that she's changed, and that she can offer him his salvation. She frees the aspect of him that Freddy had imprisoned and sends his now complete spirit off to some unknown plane and continues. Alice goes through more Alice in Wonderland-themed vistas, and is eventually overpowered by Freddy in the guise of the Jabberwocky, while Neil leaves the Dream Warriors' pocket dimension and continues. Nancy tries to talk Jacob out of helping Freddy, pointing out that he was the one who killed Dan in the first place, but she has now entered Freddy's place and he now has power over her too. Devonne, finally realizing that Freddy was never going to keep his word and that she was only ever a pawn to him, turns against him and sides with Neil, Nancy and Dan in attacking Freddy. After Freddy's temporary defeat, Jacob uses his psychic powers to put his father Dan's spirit into Neil Gordon's body, who had rather wanted to join Nancy in "the Beautiful Dream". The three prepare to leave Springwood for good, with Alice asking Yvonne to come with them and leave the nightmares behind for good. Freddy is shown to reconstitute himself in the last panel.
Characters
Freddy Krueger - The central character of the franchise. His main agenda in the comics is to draw Nancy Thompson out into his own place of strength, and later to use Jacob Johnson to bring him out of the dream world and escape the geographic restrictions to Springwood that he's saddled with, using Devonne as his agent in the physical world to accomplish the latter goal. Nancy Thompson - The franchise's original heroine and final girl of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). She was killed by Freddy in the sequel, but because of Kristen Parker's dream powers, her soul escaped his clutches and became a sort of "dream guardian" of the positive side of the dream world. In extended interviews on the franchise documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy, Andy Mangels explains that "Nancy is still alive in the "Beautiful Dream". She's essentially the polar opposite of Freddy. If Freddy represented nightmares and all that was evil, all that could harm you in dreams, Nancy represented all the things that were good and all the things that you can hope for to have in a dream. She actually became the protector within the dream world". The comic shows that after the events of the first film, she was sent to a psychiatric institution, and moved away from Springwood before Freddy could return. She went on to study psychology in college in between the aforementioned films. Alice Johnson - Nancy's successor as the franchise's heroine, the titular "Dream Master" and the only protagonist to survive Freddy twice. She became the final girl of A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) after Freddy murders Kristen Parker, whose psychic dream powers she inherits. After the events of A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989), she and Jacob moved away from Springwood before Freddy could return and kill her. She is portrayed as a blond in the comics, as in The Dream Child, though Devonne refers to her as being a redhead, as she was in The Dream Master. Both the Nightmares on Elm Street comics and the short story Dead Highway, Lost Roads has Freddy putting Alice through various Alice's Adventures in Wonderland-themed scenarios, where Alice herself predictably plays the role of the eponymous Alice in Wonderland. Jacob Daniel Johnson - Alice Johnson and Dan Jordan's son, and the titular "Dream Child". He is described as being five year old, but Yvonne notices a maturity in his language and choice of words that would imply that he is mentally around twice his biological age. Alice claims he has always been like that, and concludes that it must be an inadvertent effect of Freddy's tamperings with him while he was still in the womb. The characterization of Jacob having various psychic powers would later be used again in the novel A Nightmare on Elm Street: Perchance to Dream. Yvonne Miller - Alice's surviving friend from The Dream Child. She was a volunteer nurse in the film, but is now working as a police officer as well. Devonne Gable - The secondary antagonist, officially dubbed the "Springwood Killer". A traumatized woman with a troubled childhood, Devonne and her family lived on Elm Street before the lynching and official disappearance of Fred Krueger, but her father was hotheaded and abusive towards her and her sister Denise, whom he accidentally kills in anger. After this, Devonne sets off the gas in the house, but her plan to get rid of her hated father also kills her mother who lights a cigarette and inadvertently blows up their house. A still human Fred Krueger, his wife Loretta and daughter Kathryn were among the spectators gathered to watch the disaster she caused on their street. As a dream demon, Freddy preys upon her tormented memories, mixing truth with lies and has broken her enough through her nightmares that she will serve him out of fear, providing him with an important agent outside the dream world. Due to Freddy's tamperings, she's cursed to see every person resembling the burned, skinless cadavers she last saw her parents as after the fire. Cybil Houch - Former college roommate of Nancy Thompson. Cybil is a "ripperologist", obsessing over everything related to Jack the Ripper. James is Cybil's boyfriend, with whom she is unknowingly expecting a daughter. Freddy kills him by dropping him into a gigantic printing press in the dream world as she watches, whereafter Freddy immediately prints headlines announcing his demise to her. Priscilla Martin - The third roommate of Nancy and Cybil. Priscilla is a fashion designer whom Freddy kills in a catwalk-themed nightmare. Her formerly "hunky boyfriend" Max has since become an overweight trans woman; Freddy kills her too in Priscilla's nightmare. Mangels explains that (on Priscilla's death) "her fears concerned her first big show as a fashion designer and losing her lover. Freddy takes those fears and manipulates them in her dreams and creates for her a world that's everything she fears." Cybil and Priscilla were featured briefly in the fan film Don't Fall Asleep: The Film in 2016, depicting part of Nancy's time in college.