A Brief History of Hack/Slash

Sex and horror… they’ve always gone so well together.

The ‘final girl’ has become a staple of the slasher genre – the level-headed and respectable character who has displayed incredible strength and courage whilst maintaining that girl-next-door look, as she battles against masked maniacs who have dispatched of her friends in all manner of gruesome ways. Laurie, Alice, Nancy – each one of them had survived using their own initiative and independence, without the help of boyfriends or authority figures, and whilst each of them would receive a grizzly fate in later sequels, they are as important to the genre as the iconic monsters which draw the audiences in. But what if one of the final girls had been forced to kill her own mother and, having survived that ordeal, had dedicated her life to travelling the land on a mission to preserve innocence and destroy other slasher villains. Being as deadly as those which she hunts, and sexy as hell to boot, one such final girl is Cassie Hack!

Cassie had once been a shy young girl in Chippewa, Wisconsin. Unable to make friends and the constant victim of bullying, her only ally in school was her imposing mother, referred to by the other students as The Lunch Lady. Trapping those responsible in the school kitchen, Ms. Hack would dish out savage revenge with the help of her bloodied axe. But, despite being her only protection, Cassie pleads with her mother to stop the killing, eventually calling the police in the hope that she will see sense and let the children live. The horror of having a slasher as a mother had deeply scarred Cassie, who would dispose of the nerd look and re-invent herself as a sleazy goth princess, targeting other serial killers and ending their murderous rampage. Accompanied by Vlad, a hulking beast in a gas mask but with a heart of gold, Cassie has made it her life’s work to make sure no one else will ever fall victim to a monster like The Lunch Lady.

Hack/Slash was first published as a series of one-shots stories back in 2004 by creator Tim Seeley, who had first started as a staff artist for Devil’s Due Publishing, who would eventually be responsible for the success of the series. Earlier collaborators included Stefano Caselli, Federica Manfredi and regular Emily Stone, quickly creating a back-story for the character whilst also pitting her against such iconic monsters as Re-animator‘s Herbert West and Child’s Play‘s Chucky. A motion picture adaptation has been trapped in development hell for several years, to be directed by Todd Lincoln (who had previously been attached to a new remake of The Fly) and produced by Rogue Pictures. With Transformers beauty Megan Fox linked to the role of Cassie and Michael Clarke Duncan (Sin City) rumoured to be cast as Vlad, the film could have given the slasher genre a much needed new lease of life.