SHOCKING! TERRIFYING! BLOODY HELL! This week, I’ve decided to review Zenescope Entertainment’s Grim Tales of Terror Volume 2 #11. This title caught my eye for two reasons. For one, I like horror titles; I like seeing what’s on the market and how other people make horror comics. The second reason was that a friend of mine had drawn stories for this title previously and from the quality of his work, I thought this book would be ace… I might have picked the wrong issue to review here, ha-ha.

This issue’s story has a well-trodden trope; you should guess that from the story’s title, “Vanishing Hitchhiker.” Ghost of a hitchhiker haunting a road, looking for the person who killed them. Done. I’ve seen this story done across various forms of media a few times, so it would’ve had to have done something really special to impress me. I think this is the first comic I’ve seen in a long time that has someone who came up with the story and someone who’s written it credited to two different people… Joe Brusha came up with the story, and Marco Lopez has written the issue (I think this is the first time I’ve encountered anyone on this title’s work.)

It’s a pretty bog-standard tale, and I’m sure it could have been done in far fewer pages. Some of the dialogue is pretty stilted and Marco… he… really like using those ellipses. The main character is like a less charismatic Captain Kirk, who happens to be a home security salesman and also, a really cheap bastard.

The artist for this issue did alright I guess. Though Roger Bonet’s art at times is a bit hit and miss, there are some nice panels in here; it’s just a shame that there’s some duffers in there too because it drags down the rest of the art in the book. The color work is lovely throughout from Sonia Moruno, though, even on the panels that aren’t drawn particularly well. So well done, Sonia!

There’s not much else I can really say about the story in this issue. It wasn’t really scary or horrific in any way. There was some gore and some swearing. Overall, a pretty disappointing introduction to the series for me. The variants are probably the highlight for me. I have a guy who buys a lot of Zenescope titles from my shop who I’m pretty sure doesn’t even read them, ha-ha. He just buys all the covers. So keep doing the variants, Zenescope. I have a customer who loves them…

If you collect the series, I’d like to know what you thought about the issue in the comments section. And if you do collect the title, tell me about previous issues for that matter. Maybe I just picked a bad issue, eh?

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Grim Tales of Terror v2 #11 Writer: Marco Lopez Artist: Roger Bonet Colorist: Sonia Moruno Publisher: Zenescope Entertainment Price: $3.99 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital[/su_box]

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