Horror comic review: Grimm Tales of Terror #3: Knife wielding nut-job on campus

Writer: Meredith Finch
Artist: Milton Estevam
Publisher: Zenescope Entertainment
Released: 17th September 2014


I enjoyed this book, but it would be amiss of me not to mention that it had serious structural flaws, with an ending that happened before it should have done, and some characters that weren’t properly developed or given satisfying story-line payoffs.

There was the added problem that all of the pretty girl protagonists looked very similar, apart from hair colour, and as the story was relatively short it was difficult to get a handle on who they all were as individuals. One girl was a daddy’s girl, and some of the others were worried about their grades, but that’s all there was to differentiate them. The problem was that the book was too short, and there were too many people in it. In horror one shots there isn’t enough room to properly develop numerous characters. Writer Meredith Finch tried to put a horror movie script into twenty-two pages of a comic book, and there wasn’t enough room to properly accomplish that.

One of the undeveloped characters in this book was a perverted lecturer who gave pretty college girls good grades for sexual ‘favours.’ That’s quite standard fare in stories about pretty college girls, but the book wasn’t long enough to fully develop his character and story-arc, so when he met his inevitable demise it fell flat because he wasn’t a convincing flesh and blood person. You see him briefly at the beginning, and briefly at the end. He is a teacher, and a pervert. That is all. That is not a human being. That is two-dimensional cardboard cutout.

The big moment in horror stories such as this one is the scene where the identity of the murderer is finally revealed. You expect a twist, but if it's done well it’s still a dramatic moment. You get that scene in this book, but it happens too early, leaving three unnecessary pages that were only included so that the Horror host could be fitted into the story at the end. It didn’t work.

The host should have been involved in the reveal, and she wasn’t. Her signature moment of whistling whilst the bad guys get their just deserts didn’t work out this time as she didn’t appear to care about a psychopathic knife murdering maniac at all. Instead she was more concerned with a lecherous teacher and making sure that he got what he deserved. That was a bit jarring to me. On a rising scale of moral wrongs surely hacking young girls to death with a knife ranks a few notches above being a perverted teacher? Yes, I know that being a dirty old git who exploits his pupils is pretty bloody disgusting and morally vacuous, but stabbing college girls to death with a big knife and leaving silly horror movie messages on the wall in their own blood must be a more serious crime, right?

I also had a problem with the character of the janitor in this book. Again, as you might expect, he was portrayed as a big old weird pervert, because obviously every single man that comes into contact with young females must be some perverted lech, right? Actually, come to think of it, the younger men in this book were portrayed as perverts as well, so it’s not exactly a man friendly book come to think of it. Anyway, the janitor character kept popping up, looking and acting like a big fat sweaty pervert (how was he not sacked on the first day of his job?), but we didn’t get any payoff to his story. Any half clued in reader would never take him seriously as being a real candidate for the murderer because he was too obvious, and as the book ended he was still mopping up, still looking like a pervert, and that was it. He was just there as a very obvious and very unsatisfying red herring. That’s frustrating to the reader, and I got the impression that the original script for this story had been massively edited, and because it was a one-shot story there wasn’t enough time and space in a comic book form to make it properly work.

This book was a three or four-issue script that had been crammed into a one shot comic. The panels were very large, featuring double-paged spreads of gruesome murder scenes etc, and it left them with nowhere near enough room to tell the story, as it should have been told.

The book was working against itself, but that didn’t stop it from being fun. The curvy girls were drawn very voluptuously, the pervert men were drawn very seedily and the reveal of the murderer, although a bit obvious to horror comic buffs, was a good moment anyway. It was a small surprise to me, and when it came I did smile. It came too early on in the script, but it was good.

I really appreciate Zenescope putting out these old style horror books. These are the kind of books that I grew up with, so they give me a strong sense of nostalgia that I really enjoy. It’s not just nostalgia though. I miss the old horror books. Why not bring them back? They used to be really good, and they can still be good today. Human nature does not change, and the thrill of reading a well-structured creepy, weird story with a delicious twist at the end will always be an enjoyable experience.

Plus, superheroes can get very lame, very quickly, especially when Marvel and DC are so bloody statist and corporate that all of the heroes are either government agents, stuck in dimension X or battling Nazi’s and cold war era Russians. Contemporary superhero comic books STILL cannot get to grips with a post 9/11 world and all of the NSA Police state bullshit that is turning western countries into bloody banker ran autocracies these days. Just imagine all of the great stories that a switched on horror writer could be telling today with all that has happened in the past decade. The world has become a horror story, so why not reflect that fact in the comics?

Grimm Tales of Terror #3 had structural problems, but I enjoyed it. It felt rushed and incomplete, and I would love it if they updated the genre somewhat. The events that unfold in this book have no relation to this day and age. They could have happened in 1960, 1984, 1994 or 2014. Things need to get updated. Things need to change, and that’s why I’m doing my very small bit by writing this blog. I want Zenescope to keep on putting out these horror books. I want them to get better. I want them to update the stories for a post 9/11 generation, and I want them to start connecting with the awakened, post mainstream media generation of these times. I know it’s asking a lot, too much perhaps, but it’s not going to stop me from asking. I love old style horror comics. Get the structure sorted out. Let the stories run for a few issues if you cannot tell them in one-shots, and throw in the odd reference to the surveillance state, poisons in our foods, illegal wars and corporate bankster owned political elite’s. Oh, and if you can cut out the anti man stuff, that would be nice as well, thanks.

Rating: 5.5/10