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Sunday, November 16, 2014

Comic Review: Grindhouse: Slay Ride #1

GRINDHOUSE: DRIVE IN, BLEED OUT #1
Writer: Alex de Campi
Colorist: Giulia Brusco
Cover Artist: R. M. Guéra
Dark Horse
Genre: Action/Adventure, Horror
Publication Date: November 12, 2014
Format: FC, 32 pages; Miniseries
Price:$3.99
UPC:7 61568 26746 4 00111
Grindhouse is back from the dead, and it’s meaner, badder, and dirtier than ever! In the first of four new exploitation opuses,Scalped’s R. M. Guéra joins series writer Alex de Campi for “Slay Ride,” a brutal holiday tale of revenge and supernatural terror in the driven snow!

* We’re back, just in time to celebrate the holidays in bloody style!

* From the perverted mind of Alex de Campi (Smoke/Ashes, Lady Zorro)!

* World-renowned artist R. M. Guéra (Django Unchained,Scalped)!

I was already made a fan of Alex de Campi's gory greatness that is Grindhouse, but now that it's back this month and has it's new story taking place in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada? Well, shoot...I'm a double fan now.

Grindhouse goes for the jugular yet again too, with de Campi's high-octane horror featuring a father and son murdered in the opening pages, then the elderly cancer-ridden Mother Wolf facing down a malevolent trio of misfits with only the estranged daughter of Papa at her side.

In Grindhouse's ghosts of Christmas past (the previous issues, of which I clumsily refer), the stories were all done in two-parters, but this time around Slay Ride will be a four-parter, which should give de Campi more elbow room for some character development—not that you need heaping piles of that in exploitation fare. Actually, this doesn't feel like the kind of gritty, hard-nosed 70s-style grindhouse, but more in keeping with the supernatural, hack-and-slash kind of stuff that came along with the advent of VHS in the 80s. It's blood, and weirdness, and jump scares, and mounting dread, and a bevy demonic debauchery.

With R.M. Guera offering some gripping illustrations and Giulia Brusco adding top-notch coloring, the visual impact of this first issue is about as great as a fan of the series could ask for. Alex de Campi had mentioned in an interview back in May (http://www.ismellsheep.com/2014/05/interview-alex-de-campi-comic-book.html) that she had artists in mind for what is ostensibly Season Two of Grindhouse. And in these early goings, it looks like its paid off with great choices.
Now, with the frenzied manner with which this first issue left off, I can only salivate at the chance to read the ensuing issues to find out just how in the heck the folks of this idyllic little snowscape can survive the scourge of the Clown, the Man Who Walks, and the Overseer.


4 1/2 Sheep





Gef Fox

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