Grimm Fairy Tales 2011 Halloween Special
Written by Joe Brusha, Ralph Tedesco, and Raven Gregory
Letters by Jim Campbell
Art Direction by Anthony Spay
Reviewed by Steve Seigh
This year’s Grimm Fairy Tales Halloween Special issue was interesting to say the least. As is tradition with the Grimms book this special issue is divided into a total of 2 separate stories. First we have “Dead Luck Desert” a “lesson learned” tale of an assassin who doesn’t know when to follow orders. The story is cool enough with some really great artwork (drawn by Louie De Martinis with colors by Hector Rubilar) to accompany a short but sweet story. I enjoy a good tale of some asshole who gets his in the end, so the final panel to this one put a particularly twisted smile on my face.
Next up we have the tale “The Sure Thing” a short story about a couple down on their luck and willing to risk it all in a game of Russian Roulette at some fancy Halloween party for rich people. I found this particular tale to be the weakest of the three as I just did not connect with the characters whatsoever. Perhaps I was a bit surprised by the outcome of the story but even then I wasn’t too impressed. Perhaps if we’d had a few more pages it could have been something, but on it’s own it just seemed like filler and perhaps those pages could have been dedicated to the final and best story of the three offered in this book.
Finally, we have “Rule of Three” the tale of an on the edge of his sanity cop in pursuit of a vicious serial killer. This particular tale drew me in the most out of the three stories offered within this book. The main character has a really strong voice to his narration of the tale and I completely felt his desperation for closure to this grisly case. With a rather nice twist and some monster action in the middle this is something I could get into on more of a long tern read, and it is certainly something cool to read so close to Halloween. With hints at a continuation (perhaps next year?) there’s no telling if characters from this story in particular may show up in other books during the year.
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO KNOW?
Nothing really. You could pick this up and read it blindly and would have no problem following along.
VERDICT
Check it out first. If you’re not familiar with the Grimms Fairy Tale story structuring or you’re not a fan of monsters, you might not be into this one. I for one really get into these books. Some of the Grimm books are my favorites I’ve ever read so I’m a little biased. It’s a cool read for Halloween but there have certainly been better Special books from Zenescope and Grimms in the past.
