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Published by: Dark Horse Comics
Released on: Nov. 12, 2014
Writer: Alex De Campi
Artist: R.M. Guera
Cover: R.M. Guera
Purchase at Amazon
Yeah…! A new series emerges after the fun-filled 8-issue “Doors Open At Midnight†ended a number of months ago, and Alex de Campi brings more sleazy love to her newest Grindhouse series “Drive In, Bleed Outâ€. Presumably set up like the last run, each story takes place over two issues and each two-issue story has a different artist. It's a great formula and is almost like her own little Creepy or Eerie series. Short stories, different artists, and filled with blood, monsters, and sex. Perfect.
This first issue marks part one of “Slay Rideâ€, a tale just in time for Christmas, but this is not a tale for the family. Well, not a normal family. Speaking of families, the one in this story gets cut down to 1/3 the size right off in the first couple pages. Three figures (demons?) are to be credited for the slayings: the Clown, the Overseer, and the Man Who Walks. As to who they exactly are, that is still guarded information, but Mother Wolf knows them. She watches them as they leave the house of slaughter and they pass her by, perhaps out of respect, but she'll not let them continue their rampage if she can help it. Thing is, she's old, bent, and coughing up blood; death is upon her. She knows well the family that was slain, and calls the last member, Shayla, to come to the house.
Shayla, estranged from her abusive father (who is now splattered all over a room in the house), goes with the old lady to another house nearby, in a horse-drawn sleigh, to hopefully get to them before the assassins do. They're way too late, but there is more in the house besides dead people and animals. Is that Colonel Sanders?? Shayla has a rather lustful appetite and it looks like she is about to pay for it, courtesy of what looks to be the fried chicken king. And then there's the matter of a couple of children playing in the snow who recognize Shayla. They just want to play with her is all…
De Campi jumps right back into it with yet another schlocker rich with gratuitous violence, illicit sex, and eye sockets filled with jagged teeth. Her pacing is perfect, and in the limited amount of time the comic allows she quickly builds story and characters in her usual expert fashion. In every Grindhouse tale so far she has the hero or heroes as women who can handle themselves and dispatch the bad guys, and this tale is along that same modus operandi. That's a good thing, since there's too many dicks on the dance floor when it comes to comic book writers, so there is plenty of room for chicks who kick ass both in the comic world and the writing world. And De Campi kicks ass. R.M. Guera's art shines, with some well laid out sequences like a shotgun blast to the head. Very effective, very disgusting.
Dark Horse has made this reader very happy by continuing this title. Its superficial, it's full of the things your mother never wanted you to see, and reading the newest issues always feels like stumbling across an awesome tape at the video store that you've had to sit through countless hours of shitty movies to find.
