BOOM! Studios bring you a horror comic that actually takes place in Hollywood written by a novelist who wrote Goosebumps in Just Beyond Monstrosity the graphic novel. So we get a horror comic in a movie setting of the story which takes place in Hollywood. 
I can’t think of any other comic that can be a mere fantasy than this one, I mean is this real life or made up? However, the story comes up with some drastic events such as the haunted house studio itself. The story is originally written by R.L. Stine, the same person who wrote Goosebumps, and illustrated by Irene Flores. Irene is just another Philippines artist who was heavily influenced by Japanese animation and American Comics. She illustrates and wrote some Manga Art School series that make it as tutorial books for beginners. I never heard about her, but I get to see those kinds of books at Barnes and Noble lying there as if someone doesn’t want it. But who would have thunk that she would be illustrating on Boom! Studios in the first place.
The front cover looks like more of an abandoned studio after you’ve watched an episode of Animaniacs last year, where the Russians actually made a rip off of the show itself and turned into a low-budget cartoon series with an abandoned studio. What I can witness on this cover art is all surrounded with horror props and costumes. And everything is colored in a cool color with a blueish monochrome color, and it was designed by Julian Totino Tedesco who started doing concept art for commercials and painted backgrounds for animated movies, right until he started doing comic covers for Boom! Studios in 2009.
The story starts with the most cliched moment when every family moved to a new home, but this time, those people have bought an old horror movie studio and they brought their kids to show around. However, when a guide who dressed up as the butler shows up, he announced his name after an old American author. Then he mentions the whole studio has some strange accidents as if the whole studio is cursed somehow, that comes from when the gargoyle statue fell down and broke into pieces.
For me, what the guide mentions about the studio, reminded me of one of the Troma movies that almost everyone went apeshit about. After the whole tour of the studio, Poe was mysteriously disappeared when the children stepped into the cave where Mangra the Mangler dragged his victims. Moreover, the whole reason that the whole studio was abandoned is that some old programmer hid his creation somewhere in the studio who is actually a machine, an evil incarnate. Apparently, a programmer named Carter Pendergrass who actually programmed every monster on every movie set just hurt some actors with his own creations, as if these things became so violent and uncontrollable. Somehow his boss has put him to serious consequences because his robots hurt the actors twice. He told Pendergrass to destroy that creature along with the remote control which is an amulet, but after that, he hid the monster and the controller somewhere that no one in the studio can find it, that is to say, that no one can activate it ever again. Later on, the siblings were meeting with a famous old horror director who pulled out a poster of a stinkbug as a horror movie, which happens to be another Troma movie ripoff like the Toxic Avenger. And then after the meeting, the siblings started bitching out over some personal issues between family.
When the filming started, there are some strange things going on while filming the movie, some unexpected accidents that almost hurt everyone, a director who is terribly allergic to hornet stings, and some fish monsters attacked the children while riding the canoe. All of that was because of the controller that Pendergrass hid it from, however, the mastermind of the monster rampage was his granddaughter who tries to have the new owner going on bankrupt, but she was thwarted by some kids who destroyed the controller causing the monsters to turn off. After the incident, the studio is out of money to film another movie, but luckily, his son just recorded some of the videos on his phone showing what happened to the monster rampage and Perdergrass’ granddaughter who controls the monsters. I can’t tell if this actually makes sense for the readers because somehow this comic is taking to another horror setting like one of the animatronics who is losing control.
The story is too random to begin with, however, owning an old horror movie studio is a dream come true, but there are some serious flaws and sacrifices to make. Considering that the studio has some strange accidents around, it would mean that someone is trying to get revenge for having Pendergrass out of work. But a story coming from R.L. Stine, this comic doesn’t seem to have some horror vibes, because all you can get is some scenes where every other monster and insect you see on sight are attacking people. This comic is almost going to turn into an action genre where humans and monsters battle against each other. It doesn’t give out the scary stuff, you’d feel like you’re going to give some ideas to what scene you’re going to put on the next video on YouTube or something. The art was nothing, to begin with, but let me focus on the monsters’ design. What Pendergrass designed made is scarier, but somehow he designed those monsters something came from the animatronics from Five Nights at Freddy’s, however the monster designs almost reminded me of Castlevania, as the Wolfenscreem looks like Frankenstein and the Gill-Monsters who look like Merman, and the gargoyle monster looks like Gaibon from Symphony of the Night. I don’t know what else to explain, but this comic is full of role-playing of many horror movies that you saw, but this one is so cheap that you can make it as an indie comic.
Newsdesk