4 out of 5

Rather perfectly mimicking the iffy success rate of the TV show – admittedly not always great entries, but generally entertaining enough to pass the time – the third volume of Creepshow arrives with an underwhelming opener, but a great closer. And given that the closer has more pages… we’ll lean the rating that way.

Chip Zdarsky, artist Kagan McLeod, and letterer Pat Brosseau offer up “Let ‘Er Trip,” which makes the puzzling decision to spoil a plot point right up front, as well as establish an unfortunate precedent of dropping common narration details between panels – little beats that set up a scene, or establish a character. I’ve not read enough of Zdarsky’s writing to know if this is common or just a sacrifice to fit a story into a few pages, but it ends up reading sloppily. It’s not that it’s difficult to parse – the story is very linear – so I can understand how such details could’ve met an editor’s striking marks, but just because we understand the context of a word when it’s missing letters doesn’t mean it’s spelled correctly. McLeod’s art has a delightfully Colan-esque swoopiness to it that’s fitting for its 70s vibe, equally matched by Brousseau’s wide lettering. But otherwise, this cosmic tale of cults is a bit of a misfire – it would work as a mid story in a triptych, but isn’t quite interesting or horrorful enough to make it a good lead.

But then one-man act James Stokoe shows up with a weird one – one that delivers on opening and closing cryptkeeper puns, and has a plot that’s kind of both in your face and unexpected at the same time. Like, you know where it’s going, but there’s some dialogue that feels like either a red herring or a mistake… until it’s not. And there’s just a creepy edge to it that vibes well with some of the inherent comedy in Stokoe’s stylized character work and neon-dashed colors – the story taps into the obsession of one character, and juxtaposes that against another’s shallowness, which is a pairing that perfectly syncs to the tonal / visual dichotomy. In “Scrimshaw,” someone tells a winding tale of a man lost at sea… the ending to which is perpetually put off behind more and more gripping cliffhangers.