3 out of 5

Kudos to writer Tristan Gallagher and artist Christian DiBari for the conception of this book; I don’t know if skater horror was a thing prior to this, but regardless – I’m glad for this to be my first jump into a quirky lil’ subgenre.

“Garm” – the names in this series seem odd to me, but maybe this is some cool skate culture thing, or perhaps an 80s movie nod, where all cool kids have names like T Dog and Bullets or somesuch – Garm is our resident wannabe, short and friends with the school layabout, wanting more than anything to be part of the cool kids skater crew. Oh, he can be, of course… if he skates the halfpipe in the graveyard.

This goes disastrously wrong, and it seems we have woken the demon skater god as a result – we’ll call him Rad Wraith, as per the title – who helps Garm get his bloody revenge against the skater bullies.

There’s some amusingly cheeky stuff alongside that already cheeky premise, plucking from various horror flicks and 80s teen comedies; Dibari has a sketchy, but heavy-lined Pixar style, reminiscent of Sean Murphy or Ethan Niccole, which definitely allows the book to flex between high school antics and over-the-top gore with ease. Some connective tissue in action scenes feels missing, though, and the longer dialogue beats are enlivened only by DiBari’s active linework, as the layouts can be a little distant from the script – dramatic or angles changed without exact purpose.

And Tristan Gallagher’s writing maybe assumes more of its cheek than actually displays or develops it; while the style of this book isn’t demanding a lore deep dive, we don’t establish anything about the characters or the wraith, and some of the story takes too many hops towards instant dumb or weird; there’s not a good middleground.

But none of this stopped me from chuckling at the concept, and the various Freddy style skate puns Rad used during his kills. It’s willfully silly stuff, and definitely fun as a result. Long live skater horror.