Review by Ian Keogh

Graves End is a place of endless graves, supplying areas the teens of the town have hung out in since they were children, one of them being Parker West, narrator of Revenge Game. We learn his father disappeared years ago, his mate Caleb has a crush on his girlfriend Patti, and local police officer Higgins doubles as the town bully, a position his son is in training to inherit. The problem of both of them leads to the title premise.

Writer R.L. Stine has a considerable track record writing horror novels for teens, and adapts easily to the different demands of comics. At first it seems he’s writing to a template, but is a step ahead of such assumptions, and Revenge Game lives up to the title by becoming an escalating series of tit for tat pranks in poor taste. These don’t play out in a predictable manner either.

The strength of the story is greatly dependent on mood, and Carola Borelli delivers that in spades, both with the emotions of the cast and with the locations. Francesco Segala’s darkened colours seal the setting, with the graveyard scenes important.

There are a couple of strange moments involving Parker’s friend Rhonda, who mentions her father disappeared on the same night as Parker’s. He’s surprised to hear about this, which is also surprising for readers as one might imagine anyone disappearing in a small town would be big news, and one might imagine he’d know his friend’s circumstances. She subsequently says she’s seen her father in a graveyard, with Parker responding the same thing’s happened to him, except we’ve not seen that.

Apart from those anomalies everything’s going well until the story abruptly ends, presumably to be continued in Fresh Blood. It’s really unsatisfying, because while there’s no arguing with a retail price of $.9.99, there’s also an expectation that allowing for title pages, the story is going to occupy most of the book. Instead around two-thirds are Revenge Game, followed by Borelli’s page roughs and character designs, and several pages from another project of Stine’s, Stuff of Nightmares, and that story doesn’t end either.

What there is of The Graveyard Club hits the spot, but be warned going in that there’s not as much as you might expect. It also comes with three alternate covers, all but one available in versions both with and without logos.