The Tale of the Ghastly Grinner

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Air Date: Saturday, December 3, 1994
Storyteller: Betty Ann (Raine Pare-Coull)

Frame: An exasperated Gary (Ross Hull) and an impatient Frank (Jason Alisharan) are trying to get a fire started unsuccessfully, when Frank gets the idea to swipe Tucker's (Daniel DeSanto) comic book to use as kindling. Betty Ann enters the scene and takes the book from Frank, saying it would be perfect for her story, while Tucker, still annoyed, is at least happy it's in safer hands. She then offers a "what if?" scenario, with the idea that comic books can be gateways to another dimension, as the campfire roars to life, eagerly awaiting another tale.

Story: Ethan Wood (Amos Crawley) is a talented young artist who comic book companies constantly reject as he seeks to prove his talents to the world. One day, at a comic book shop, a young lady named Frankie (Missy Christensen) sees his artwork. She introduces him to a similar artist's work, that of Sylvester Uncas (Danny Raboy), who designed a character known as the Ghastly Grinner (Neil Kroetsch). Ethan goes home with a free copy of 'Ghastly Grinner' #1, and through a series of improbable events, manages to bring the character into the real world, and has to figure out how to stop him and get him back inside the book.

Review: While I really like the idea of a comic book villain coming into the real world, and while this is an episode that ought to be right up my alley, especially as one of the more famous episodes of the series, upon watching it, I actually found it lacking in quality, aside from perhaps a little humour coming from Ethan's nerdy helper, Hooper Picalarro (Heidi Burbela) who plays the dry, humourless nerd pretty damn well. The Grinner's design is excellent, but I'd still never cast Kroetsch as The Joker. They could have done more with this, such as showing us the world inside the comic book, but there's only so much one can do.

Final Rating: Spooked

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