Alright, let’s continue with some more Halloween haunts with the Chilling Adventures imprint presenting Jinx’s Grimm Fairy Tales. A perfect choice for the chaotic little girl born on Halloween. And just like that unpredictable girl, the title isn’t what it seems.

Magdalena Vissaggio writes the intro where a teenage Jinx is trying to wrangle two rowdy kids in what was supposed to be an easy babysitting gig for guitar money. When suddenly she is hit with the idea to capture their attention with some special fairytale stories with a twist of course. Vissagio does a good job in capturing the snark and speak-before-thinking quality a teenage Jinx would have as she dubs one of her villainous characters Von Douchebag and tells the kids to ask the parents about the meaning of Douche later.

As for the stories, they’re not the fairytales you might first think of. Not even the Grimm Brothers ones. Rather they come from or are inspired by folklore and creepy tales. They also have surprising cameos, and not from the Jinx universe.

The Monkey’s Paw has been rewritten and done in many variations across tv shows and books and James III does an admirable spin on it with old Archie character, the ditzy but sweet Suzie. Suzie is having an awful day until Jinx offers the power of the monkey’s paw that always comes at a price. Suzie’s wishes and backfires are bad enough but doesn’t reach the grimmness promised in the title and the ending was so ambiguous that I was actually confused. And not in the horror-twist way. I was just confused.

However, Eva Cabrera’s art is excellent and keeps Suzie as the blonde bombshell she is known for post-wishes yet also makes her an adorable mess in the beginning. So very good art.

Will the Real Sorcerer Please Stand Up? by Joe Corallo is an amusing story featuring an old Archie comics player, Kadark the Mystic who features as a bad guy using his hypnotic gem to turn everyone into his admirers. Not if Jinx has anything to say about it with a surprised Dilton Doiley as her partner. It features some amusing banter between the two personalities and the twist is a fun surprise. The art by Evan Stanley has a classic Archie quality that adds to the fun of the story that is more amusing than grimm in my opinion.

Kevnetella was a more traditional fairytale. Not on Cinderella as I first suspected when I saw the title but it is based on Italian fairytale Cannetella which as you know from those pre-Disney sanitized tales can get pretty grimm which Vissaggio delivers. Prince Kevin’s interests turn toward the tall, dark and handsome but his father insists that he must marry a princess in order to preserve the family line. So when Kevin jokingly suggests he will only marry a girl if she is of golden-haired, and golden-skin.

Lady Cheryl Blossom is not either of those things but using the dark arts, she transforms into a real golden girl in order to win Prince Kevin’s hand and stab his back.

It plays out like a traditional fairytale from there with Cheryl getting her comupence and Kevin getting his prince. However, I feel like it would have benefitted from more pages as the grimm scenes were only one or two panels out of the three-four pages. In fact all of them could use a longer length. I know there are such things as page limits but since it’s supposed to be a super scary one-shot anathology, I think they could go all out to get real dark and grimm.

Anyway, I enjoyed the art by Craig Cermak the most in this one-shot as its details and vivid colors make it fit right in a golden-paged fairytale book.

While these are unique stories, they don’t quite live up to the premise of being Halloween stories or even that dark. Additionally, they were so short that it left me wanting for. . . just a little extra oomph to it all or more of an impact. So you can read it once for the Halloween season but there are other scarier and more creative Archie stories that will suit the season.