Tales from the Pizzaplex, Volume 1

January 15, 2025
In graphic versions of three previously published episodes, the "extremefamily fun" offered at Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex runs to dismemberment and attacks by blob monsters. Graphic in format but not--disappointingly, perhaps, to some readers--visual content, the tales feature mostly offstage carnage and rely heavily for their impact on suggestion and sound effects. In "Under Construction," Maya has a Sweet 16 party with friends. They venture into in an augmented reality arcade that's not quite ready for visitors, which she leaves (or so she thinks), only to find that people around her are dying of cancer and being replaced by hordes of weirdly blobby, pinkish, veined claylike figures. In the other stories, robots become gruesomely insistent on helping two young visitors lost in a maze, and a Pizzaplex workman named Grady gets caught in a series of looping tunnels meant for small children. The horrific consequences are visible as largely discreet splashes of gore. Maya's extensive grief and a childhood experience of being locked in a closet that left Grady deeply cleithrophobic stir in some psychodrama, but the main appeal here can be summed up by the closing panel, which contains nothing but a bone-crunching "SPLURCH." The art, though drawn and colored by a different set of artists for each story, has a consistent look throughout, and features a human cast that presents as racially diverse. Expertly crafted, with most of the gory details left to the imagination.(Graphic horror. 12-16)

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