Spoiler Alert!: Some of the endings to these short stories are revealed in this review
by Courtney Hilden
Terror Trips is a collection of three Goosebumps stories done as graphic narratives. "One Day at Horrorland" chronicles a family's misadventures at a theme park, "Deep Trouble" is about a boy visiting his scientist uncle and meeting a mermaid, and "A Shocker on Shock Street" is about two kids trying out a new theme park ride.
Each story stands up at least reasonably well within the graphic narrative (or as the kids would probably read these call them, comics.) There is plenty of action and monsters to make each story fun.
The two stories for "Deep Trouble" and "One Day at Horrorland" are predictable. "Deep Trouble" has the hero, Billy, comes to the inevitable conclusion that the mermaid, captured for scientific study and confinement, should be released. "One Day at Horrorland" is slightly less predictable, with the children remembering a detail about the theme park that leads them to the discover the weakness of the monsters that are about to kill them. It is the sort of detail that seems to obvious in retrospect. In terms of the storyline, the impressive one is "A Shocker on Shock Street," which has an impressive Twilight Zone-esque ending. The story starts out with the assumption that the two children are completely normal, but in the end, it turns out they were like their father's other creations: robots meant to emulate something else. The ending was well-handled, fast, and devastating.
The art work for "Deep Trouble" is particularly beautiful. The artist, Amy Kim Ganter, created an adorable mermaid, one that I would love to follow in further adventures. The artwork for the other two stories was serviceable for the story but not as eye-catching as Ganter's work.
