Ghoul Scouts, Night of the Unliving Undead #3 review

It’s tough to be a kid who is into the undead. Even our 4 year old knows about zombies, despite the fact that he has never seen anything close to them on television. The closest he’s probably gotten is Scooby Doo where a ‘zombie’ attacks the gang but is promptly outed as an angry tenant wearing a mask. Ghoul Scouts, Night of the Unlving Undead is a clever comic for young readers that helps satisfy their zombie curiosity while providing some lessons to live by too.

Ghoul Scouts #3 starts out with a group of six early teen/tween kids who are sheltered in their library from a pack of zombies. The comic book does not have an introductory page that gets readers up to speed on who the characters are. However, this is a comic book that is aimed at young readers and there aren’t any others that write about zombies, so they’ll learn who is who quickly.

The main character in this issue is Peyton, a leather jacket wearing kid whose parents host a paranormal television show. He has an outer shell the projects tough guy, but things may not be all they seem with him.

As the team is stuck in the library they find that a group similar to them called the Zomboy Scouts existed years earlier and helped Full Moon Hallow in such spooky instances. Ghoul Scouts is actually somewhat of a misnomer, there are boys and girls in the group, just as their predecessor Zomboy Scouts had a mix.

In their research they learn that if the zombies continue on their prior course they’ll be going east, which would take them to the Eastside ‘Horror House’, where a rare and mysterious flower happens to grow.  Armed with purpose and a possible destination the team leaves the safety of the library where they encounter dozens of the undead.

This is all age appropriate zombie violence. The zombies get conked in the head with rocks, frying pans and baseball bats. One kid does have a gun and shoot it several times, but it fires potatoes-all of which go bouncing off of their heads. In this issue the most realistic violence happens when Peyton gets lightly bitten by a zombie.

After that the group rests where some surprisingly emotional feelings come out for an all age comic book. One of the characters cries, one opens up about their parent’s divorce, one shared the story of her grandmother’s breast cancer and one tells the group that he told his father that he hates him-even though he doesn’t. This is relatively heavy stuff, but Ghoul Scouts talks about it with ease and then has the group moving on down the road.

This is a great way for kids to know that problems happen to everyone and that it’s not about the problem, it’s about how you deal with it. It’s important to point out that this segment of the comic book isn’t preachy; it’s done in a campfire setting that kids will easily relate to.

The down side to Ghoul Scouts it that the comic book only has 23 pages and sells for $3.99. That price point, combined with the unknown variable of its characters might lead some young readers to pass on it. The remaining pages in the comic show readers how a comic book is produced, showing the script, stencil and inking stages. It’s published on Action Lab and is rated E, for everyone. Action Lab has one of the best rating systems for comic books that clearly let readers know who that comic book is intended for.