Action Lab Comics’ The Trip, part of The Danger Zone line, is a horror comic that follows a group of college students who take a trip to the wilderness. While on their vacation, they take a drug that sends them on a whole other kind of trip where they will be forced to face their worst nightmares.

The core plot of The Trip follows along the horror genre’s usual lines, but with some neat twists and turns that keep the comic feeling fresh. Likewise, the characters sort of fit into those horror genre stereotypes such as the jock, the burnout, and the goth, but it’s a high-level association and doesn’t provide expectations of the characters’ fates or backgrounds. Overall, Jesse Grillo’s story makes good use of these traditional elements without telling just another horror story.

David Brame’s art, Heather Breckel’s colors, and Cary Kelley’s lettering are crucial to telling this story. The Trip has a grungy, slightly exaggerated look that gives the setting a lived in and familiar look. It’s easy to identify character and setting traits at a glance, which, given the fast pace of this comic, is a good quality to have. The hallucinations brought on by consuming tolache are depicted using vibrant colors, filters, and abstractions of elements in the real world. These sequences are the highlights of the comic. The Trip is largely a realistic form of horror, but the hallucinations provide opportunities to introduce more monstrous and supernatural designs. It’s these elements that make the comic stand out and make it an absolutely terrifying read.

The Trip is a fun, quick read with art as beautiful as it is horrific. Orders for The Trip can be placed at actionlabcomics.com with copies of the book set to ship in May.