Stephen King has great memories of reading the short story "Duel" by Richard Matheson for the first time in 1971 and both Joe Hill, his son, and he has fond memories of watching the Stephen Speilberg movie made of Duel in the same year that they watched together on videodisk in 1978. So when the time came for an anthology of work by authors saluting Matheson, both of them signed up to write a story together. This comic contains their story "Throttle" and Matheson's story "Duel".
In "Throttle" a bike gang a friend of one of them, Roy has just taken them for $60,000 to build a meth lab that he says blew up, but his buddy who set this up and belongs to the bike gang, Race, doesn't buy this. Only when he goes to question Roy and his girlfriend with some of the guys, she begins shooting and one of the guys takes a machete and goes to town and now Roy and his girlfriend are both dead and Race has an idea that the money may be at his sister's house and wants to go there to look for it, but his dad Vince and half of the gang is against it while the other half is for going to the sister's house. As they head out down the road after stopping at a roadside diner to discuss their plans and eat, they head out on the road. It soon becomes apparent though that the truck behind them is gunning for them. But why? And will any of them survive?
In "Duel" Mann is heading across the United States towards San Fransico through mountainous regions. He's a salesman thinking of the appointments he has and the hoped-for contacts that will likely lead to disappointment. Then this old, belching truck comes up from behind him and passes him. He doesn't want to be breathing noxious fumes for miles and the only way to not be stuck breathing in the fumes he has to either slow down or to pass him. He doesn't want to be late for his appointment so he passes the truck. Then the truck passes him again. When he tries to pass the truck again the truck moves across the highway blocking him. Then after a while, the truck gives him the go-ahead signal and it turns out that there is a truck coming in the other lane that he narrowly avoids hitting. He does manage to pass the truck and stay ahead of it for a while then he stops at a diner and hopes to lose the truck there, but he had no luck as the truck is waiting for him.
When I watched the movie Maximum Overdrive which was based on the Stephen King short story "Trucks". It had a lot of trucks in it that were running by themselves. Evil trucks. One, in particular, was a truck with a purple cab with a clown on the front that looked particularly menacing. Twice now while I've been driving I've gotten in front of two trucks that were purple and been totally freaked out because of that movie. Killer trucks like in these two stories can be scary things. Matheson really hit on something with his short story "Duel" all those years ago that still resonates today. Both of these stories are really good. You really don't know if these people in the story will survive their encounters with the trucks. I like how in King and Hill's story there's a twist at the end. I give this book four out of five stars.
Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Road-Rage-Stephen-King-ebook/dp/B0097EROYU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540565309&sr=8-1&keywords=road+rage+comic
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