• Authors: Joe Hill & Stephen King
• Publisher: Gollancz
• Year of publication: 2009/2019
• Number of pages: 47/37
• ISBN Throttle: 978-0062215956
• ISBN Full Throttle: 978-1473219915

Review:

This is Hill & King’s own take on a road trip gone bad with a truck and a few bikers!

Joe Hill was asked to write a story for a Richard Matheson tribute collection. Immediately he knew what to write, a tribute to Matheson’s Duel (later adapted into a movie, the debut film of Steven Spielberg) where a gang of outlaw bikers are chased by an old battered truck.

But since, at the time, Joe had never ridden a bike, he asked his father Stephen King to help him write the story, because King is an avid biker! (Joe Hill has his license now!)

The result is a story packed with action and enough emotional background (not easy for a story not even fifty pages long) that’s a great tribute to one of the best and best known writers of all time! Matheson would be proud! Those that know Joe Hill’s work also know he pays tribute to other writers often in his work. For instance, in the Lock & Key graphic novels he named the town where the Lockes move to Matheson as well.

I had read Throttle years ago but now I’m reading Hill’s collection Full Throttle and decided to reread it (same with ‘In the Tall Grass’ and a few other stories in this collection, by the way)

And of course Joe Hill had Throttle adapted into a graphic novel as well (see image below) which I highly recommend as well! ‘Road Rage’ is a double feature with Matheson’s Duel and Hill and King’s Throttle!