Proctor Valley Road #1

Proctor Valley Road #1

BOOM! Studios 2021

Written by Grant Morrison & Alex Child

Illustrated by Naomi Franquiz

Coloured by Tamra Bonvillain

Lettered by Jim Campbell

August, Rylee, Cora & Jennie have organized a "Spook Tour" with their classmates on the most haunted, demon-infested stretch of road in America to fund attending the concert of their dreams. When their visit turns deadly, these four friends race to rescue the missing students... before the town tears them limb from limb. Now they must slay the evils roaming Proctor Valley Road... along with the monsters lurking in the hearts of 1970s America.

The first thing that ran through my mind after reading this was Lemon Tree Passage Road which can be found in New South Wales. This road is infamous for seeing a ghost when you travel upon it in the right circumstances. So my connection with this story is already there for you it may be something much different but I will say that this is so much fun to read that you are bound to find your connection with the story or the characters or simply the premise. Also the fact that these four girls, with on in particular, love Janis Joplin and everything they do is to go see her in concert is an aspect of this that I am particularly enjoying.

I am thrilled with the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented in such a marvellous way. The character development is proper brilliant! I mean these girls are so complex and full of sass and verve that we get the sense of what drives each and every one of them. Cora may be the exception but that depends on the reader I suppose. To see the cousins with their mothers yeah that explains almost everything you need to know about them and why they are so close lol. Brilliantly done and it leaves me chuffed. The pacing here is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing this world, the characters and the story we know we’re in for something special.

I like the way that we see this being structured and how the layers within the story emerge and grow and how one crescendos to a dramatic ending. The way that we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow is really rather quite extraordinary to see.

I was a little surprised by the interiors here and trust me surprises are interesting things. At first I thought is this an all-ages title? Then of course I was like no it surely isn’t but i like the juxtaposition is beautiful to see. The first couple of pages really made me a firm believer and fan of the work being done here. The attention to detail is at such a great level of quality and then to see backgrounds being utilised throughout as we see them in the composition within the panels is phenomenal. How all this creates the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope of the story is magnificently achieved. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show an extremely talented eye for storytelling. The colour work is gorgeously rendered as well. I like how we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work. Maybe it’s an optical illusion but I like seeing the application of both the colour blocking and gradation effects that I see here.

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Alright folks this is brilliantly done and it evokes so much emotion and feeling out of the reader that makes it feel like a perfect vessel for the story. It’s too bad they don’t have a gay friend in the mix, I mean all these intrepid girl explorer’s that are on stands these days really need that gay bestie! BOOM! Strikes again as this is another title I can’t live without.