Proctor Valley Road #4
BOOM! Studios 2021
Written by Alex Child & Grant Morrison
Illustrated by Naomi Franquiz
Coloured by Tamra Bonvillain
Lettered by Jim Campbell
* Plagued by day terrors and visions of a drenched woman, the girls search for answers about Proctor Valley Road at another haunted spot, the abandoned Haven Bakery.
* Their inquiries into the spirit world will lead them to the local tribal reservation, but not before Rylee and August's feelings for the same boy threaten to tear the group apart...
This is among one of my personal favourite books right now. It is just kooky enough walking that fine line between serious and kitsch to be really make an impact upon the reader while making to relatable to. You’d think that a supernatural story wouldn’t be so relatable to but it really is all about how the characters act and behave with one another that makes them so familiar to the people in your own life. Granted I’d love to have that place where a woman like the Landlady who terrorises those who traverse her land because that would’ve been way too cool to experience, the horror of it and all. Still the relationship between these girls is what we can only aspire to have in our own lives to this degree.
I am thoroughly enjoying 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 exceedingly well presented. The character development is bloody brilliant to see and that’s thanks to the dialogue, character interaction and how they act and react to the situations and circumstances that they encounter. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story we’re drawn further and further in.
I am supremely impressed with the way that this is being structured and how the layers within the story continue to grow, evolve and strengthen while new ones emerge. These layers contain some incredible moments some of which strengthen the main arc while others provide this wonderful depth and complexity to the story as they swirl around the story. I mean their principal and that Baker yeah those are two of the layers that I am referring to. How everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is achieved perfectly.
The interiors here are so charming. The linework we see and with its varying weights and techniques being utilised to showcase the attention to detail that we see is beautifully rendered. The backgrounds that we see are phenomenal and they are utilised throughout the book and within the composition of the panels bringing us depth perception, sense of scale as well as the overall sense of size and scope of the book is amazing. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show such an extremely talented eye for storytelling. The colour work that we see is also rendered exceptionally well. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work are stupendous. The Baker alone showcases such an eye for how to utilise colour to get that maximum impact.
This is just so much fun to read. There are those books that are so incredibly fun to read that you get lost in the story and imagine yourself as part of it and this is one of those. You want to be friends with these girls and you want to see the Landlady but not end up dead or like those prior kids who ended up in the nuthouse. What this creative team has done is create a nearly perfect world filled with interesting characters and a do or die attitude that few in real life posses and that’s amazing to see.
About the Creator
Steven Leitman
Just me talking about the comics I enjoy reading, ones that you might not know exist and spotlighting the indie creators that excite me.
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