From the minds of Grant Morrison and acclaimed television writer Alex Child emerges Proctor Valley Road, a horror series drawn by Naomi Franquiz, colored by Tamra Bonvillain, and lettered by Jim Campbell. This twisted trip to 1970s California follows four teenagers and their complicated relationship with Proctor Valley Road. Riotous, witty, and wickedly creepy, Proctor Valley Road takes the familiar teen drama/horror story and executes it beautifully.
Proctor Valley Road wastes no time in establishing its tone and cast. After the opening pages foreshadow the horrors to come, protagonists August, Rylee, Jennie, and Cora are introduced in quick succession. Their first visit to the titular Proctor Valley Road, which incites all the danger and drama to come, is prompted by a familiar adolescent conundrum: being simultaneously flat broke and desperate to go to a concert. August invents a $5-a-head spooky tour of the nearby Proctor Valley Road for three classmates, who leave unimpressed before a malignant force chases our heroes home. However, as the next day at school reveals, their guests weren't so lucky. Now at the center of a missing person's case, the girls set out to clear their name and solve the mystery at the heart of Proctor Valley Road.
The story that Grant Morrison and Alex Child have written is simple, but masterful in its performance. By continually breaking the boundaries between teenage mundanity and otherworldly horror, the relatively well-worn genre of supernatural small towns is refreshed with a bombastic edge. Proctor Valley Road's unfolding mystery is exceptionally well-paced, with each thread deploying a fresh horror for the heroes to face. Although humor isn't at the forefront of the story, it is genuinely funny. Its dialogue has a playfulness that feels authentically adolescent, whilst still honing an edge of wit. The story's characters are exceptionally well-delineated and endearing. Each of the main cast has satisfying individual arcs, which gives the reader a real opportunity to get invested in their development.
The robustness of the characterization is aided hugely by Naomi Franquiz's charming and idiosyncratic character design -- brimming with individual personality and expressiveness. Franquiz's illustration is simultaneously vibrant and naturalistic, and its blunt lines and bold dimensions heighten the sense of magical realism that underlies the story. Her horror imagery is impressive both in its imagination and implementation, underscoring the tension of the comic with a real visceral punch.
The most arresting element of Proctor Valley Road is its atmosphere, which owes a huge amount to Tamra Bonvillain's rich and subtly shifting colors. Bonvillain's deft variation of light and intensity allows the tone to shift effortlessly from foreboding to an idyllic vision of 1970s Americana, ratcheting up the tension from page to page. Jim Campbell's lettering is consistently impressive throughout, lending huge effect to scary sequences with mottled, stylized letters that capture the eeriness. His frequent integration of sound effects into the illustration itself is beautifully fluid and intensifies the action even further.
Proctor Valley Road is a stunning coming-of-age tale, demonstrating the narrative power of teenage girls when they are treated as complex characters. As a self-contained story, Proctor Valley Road is a fantastic exploration of horror, adolescence, and the bonds of friendship, wrapped in a package that is every bit as beautiful as it is blood-curdling.
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