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ROUTE 666 #1
Recommended (7/10)
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CrossGen Comics
Writer: Tony Bedard
Pencils: Karl Moline
Inks: John Dell
Colors: Nick Bell
Letters: Troy Peteri & Dave Lanphear
Price: $2.95 US/$4.75 CAN |
Once again, CrossGen impresses with its effort to explore different genres in its lineup of comics. Tony Bedard leads the charge down this unusual path. This teen horror drama boasts some surprisingly chilling moments. Moline and the other artists tell the story clearly and quite well. The problem is that the creators throw us in the deep end of the plot pool; the reader does't have a chance to get to know the characters all that well.
On the surface, Cassie is a normal young woman. She attends college, is part of the varsity gymnastics team and has a crush on a certain jock-type named Bart. Yep, she seems pretty normal... except that she sees dead people, as Haley Joel Osment was prone to telling people. Her parents admit her to the care of a psychiatric institution, where her life gets even weirder.
Moline's art here reminds me a little of the dark, realistic style that J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray bring to DC/America's Best Promethea. He has a more angular, exaggerated style, though, and that works well with the psychedelic Casper riff that Bedard has going in the script. Speaking of which, I love the design of the ghostly henchmen who turn up later in the book; they contrast well with the more convention, realistic spectres. Bell's colors are dark, but subtly so, adding to the atmosphere and supernatural texture of the art.
Bedard provides some horrific, cutting-edge horror elements here along with the more conventional ones, but he forgot one thing: a main character. I'm exaggerating, of course. My point is this: I have no idea who Cassie is outside of her "curse" and her one-dimensional quasi-Valley girl personality. The brief moments in which she does seems to have a personality, she comes off as spoiled brat. I'm sure there's more to her, but I was looking for more in this introduction.
Page eight. That's where Bedard and company grabbed my attention. Given the tone of the book at first, I figured this was more of a Buffy kind of book, but that eighth page took the book to a different level of horror. The vivid intensity of true horror was more than enough to pique my interest.
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