Route 666, Vol. 1: Highway to Horror TPB
Review by Doc Ezra
Story:
Art:

Written by Tony Bedard
Pencils by Karl Moline
Inks by John Dell
Colors by Nick Bell
Letters by Troy Peteri

Published by CrossGen
Contents: Collects issues #1-6
Price: $15.95

My advice: Own it.

When Cassie Starkweather starts seeing dead people after her best friend's death during gymnatics practice, her family quite naturally assumes she's off her tree, and call in the professionals. What they don't know is that their darling daughter has been seing dead people almost all her life. The visions merely stopped after her failed suicide attempt at the age of eight. But now, with such an immediate trauma in her life, she's seeing them again. And worse things, too. Her friend's ghost is dragged away by a pair of inky black creatures that speak of delivering her soul to their master for his pleasure. And they seem very interested in finding out why Cassie can see them at all.

Howling nutjob or psychic defender of lost souls? Well, when she's sent to the Melchior Institute for long-term care, the doctors' diagnoses seem solidly on the former option. Of course, this might be because Dr. Melchior himself is a monster of some kind, and his orderly appears to be a werewolf. Cassie panics, and flees into the countryside, where the manhunt can begin for the "escaped lunatic murderer" that apparently left a few bodies behind. So Cassie runs. Over the course of this installment, she gets hounded by government agents, convinces a small town sheriff she's not crazy after a terrible accident, encounters the dark things a few more times, blasts a few werewolves, and runs with a serial killer. Pretty hectic for a trade that only collects six issues, no?

Route 666 is hectic. There's few to no wasted frames in any given installment. Bedard's writing is frenetic and keeps things moving so fast that Cassie doesn't have time to sit down and ask questions, and neither do the readers have time to put the book down and go read something else. It's like Tales from the Crypt on methamphetamines. There hasn't been anything like this title on the comic rack in years, and kudos to CrossGen for putting a solid horror comic in circulation.

Moline's pencils are excellent, and his framing works to enhance the spooky factor, just like a good cinematographer can make or break a horror film. The creatures themselves (both the monsters and the more amorphous spirits) have just the right amount of "not quite right" about their look to make them creepy. Add in Nick Bell's colors, which manage to be eerie without being dark, and you get one hell of a carnival ride. It's not dark, atmospheric horror; it's a garishly lit freakshow horror, which is exactly right for the comic medium.

If you miss the schlock horror comics of yesteryear, this one belongs on your bookshelf. And if you're too young to remember when there were nearly as many "scary" comics as there were superhero or war comics, then pick this up and see what you've been missing. You'll have a hard time putting it down.