Proctor Valley Road #5
The girls have their final battle with the Landlady in Proctor Valley Road #5, by writers Alex Child and Grant Morrison, artist Naomi Franquiz, colorist Tamra Bonvillain, and letterer Jim Campbell. Proctor Valley Road has shaped up to be a whole lot of fun, and this final issue closes the whole thing masterfully.
Basically, this issue is rather simple, and that’s why it works so well. It opens with the girls still fighting, but each of them misses the other and needs to solve the problem of the Landlady, so they get back together and, with the help of Chayton, find their way to the Landlady and defeat her. The ending sees the friends going to the Janis Joplin concert, but a call on a police scanner that August “borrowed” from the cops gives the girls even more action.
For Grant Morrison fans, Proctor Valley Road is a book that may have started off as not what they were expecting. It doesn’t have any of the Morrison trademarks that they place into their stories- it’s not weird or mind-bending, instead being a fairly run-of-the-mill horror story. However, that’s one of the reasons why the book is so excellent. Child and Morrison teamed up to create the perfect retro summer blockbuster horror movie in comic book form, and this issue is a wonderful capstone on the whole thing. It’s plain to see that the two writers embraced the horror movie structure, and while there are a lot of cliches to the story, it all works.
That’s the joy of this issue; it ties up all the loose ends, throws in some character development, especially for Cora, and brings all of the girls back together at the end. Woman-centric horror stories like this one are few and far between, and this last issue shows the strength of the whole thing. All of the characters are wonderful, and the characters are begging for a sequel; it feels like their story isn’t over, and the way the book ends totally opens things for a sequel. It’s a really great ending, even if it is cliche. In fact, that’s half the fun- the reader kind of knows what’s going to happen when they crack this one open, and that’s okay because of how entertaining Child and Morrison made it all.
Franquiz’s cartoonish art style has worked way better than anyone would have thought it for a horror story, and this issue is yet another example of that. It’s never been a scary book, but the type of movie this story would be isn’t meant to be scary. Her emotive pencils really get the sentiment and character development across, which is the most crucial part.
Proctor Valley Road #5 is as cliche as they come, but that makes it no less entertaining. Child, Morrison, Franquiz, Bonvillain, and Campbell have created a fun horror comic that just begs for a sequel. This issue serves to tie everything up nicely, and while it definitely leaves things open, it’s enough of an ending that if there’s never a sequel, it’s still a satisfying story.
