*received for free from netgalley for honest review* this was a pretty creepy read but idk just kinda missed the mark for me, would reread or recommend though

I wanted to love Proctor Valley Road, and instead, I was fairly underwhelmed. I thought the premise was great, and the banter between characters if fun, but the story felt rushed and choppy. There are many pieces to this story, along with a ton of characters, so it really needed to be longer to allow some breathing room and for the story to develop a bit more naturally.

Es una buena historia pero solo para pasar el momento, como que no me terminó de llamar del todo.
El arte me gustó bastante pero en temas del "horror" meh, se quedaba corto.

This reads like a Boom title from ten years ago - a group of girls on a spooky adventure, full of positive enforcement. Each girl has their own personal problem bothering them, which will of course get solved.

It takes place in the Seventies, which hardly seems to be important - it's background noise at most. The spooky story isn't very spooky, and Child tries to force too much plot in the five issues/chapters that we get.

Someone gets killed early on in the story, and it has nowhere near the impact you'd think it should have (in fact, all the spookiness doesn't have too much impact).

There is absolutely no sign of Grant Morrison's hand in any of this. My guess is he maybe had a look at the script, perhaps gave some notes, and then let them attach his name to the project.

3 stars. Thank you Netgalley for the arc. This is definitely an adult graphic novel/comic. The violence and language wasn't too bad but still be aware. The friendship dynamic was the best part of this book. The writing wasn't my favorite nor was the art style. But seeing a strong female friendship group was worth the read.

It’s the summer of 1970 in Southern California and four friends need money to get tickets for the upcoming Janis Joplin concert. Luckily, there happens to be a haunted stretch of highway on Proctor Valley Road that they decide to make money off of by offering paid tours of the area to rubes. But, oh no, the ghosties is real - and lotsa people gonna die!

I’m a big fan but Grant Morrison is not immune to the occasional crap comic and Proctor Valley Road, even though there’s another writer involved, is definitely a crap Morrison comic.

This is me a-speculating but I feel like this was a failed TV show idea that got repurposed into a comic. It’s basically “What if Strangers Things was set in the ‘70s instead of the ‘80s?” (the cast are all kids/nostalgia/spooky stuff happening in small town). In Supergods, Morrison talks about cynically consulting star charts and the like to dowse future trends and capitalise on them, so Morrison isn’t above being mercenary. And Alex Child, who wouldn’t have gotten this book published if it were just his name on the comic, is a TV screenwriter…

Regardless, this is a bad comic for many other reasons. The characters are a boring bunch and I just don’t care about the things these teenage girls do - lusting after boys, wanting to be an astronaut, not being a ‘fraidy cat - in part because Morrison/Child failed to make the reader care in the first place. Proctor Valley Road just happens to be haunted for silly reasons by uninteresting stock monsters (pretty sure the minotaur monster is a straight lift from Harrow County, which Naomi Franquiz is an artist on) and a cliched evil witch who has cliched evil witch reasons.

Cliches abound like the smalltown ignorant white jocks at the county fair and a librarian who appears at the right time for an info dump. There’s a lot of lazy storytelling choices here too - August somehow survives a car explosion that destroys a giant monster but leaves her with nary a scratch, despite her being under the car at the time of the explosion! When the girls are trapped in a burning house, some random dude appears to save them and then connects them to a shaman he’s related to to get them to the next plot point. It’s so contrived.

All of which amounts to a very boring and forgettable YA comic, which is what Proctor Valley Road is. A poorly conceived, weakly executed, overly written and unimpressive story that never once entertained - easily one of Grant Morrison’s worst comics.

I've been a Grant Morrison fan for a long time, and I was delighted when this book popped up on Netgalley. Their first foray (to my knowledge) into YA comics is incredibly successful. Proctor Valley Road boasts a great cast of friends who are both well-written and gorgeously designed. The setting-- southern California in the summer of 1970-- is effectively rendered through scene dressing, color palette, and pop culture references. This evocative realism co-exists beautifully alongside the story's supernatural elements. Readers of all ages will enjoy getting to know August and her friends and finding out what exactly is going on at Proctor Valley Road.

Yes. Proctor Valley Road has many things in common with Stranger Things… Group of misfits… monster baddies… set in past, loaded with nostalgia. But how does it diverge from the Netflix series? And does it enough to stand on its own?

The title refers to an actual county road in Southern California that a several kids believe is populated by ghosts. So much so that they think they may be able to earn some money taking people out there for spooky tours. The goal is to make enough to get them to the Janis Joplin show.

To answer the above question: Proctor Valley Road is an actual place that has had its own stories connected to it. It doesn’t take much to see the connection between the demons and the commentary on the state of race relations and the treatment of women in the 70s. Demons abound, authorized by society and some out there

I liked this one for the characters and relationships, but the horror elements where a little repetitive at times… but the art is almost unmissable with great use of light and color in the dark scenes.

Check out this preview.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Boom Studios, and the creators for an advanced copy for review.

Proctor Valley Road has been mentioned to me by various fellow readers so I pretty much knew the premise upon diving in here. It's essentially a Scooby-Doo type story, by which I mean - it sort of ticks all those horror boxes but feels like it's really targeted at younger adult reading. It's definitely not scary. At all.

The art is undoubtedly gorgeous here. It's a cartoon style - nobody is aiming for realism here - and the lightheartedness of the writing has the balance feeling just right between the two.

Unfortunately, I did find the world building extremely lacking here. There's not a lot explained to the reader - having read this I still couldn't explain certain things. I mean, I know 'what' happened, but have no idea of 'how' it was all possible.

It all seems to whizz by at super speed, which I find is really uncharacteristic of Grant Morrison. It definitely doesn't feel like one of his books, which possibly accounts for my disappointment here.

Overall, it's a snappy YA read, but one that never really gets a chance to breathe because of it. It also seems perfectly in step with all the tropes that streaming services require these days leaving you wondering if this was written with such a thing in mind and for me that sadly comes at its detriment.

I was so excited when asked to review the new graphic novel, Proctor Valley Road. I recently started collecting comics and Proctor Valley Road was one series I picked up. It’s a scary, imaginative, and at times funny read.

The graphic novel brings together in one book all five issues of the comic. Based on urban legends in the early 70s, Proctor Valley Road is the story of four teenage girls who decide to take people on spook tours of Proctor Valley Road in order to raise money for tickets to a Janis Joplin concert. Of course, their first tour goes awry when their customers, three teenage boys about to be drafted to Vietnam, go missing. Being accused of helping the boys dodge the draft, the girls go back to Proctor Valley Road to find them. What they find is so scary and out there, it’s not to be believed.

Proctor Valley Road also shares a little about each girls’ home life. Jennie-O wants to be an astronaut. August lives with her mom after her father deserted them. Rylee is in love with a boy that doesn’t seem to notice her. Cora is afraid of the dark and has a spooky secret of her own.

The story is short but fully-developed. The art is well-done, detailed and fills the entire frame. The coloring is vibrant and evokes the 1970s.

Proctor Valley Road, the graphic novel, is perfect for comic book collectors and non-collectors alike. For collectors of the comic books, the graphic novel provides a way to revisit the story at any time allowing you to leave the comic books in their protective sleeves. For non-collectors, the book is a great read without having to scour the comic books stores in search of hard-to-find issues,

Thank you to NetGalley and Boom Studios for an advance e-reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Proctor Valley Road has it all: a haunted road, ghosts, creepy crawlies, friendship, and Janis Joplin. I loved reading this graphic novel. I was hooked from start to finish. August, Rylee, Cora, and Jennie are incredible characters and I loved getting to know them throughout the story. I love the character designs. Each character is so unique and their personalities are captured so well in the book's illustrations. As someone who was already familiar with Proctor Valley Road, the actual place, it was so interesting to see the story play out. I will also say, I am completely terrified to ever be on that road again. I don't have August, Rylee, Cora, and Jennie there to help me ghoul bust! If you are looking for a graphic novel to send chills up your spine, look no further than Proctor Valley Road.

A new Grant Morrison comic? Well, even if Morrison has been a lot less consistently impressive lately, that's still of interest. Except that it's a co-write, with someone whose bracket-worthy credit after name is...Holby City. Right. And it does feel very light on that characteristic Morrison strangeness, or even on the grasp of everyday Britishness you'd hope for if putting a charitable construction on the Holby alumnus. Instead, we're back in the era of Nixon and 'Nam, somewhere not far north of the Mexican border, where four US teens trying to make the price of tickets to see Janis Joplin instead find themselves falling foul of the ghosts and ghoulies on the eponymous road, not to mention the media and the law as things get increasingly out of hand. Naomi Franquiz and Tamra Bonvillain's art recalls another small town American horror comic, Harrow County, but where Tyler Crook's work there could capture the spookiness as well as the slice of life stuff, here the apparitions only ever feel strange rather than properly unsettling. Perhaps if Morrison and Child had tried to do something on a haunted thoroughfare over this side of the Atlantic, where both of them come from, they might have ended up with something a little more characterful, not to mention timely given the folk horror revival. As is, by entering the crowded field of US-set horror comics, they've ended up with something which feels like a mid-range Cullen Bunn miniseries, or a wannabe Stranger Things, and one can only infer that the choice of setting was made with more of an eye to potential screen adaptations than out of any desperate belief in a story that had to be told.

(Netgalley ARC)

Setting: Chula Vista, California in the 1970’s

Characters: teenagers August, Rylee, Cora, and Jennie

The girls are trying to buy tickets to attend the concert of their dreams — Janis Joplin, but they have no money. Then they have the bright idea to host a "Spook Tour" on the infamous roadway — Proctor Valley Road. But of course, their attendees venture off…

Now the girls are the talk of the town, and not in a good way. They do all of the bonkers things they can think of to get the guys back, and it’s an awful creepy journey.

I don’t know about you, but this makes me want to visit Proctor Valley Road IRL. This series is based on the century old ghost stories — tales ranging from a large ape-looking beast , to a screaming banshee, to a hitchhiking lady dressed in blue, to a demon car chasing after you. You may even leave with small hand-prints on your car and your car mysteriously breaking down or crashing out there. Sounds fun right? Who’s coming with me?

I haven’t read many graphic novels before, but this one has to be my favorite! It’s spooky and the art is amazing.