MacabreDaily Takes A Trip Down Image Comics "PHANTOM ROAD": Issues 1 And 2
One the latest from Image Comics, Phantom Road by Jeff Lemire is an interesting read so far, though it is skating the line of falling into well-worn tropes.
Phantom Road starts out with Dom, a truck driver on a lonely highway. He comes across a car accident with a lone survivor, Birdie. After touching a strange object jutting out of the road they are transported to a parallel world, a barren shadow of our own, populated by naked, zombie-like monsters.
That is more-or-less the entire first issue, thankfully the second issue features a decent amount of exposition from the obligatory mysterious side character (who always knows more than they will tell).
At the moment, I’m not entirely sure what sort of story Jeff Lemire is really trying to tell. The characters are bit too stereotypical and a little flat, and there doesn’t seem to be any theme or implications that are tying any of the exposition or the characters together. There has been about as much explained about them as there has been about the mysterious shadow-world. Narratively it feels he’s reluctantly relying on tropes, and that he does have something planned that isn’t going to be as predictable as it feels so far.
The artwork by Gabriel H. Walta is passable. It has a nice gritty feel that gives a more ‘blue-collar’ feeling to the characters’ actions, but it unfortunately lacks the fine detail that is sorely needed for the monsters, as they lack so much definition in design and explanation that they just don’t feel particularly interesting or threatening. Even the strange artifact, a central part of the story, looks like an indistinct blob and considering its pivotal nature you’d try to design something a little more evocative or detailed.
Overall, Phantom Road has the feel of Stephen King’s Langoliers, or J. Michael Straczynski’s Midnight Nation, but with much less going on (at least so far). It does have my curiosity, but not my enthusiasm. It has some potential and I would like to see where it is going, but I’m concerned for its ability to get out from under the tropes and actually tell a story that is worth reading.
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