Advance Review: ‘Phantom Road’ TP Vol. 1 Starts In Neutral Then Accelerates
by Tom Smithyman
Overview
Here’s a series that is better presented in a collected format like this than in a series of monthly installments. Readers are more likely to forgive the first two slow and confusing chapters since the back half of the volume provides a few answers along with a much-needed change of pace.
Overall
8.5/10With a creative team as talented as Jeff Lemire and Gabriel H. Walta, you would think that Phantom Road would start with a bang and never let up. Yet the beginning of this series – the first five issues of which are collected in this volume – starts off slowly.
Lemire’s script is intentionally confusing, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It involves truck driver Dom and his surprise passenger Birdie, whom Dom discovers in an auto accident. The pair are suddenly transported to a parallel world full of featureless creatures that seem to want to kill them. If that set up sounds at all interesting, it really isn’t.
It’s not until later in the book when new characters are introduced in our dimension, that things start to get interesting. In fact, that’s when Phantom Road gets great. Lemire pulls off a strong pivot and turns the middle chapter into a procedural that takes place in the regular world with new characters. The rest of the collection bounces back and forth between the worlds, dropping a few clues about what is to come while also giving Bridie and Dom a mission.
Walta’s illustrations also seem to benefit from the change in story. Instead of lots of featureless creatures chasing a tractor trailer through a desert, he gets to draw cops, motels and some service stations. Jordie Bellaire’s colors help to bring our reality to life, particularly when compared to the drab neutral tones in the alt world. There aren’t many bright colors in the book, but when they appear, the pop that much more.
This is clearly a case where a monthly comic book is inferior to a collected edition. The graphic novel version of this story doesn’t leave readers hanging – and wondering whether they should bother buying each individual issue.
Phantom Road TP Vol. 1 will be available for purchase tomorrow.
