Writer Jeff Lemire, artist Gabriel Walta, colorist Jordie Bellaire and letterer Steve Wands head out on the back roads and find only horror in Phantom Road #1, published by Image Comics.
I grew up on trucks. My dad owned a small trucking company, and I frequently would ride along when I wasn’t in school. As I sat in the passenger seat, it was easy to let my mind wander, to imagine shapes and faces, figures even, in the trees or mountain passes.
I was a child with an overactive imagination, so there were times when those things were absolutely frightening. It’s no wonder I usually asked him to pick me up a couple comics at the truck stop to read en route before we left.
Liminal spaces are the spaces between spaces, the area in which a transition happens. The idea of the liminal space is something that has gained prominence on the internet, as the collective hive mind interrogates these places that one is not meant to linger in, whether it’s dimly lit hospital corridors or overgrown freeway rest stops.
Phantom Road takes that idea and applies it to its entire concept, both literally and physically. It’s the story of Dom, a trucker who finds himself in the middle of fantastic circumstances. It’s also the story of the horror that can be found in those spaces in between.
Lemire and Walta make the mundane unsettling. For Dom, it’s letting his mind wander, being confronted by a parking lot drug dealer or running into someone overly friendly in the men’s room. None of these things should be happening — you should be able to walk between your truck and the truck stop in peace, you shouldn’t have to deal with a weirdo while you’re peeing. They’re able to make those things feel so off that when the literal horror starts, we are already unsettled, though Dom is clearly used to it.
When the fantastic is introduced, they take another step, shifting that unsettling feeling into true horror. Dom is just trying to get from one place to another — one of his few lines of dialogue is about him looking forward to a break after another day of driving. Walta turns Dom’s weariness into panic as he shifts into a strange world just by touching a freakish artifact left in the road, a world Bellaire colors in a tone that’s washed out, almost sepia. The unsettling blur of green on the interstate is now a beige openness, and that’s where it’s scary. Lemire knows horror can often be about seeing the “maybe” become all too definite.
After this issue, I have no idea where this story is going, and that’s good. Lemire has created a terrifying situation, in which the spaces between have become the only space. Walta and Bellaire have brought it to life, creating the visual equivalent of the unsettling sound of your ears ringing.
This book sent me back to the times I spent staring out the window, wondering what we were passing, and what would happen if we stopped. I thought I didn’t like that feeling, and I was right … but that doesn’t mean it’s not entertaining as hell.
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
