Written by Alex Child, Grant Morrison
Art by Naomi Franquiz
Published by BOOM! Studios
Set in sunny Chula Vista, California in June 1970, Proctor Valley Road #1 drops us at the local gas station with high school cousins August and Rylee.
The pair are trying to “earn” a little money with sticky fingers and a rack of sunglasses.
The ill-conceived plan fails quickly, and they’re left to come up with other ways to fund their summer dream: seeing Janis Joplin live in concert.
A firm scolding later, August and Rylee head off to find their friend Jennie. She’s in the process of getting fired from her job doing yard work for a pearl-clutching elderly woman. Their friend Cora, isn’t having luck earning money, either.
And then Rylee has an idea.
After listening to local boys Bruce, Robert, and Skip go on about a recent incident on Proctor Valley Road, Rylee proposes that they all go there for a ghost tour–for the low price of $5 a head. Enough for those Janis tickets with some to spare.
Not thrilled about parting with five bucks but desperately hoping for some free love, the guys hop in the VW van. The seven of them are off to the outskirts of town. Cora just has to “scare the dollars out of their pants,” in the words of August.
They arrive, and Cora launches into a variety of supernatural nightmares that have been linked to this stretch of highway. There’s the usual unholy ground and mysterious headlights, but there’s other, less explicable stories, too.
Deeply disappointed that there were actual ghost stories and not excuses to drive somewhere remote to makeout, the boys wander off looking to hitch a ride home. Anything rather than climbing back in that van. When the boys don’t respond to August’s final call to leave, the four girls head head home.
The next day at school, the principal sits August, Rylee, Jennie, and Cora down. He’s looking for some answers. Word has it they were the last ones to see Skip, Robert, and Bruce at the county fair.
None of those boys came home that night.
Looks like those monster stories might be real after all.
