Comic Review: Low Road West #3

Low Road West #3

BOOM! Studio

Writer: Phillip K. Johnson

Artist: Flaviano

This is life under a copper sky: cold and dangerous, infinite, and fascinating.

If you are like me and missed the first issue of Low Road West, you can be happy that you’ve found it early enough to go back only a short distance.  And there’s time to go back. In the Copper Sky, we have all the time in the world.

Low Road West shows us the American East Coast where a nuclear first strike has already occurred. The landscape is chaos, gutted and broken down vehicles litter the deserted roads; The air is acrid, US oil wells are on fire, vegetation is eroding and leaving desert-like conditions behind.  The US is at war and 5 child refugees have been abandoned halfway on their journey through the Oklahoma dust bowl.  And so abandoned, they continue on their way, heading west.

Heading West is an established trope in fiction. With few exceptions, if characters are escaping an enemy or danger they are going to be heading westward.  West is the destination for change, hope, and the unknown. The road west is unexplored, as dangerous as the potential rewards and completely life-altering.

For our main characters this trope holds true and in Issue 3 we find everyone continuing to explore the ruins of Custer’s Wake. Angela, Shawn, and Harm are outside and dealing with the roaming militia band intent on capturing them.  Ben, Emma, and Aamir are inside the Hollow House and in some ways, their journey is far more dangerous.  This is the rose unfolding petal by petal, inviting us inward.  What has Amir found, where are Ben and Emma and just how long has Harm been in Custer’s Wake anyway?  Clues abound and this issue does a great job of illuminating the dark corners bit by bit.

Visually, Flaviano is doing an excellent job. Flaviano plays with a range of styles, running through clean lines, fine details, crisp shadow blocking.  And then, in the middle, an almost haphazard line work and loose sketches as though the whole universe is in flux.  Holding on, and then pulling away.   The pacing and direction are excellent and immersive and every panel contributes.  It’s really quite marvelous and in perfect step to Johnson’s plotting and approach to characters.  

I’ve heard Low Road West compared to Stephen King’s The Stand and find that’s apt for the most obvious reasons.  But I think it finds more parallels with Clive Barker’s The Great and Secret Show. Not only because I think Philip Kennedy Johnson is bringing us a fully realized world, with solid characters and honest motivations.  But also because he seems interested in pushing his genre forward in the same way Barker was.

Heading West should be more than just the direction.  It has happened so many times in the actual history of the United States that it would be awful to only use it as a basic trope.  I very much enjoy the thematic exploration of the westward journey in Low Road West.   they are numerous and they are layered. There’s a lot at stake here, and it seems ambitious to me in a way few comic creators are striving for.

Johnson and Flaviano are gathering their strengths and passions here and putting them on display for you, wrapped in the exploration on the western calling road and a copper sky.