Route 666

Route 666 was a comic book series published by American company CrossGen Entertainment starting from July 2002. Written by Tony Bedard and drawn by Karl Moline, it was CrossGen's first horror comic venture, and contained a blend of action, menace and humor. It ended at issue #22 in June 2004, as part of CrossGen's bankruptcy. Setting Route 666 takes place on the fictional planet of Erebus in a country called The United States of Empyrean, which mimics the innocent feel and the actual mindset, lifestyles and technology of the 1950s era of own Earth's United States of America. A feuding nation, the People's Republic of Rodina, is presumably a combination of Russia and China, creating a mood through the book that mirrors the Cold War between capitalism and communism (Rodina is Russian for "motherland"). Plot summary The lead character, Cassie Heloise Starkweather, or Cassie, could see dead people when she was a child, but she repressed the talent. As a college student, she finds herself on the run after a pair of dark spirits catches her talking to the soul of her recently deceased roommate and teammate, Helene Mengert, a young Welkin State University gymnast who had been inadvertently killed by a chain of reactions created by Cassie's lack of concentration on a balance beam. Ridden with guilt and declared unstable by a Doctor Melchior, Cassie is dispatched to a sanitorium, Melchior Asylum, where she learns that half the staff is tied up in this sinister conspiracy. It seems there's a war going on in the next world, and agents of "The Adversary", disguised as mostly B-movie monsters or creatures of the local legends, prowl this world to kidnap the souls of people who've died violently. Cassie flees from the monsters, but they manage to pin the blame for the murders on her, so she's building quite a reputation as a psychotic serial killer.