Route 666 (comics)

Last updated
Route 666
Publication information
Publisher CrossGen
ScheduleMonthly
Format Ongoing series
Publication dateJuly 2002 - June 2004
No. of issues22
Main character(s)Cassie, Sheriff Cisco, The Adversary, Chairman Suvorov (Pinky), Too-Too, Special Agent Gunnar Melchior, J. Elgar Purvis, Braathwaate, Tenebrion, others. Deceased: Helene Mengert, Dr. Malachi Waterman, Doctor Melchior, Beasely, Berkely (Railsplitter)
Creative team
Created by Mark Alessi, Gina M. Villa
Written by Tony Bedard
Penciller(s) Karl Moline

Route 666 is 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.

Cassie has problems getting help. Most people do not want to admit they are sharing a world with soul-stealing monsters, so they refuse to believe anything Cassie says. One person who does believe her is a psychotic serial killer known as the "Railsplitter".

As Cassie flees from local authorities, the National Bureau of Investigation, and her home state of Welkin, she brings misfortune to the small county of Gossmer. Cisco, a local sheriff, recognizes her as the accused murderer reported on the news. Cassie steals his squad car; Cisco wants to give chase in his son's truck, but his son Miguel insists he's the only one who can drive it. While in pursuit, they fall victim to Cassie's ever-increasing bad luck; her car loses control and they all crash. Miguel dies.

Cisco has every reason to blame Cassie for his son's death and to become her greatest enemy. However, he maintains himself through most of the series as her most supportive "compadre". They almost become their own family, she a surrogate daughter and he a father figure.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aileen Wuornos</span> American serial killer (1956–2002)

Aileen Carol Wuornos was an American serial killer. In 1989–1990, while engaging in street prostitution along highways in Florida, she shot dead and robbed seven of her male clients. Wuornos claimed that her clients had either raped or attempted to rape her, and that the homicides of the men were committed in self-defense. Wuornos was sentenced to death for six of the murders. She was executed on October 9, 2002, by lethal injection after spending more than 10 years on Florida's death row.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Kürten</span> German serial killer (1883–1931)

Peter Kürten was a German serial killer, known as "The Vampire of Düsseldorf" and the "Düsseldorf Monster", who committed a series of murders and sexual assaults between February and November 1929 in the city of Düsseldorf. In the years before these assaults and murders, Kürten had amassed a lengthy criminal record for offences including arson and attempted murder. He also confessed to the 1913 murder of a nine-year-old girl in Mülheim am Rhein and the attempted murder of a 17-year-old girl in Düsseldorf.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edmund Kemper</span> American serial killer (born 1948)

Edmund Emil Kemper III is an American serial killer who murdered eight people, from May 1972 to April 1973. Years earlier, at the age of 15, Kemper had murdered his paternal grandparents. Kemper was nicknamed the Co-ed Killer, as most of his non-familial victims were female college students hitchhiking in the vicinity of Santa Cruz County, California. Most of his murders included necrophilia, decapitation, and dismemberment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tsutomu Miyazaki</span> Japanese serial killer and child murderer

Tsutomu Miyazaki was a Japanese serial killer who murdered four young girls in Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture between August 1988 and June 1989. He abducted and killed the girls, aged from 4 to 7, in his car before dismembering them and molesting their corpses. He also engaged in cannibalism, preserved body parts as trophies, and taunted the families of his victims.

<i>Torpedo Juice</i> (novel)

Torpedo Juice is Tim Dorsey's seventh novel, published in 2005. As with Dorsey's previous works, the main character is amateur Florida historian and serial killer Serge A. Storms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jerry Brudos</span> American serial killer (1939–2006)

Jerome Henry "Jerry" Brudos was an American serial killer and necrophile known as the Lust Killer and the Shoe Fetish Slayer who committed the kidnap, rape, and murder of four young women between 1968 and 1969 in Salem, Oregon. He is also known to have attempted to abduct two other young women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Berkowitz</span> American serial killer (born 1953)

David Richard Berkowitz, also known as the Son of Sam and the .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer who pled guilty to eight shootings that began in New York City on July 29, 1976. Berkowitz grew up in New York City and served in the United States Army. Using a .44 Special caliber Bulldog revolver, he killed six people and wounded seven others by July 1977, terrorizing New Yorkers. Berkowitz eluded the biggest police manhunt in the city's history while leaving letters that mocked the police and promised further crimes, which were highly publicized by the press.

<i>The Gingerdead Man</i> 2005 film by Charles Band

The Gingerdead Man is a 2005 American comedy slasher film directed by Charles Band. Gary Busey stars as the titular Gingerdead Man, created from a mix of gingerbread spice mix and the ashes of deceased serial killer Millard Findlemeyer, who terrorizes a small-town bakery. The film also stars Robin Sydney, Jonathan Chase, Alexia Aleman, Margaret Blye, James Snyder, and Larry Cedar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evil Ernie</span> Comics character

Evil Ernie, an undead psychotic killer, is a fictional supervillain created by writer Brian Pulido and artist Steven Hughes in 1991 and originally published by Eternity Comics. The imprint shifted hands in 1993 to Chaos! Comics and then Devil's Due Publishing in 2005. Evil Ernie is currently published by Dynamite Entertainment, which purchased the Chaos! Comics imprint.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dexter Morgan</span> Fictional character from the Dexter book and TV series

Dexter Morgan is a fictional character introduced as the antihero protagonist of the Dexter book series written by Jeff Lindsay, as well as the television series of the same name. In the television series, Dexter is portrayed by Michael C. Hall.

<i>Killer on the Road</i>

Killer on the Road is a crime novel by American author James Ellroy. First published in 1986, it is a non-series book between the Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy and the L.A. Quartet. It was first released by Avon as a mass-market paperback original under the title Silent Terror, and has since been republished in the U.S. under Ellroy's original title Killer on the Road, first as a mass-market paperback in 1990 and later as a trade paperback in 1999.

<i>Batman: Two Faces</i>

Batman: Two Faces is a DC Comics Elseworlds comic book, published in 1998. Written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, with art by Anthony Williams and Tom Palmer, the story is based on the novel Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. A Victorian-era Bruce Wayne tries to purge both his own evil side and that of Two-Face, while a serial killer named the Joker roams the streets. A sequel, The Superman Monster, was published in October the following year.

The Crow is a fictional antihero character and the protagonist of The Crow comic book series, originally created by American artist James O'Barr in 1989. The titular character is an undead vigilante brought back to life by a supernatural crow to avenge his murder and death of his fiancée.

<i>Cross Fire</i> (novel)

Cross Fire is the 17th book of James Patterson's Alex Cross series. In the novel, Kyle Craig has come back for one final scare to finally kill Alex Cross, but Alex has a special day ahead of him, one that concerns Bree and his relationship. The novel was released in hardcover, paperback, and audio book on November 15, 2010. It was preceded by I, Alex Cross and was followed by Kill Alex Cross. The book sees Alex marrying Bree after proposing to her in the previous book; the book also sees the final appearance of Kyle Craig, who dies by shooting an oxygen tank, killing him and two cops before he can be sent to prison again by Alex.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glen Edward Rogers</span> American serial killer on death row

Glen Edward Rogers, also known as "The Cross Country Killer" or "The Casanova Killer", is an American serial killer. He was convicted of two murders and is a suspect in numerous others throughout the United States. According to one cable-TV documentary, he claims that he was responsible for the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, but there is no basis for that claim and O. J. Simpson was found responsible for the murders in a 1997 civil trial. Rogers was featured on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list after a crime spree that began on September 28, 1995, with Rogers' first authoritatively established murder.

Nicola Edgington is a British double killer who also attempted to murder a third person. Having killed her own mother in 2005, she attacked two strangers in the street in Bexleyheath in 2011, killing one. She was convicted of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility, attempted murder and murder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Casimir Dankerque</span> Executed French serial killer

Casimir Dankerque, known as The Monster of Artois, was a French criminal and serial killer responsible for murdering four pensioners in Pas-de-Calais between September and October 1935. Convicted of these murders, in addition to other crimes, he was guillotined in 1936.