Poor Valley

The Carter Family comes from an area in SW Virginia called "Poor Valley". I was surprised to learn that there is also a "Rich Valley," where the soil is better for farming and people are generally more affluent.

One of the original concepts Frank and I had for this book was to show some of the events taking place in a comic strip called "Poor Valley" that would be based on the classic newspaper strip "Gasoline Alley". Though our art will definitely be influenced by "Gasoline Alley" (among other things), we have recently decided not to use a "Poor Valley" logo in the book as it would impede the narrative flow. But you can see it right here, right now, in this art sample we created during the initial planning process.