[1] At the beginning of the first of issue, Alex Hunter almost runs over a woman while driving through the British countryside, swerving and crashing his car into a tree.

He wakes to find himself in the picturesque village of Strangehaven, where a young woman named Janey Jones convinces him to stay.

A number of characters have unusual quirks or gifts, such as the mechanic, Alberto, who is able to restore any car to pristine condition, no matter how badly it is damaged; also Adam, who claims to be an alien with X-ray vision; and Elsie, an old woman who is depicted as being able to communicate with animals.

Supernatural elements are hinted at in earlier issues, most notably in the way that Alex is unable to leave the village without the road seemingly curving back into Strangehaven, and in the visions Alex has of The Woman on the Road, whose physical form also seems to be kept in a fishtank in the house of an unseen villager.

Suzie Tang leaves the village in one issue to return to Hong Kong, and Billy Bates also flees Strangehaven, so one can assume that some are able to travel outside it.

In Strangehaven's case, he is not pursued by any kind of security device; rather, any attempt by him to leave results in the geography of the outlying area warping to deposit him back in the village, as if he had somehow driven in a circle.

The series also follows a soap-operatic style much like Twin Peaks, in which the supernatural is offset by more mundane story elements such as infidelity, young love, and murder.

Millidge also took inspiration from The Darling Buds of May, a TV series about peaceful countryside life, and The Avengers, a '60s spy show that often featured quaint English villages run by diabolical masterminds.

From issue 13 onwards, Millidge's art changed completely to resemble an entirely painted look, with thicker black outlines around characters and more subtle shading.

[4] During this time, Millidge considered the book to still be active and planned "some kind of closure" by issue 24, which would also mark the end of the fourth trade paperback, Destiny.