GHOST RIDER #5

By: Kurt Amacker
Review Date: Thursday, January 12, 2006

Thus far, Marvel's newest Ghost Rider miniseries has offered Garth Ennis at his most Garth Ennis. Reread that sentence. GHOST RIDER prominently features those elements of Ennis's past comics that we've all come to know well -- Biblical themes, scatological humor, left wing politics, antiauthoritarianism, and, of course, the great state of Texas. After the angel Malachi freed Johnny Blaze from hell in the second issue of the series, Blaze set out to find the escaped demon Kazann, recently summoned by an evil, crippled oil executive to regain the use of his legs. Unfortunately, Malachi swapped intelligence with the demon for years before his escape. Now, Heaven has sent the archangel Ruth to capture the errant demon. Hell has responded in kind with the demon Hoss -- a fat, Cadillac-driving Texas good ol' boy. The only problem is that if Ruth captures Kazann, the other angels will learn of Malachi's indiscretion and he'll find himself south of Heaven. By this issue, Hoss and Blaze have allied themselves to return Kazann to Hell before Ruth kills even more people to get to him (she's not real keen on people).

If you like Ennis, then you'll probably like this issue of GHOST RIDER and the rest of the series. However, while I enjoyed it well enough, it feels like he's writing more of the same here, instead of trying something wildly different and interesting. Cynically, this feels like PREACHER-light. More optimistically, it's a fun little Ghost Rider story with a Texas twist. I like both Ennis and Blaze, so I couldn't help but enjoy this on some level. However, I know others can't stand Ennis's weird mixture of Americana, gross-out humor, and amateurish theology. I doubt I could persuade anyone like that to read this, because it's simply more of the same.

I've enjoyed Clayton Crain's computer-created art far more than I thought I would. My purist instincts made me wary of this, but it didn't really bother me. He imbues his images with a magnificent, almost overwhelming level of detail. Some panels, quite literally, have more than the eye can take in and it just looks like a jumble of demons, blood, bones, and hellfire -- like a shopping mall airbrush artist gone off the deep end. But, in simpler moments, Crain has created several awe-inspiring images of Johnny Blaze that make the book worth your time.

I've enjoyed GHOST RIDER thus far, but those not already enamored with Garth Ennis's older work in PREACHER and JUST A PILGRIM won't find anything here to change their mind.

Questions? Comments? Let us know what you think at comicscape@cinescape.com.