Ghost Rider #5: You Will Believe a Man can Flay

Okay, so it’s been just about almost a month since I started this new endeavour, and how successful have I been? Experts Say: One hundred percent successful. I rule.

Well, I suppose that it’s hard to be anything less when you don’t really outline any specific goals for yourself, thus making failure impossible, but that’s more of a finer detail. I guess I could say I’m successful so far, in that I haven’t given up writing these reviews.

Admittedly, there have been some problems, such as frequent losses of posts. But hey, I figure this is a learning process for me, so as long as I’ve been learning from these mistakes (and I have been) it’s all good. Because yeah, I’m still figuring out how to best approach this. As you may have noticed, for example, instead of the originally proposed 5 comics a week, I’ve now decided to write longer reviews for one or two comics a week, published some time in between Wednesdays, the holy days. I may also decide to invite others to contribute their own reviews to this site as members, and have approached a few people who seem interested.

This week, it looks like I’ll only be writing one review, due to it being a slow week as well as Border City comics being sold out of one of the titles I was going to purchase. Damn them, I say. Well, not really. They’re nice people.

GHOST RIDER #5 (of 6)

As I mentioned before, Ghost Rider has been one of the lamest Super-Heroes to be found in the pages of Marvel, at least among the heroes mainstream enough to merit their own film. My friend keeps on telling me that, according to the original continuity, Ghost Rider got his origins from a magic gas-cap. While I find this hard to believe, if so, it would mean he had the lamest origin in comic-book history (okay, that’s a lie. Ragman got his powers from being electrocuted while holding the hands of four geriatrics in a chain. He absorbed their power, and now has the strength of four old people). That in mind, I seriously doubt this series would have had much of a following had it been under the helm of a different creative team. As it stands, I’d imagine the breakdown of people who bought this book to be as follows:

33%- People who are fans of Garth Ennis

33%- People who are fans of Clayton Crain

33%- Disappointed fans who expected this series to be about a group of children who solve crimes with the help of a spirit who communicates to them by spelling out messages in texts

1%- That dude who thinks Ghost Rider is cool

I seem to recall that apparently one of the reasons this project was undertaken in the first place was to prove that Ghost Rider is, in fact, a marketable character. The idea is to draw people in with the appealing creative team/misleading title, then hook them with the awesomeness that is Ghost Rider (it took several attempts for me to just type that last clause, the idea is so alien to me).

And overall, people have responded well to this series (at least according to the editorial page). However, last issue I noted that Ennis has taken to including as little of Ghost Rider in his own series as humanly possible. For the first four issues, the strength of the series lies in the supporting characters, as well as the balls-to-the-wall (that’s right, I said it) action. None of this proves to me that Ghost Rider himself is a marketable character. In this series, a howler monkey could have replaced him and that wouldn’t have affected the story one bit. Actually, it may have been marginally cooler, but that’s only because I said howler monkeys, which are untapped resources of awesomeness.

In this issue, however, five issues in, Ennis finally brings Ghost Rider to the forefront of the story. We finally see, in this new and unique Ghost Rider series, a new and unique Ghost Rider. Just what does this entail, you ask?

Well, he’s a huge goofball, is what. He’s just a dude who has no idea what’s going on, and can barely keep up with the villains, if at all. So far in this series, he’s been crushed by a Greyhound, lost his bike, and even called one of the villains a “cracker.” He’s a powerful guy, sure, but he’s just not very good. Hardly an awesome badass.

But you know what? That’s awesome. One of Ghost Rider’s flaws in the past is he was taken way too seriously. No, that’s not the right approach. Ennis here has hit the right chord, with cheek fully encompassing the tongue. Ghost Rider should be a goofball, out of his element. It’s refreshing, and it contrasts nicely with the overall concept of the character, which could have too easily (and has in the past) become a generic lame-oid.

Storyline-wise, not a lot going on. As I predicted last month, it’s really just the action part of the story, part one of the climax. Still, the action is pretty crazy, and keeps with the tongue-in-cheek direction, involving, for one thing, two characters beating each other to death with other people. You need to see it, really.

Art continues to grow on me.

8 howler monkeys out of 10. Okay, now the resource has been tapped.