On Sale Date: March 2007
Writer: Daniel Way
Breakdowns: Javier Saltares
Finishes: Mark Texeira
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Colorist: Dan Brown
Editor: Michael O'Connor
Supervising Editor: Axel Alonso
Editor In Chief: Joe Quesada
Cover Artist: Arthur Suydam
Late at night, two teenage boys - Marcus and Donnie - walk down a deserted road toward a single-lane bridge. Because they're out after the established curfew, Donnie goes to hide when a headlight approaches, fearing it might be a cop. Marcus points out that there's only one light, meaning it's a motorcycle. But when the light gets closer, they see that it's actually a flaming jack-o-lantern pumpkin flying through the air toward them. The boys run toward the bridge and jump into the water just as the pumpkin explodes. Marcus pops out of the water and drags Donnie back onto land, not realizing until after that his friend is dead and sans his head. The Jack O' Lantern hovers down to the boy and offers to let him live in exchange for his soul...but before Marcus can take the demon's hand, the Ghost Rider's chain wraps itself around Jack's body and yanks him away.
The Ghost Rider drags the Lucifer-possessed Jack O' Lantern through a cornfield by his chain, then tosses him back out onto the highway - directly in the path of a speeding semi-truck. The truck collides into the villain's body and then runs him over. The driver stops and goes to check on the body, but the approaching Ghost Rider instead tells him to "run away, quickly". Jack is still alive, however, protected by his high-impact body armor. He uses his wrist-blaster to explode the Rider's skull, though it immediately reforms atop his shoulders. Before the Rider can do anything more, Jack's glider knocks him down and sweeps its master away into the night.
Later, the Ghost Rider enters the deserted town of Sleepy Hollow - deserted due to the imposed curfew established because of the murders of several teenagers. Suddenly, the Rider is rammed by a police car that pushes him through a department store building and into a brick wall. Sheriff Harry O'Conner exits the car with an assault rifle and points it at the Rider, blaming him for the murders of the teenagers. Meanwhile, in the local cemetery, Jack O' Lantern reflects on the time of year - Halloween - and asks if anyone wants to go trick-or-treating with him. All around him, dozens of arms emerge from the graves.
 |
| Ghost Rider's lesser known power: weaponized corn. |
THE ROADMAP
This issue is a "Casualties of War" tie-in to Marvel's crossover event Civil War.
The Jack O' Lantern was murdered by the Punisher in Civil War # 5.
Lucifer's plan to invade Earth by inhabiting the bodies of the recently deceased was revealed in Ghost Rider (2006) # 4.
CHAIN REACTION
This book's getting better...it really, truly is. Granted, this is just a big fight scene padded out to fill 22 pages, but that's okay considering the massive amount of set-up given to us in the previous chapter. Ghost Rider finally fights his first super-villain since his return, and it's about bloody time.
Keeping in mind the thought that Ghost Rider is usually depicted as a horror title, most fans - and writers, for that matter - tend to forget the book's original premise when it first debuted several decades ago. Ghost Rider was intended to be a bridge between the supernatural and superhero universes, a monster that fought super-villains. You can add as much gothic trappings to the concept as you like, but the fact remains that this book needs villains that are as strong and interesting as the hero, and until now we only had the dreadfully underwhelming and woefully uninspired Lucifer to fill that void. We're still dealing with Lucifer in this arc, but the twist - that he's possessed the body of the deceased Jack O' Lantern - is enough to finally make things stand out with a uniqueness all it's own. As I've said in previous reviews, we can only read the same "Blaze versus Lucifer" fight so many times, and it's already starting to get old. It's the one major failure of Daniel Way's master plan for the series, otherwise a decent idea, and the injection of a familiar villain is exactly what was needed. Now the problem lies in the question of where the concept can possibly be taken to from here...I admit, I'm at a loss, and I'm afraid Way may be as well.
Regardless, "Sleepy Hollow" is turning out to be a pretty decent read, heads above the previous "Vicious Cycle" arc in just about every conceivable fashion. Much like the Scarecrow in the 90's series, the Jack O' Lantern is a villain that, while never before a Ghost Rider villain, fits in amazingly well - both conceptually and visually. Granted we're not really dealing with Jack himself, just Lucifer in his body, but the lines are blurry enough for you to forget that while reading and just get absorbed into the action. And action is the name of the game this issue, since pretty much the whole book is taken up by the Rider's first encounter with Jack. Way sets up the encounter nicely with the attack on the two boys and Jack O' Lantern's appearance, and things snowball nicely from there when Ghost Rider arrives on the scene. The fight scenes are obviously padded out to take up as much room as possible - see the six pages for Jack being hit by a truck and the following three pages for the sheriff's hit and run tactic against the Ghost Rider - but at this point I don't really mind. After the necessary set-up in the previous issue, Way allows this chapter to be carried by the artists...
And as always, Javier Saltares and Mark Texeira step up and knock things out of the park. I'm consistently amazed at how the artistic duo continue to top themselves with each subsequent issue, considering how beautiful their work always is. The action is handled superbly, especially the kinetic fluidity of both the Rider's attack on Jack and Sheriff O'Connor's attack on the Rider. Like I said above, it's a lot of padding, but when it looks as good as this I find myself unable to argue the reasoning behind it.
With the last page, it appears that Blaze will be facing an army of zombies...and, well, as much as I love zombies we'll have to see how things go from here. Hopefully the rest of this arc will surprise me with a unique take on the genre instead of just supplying us with the clichés. So far, though, things are off to a pretty good start.
 |
| Vengeance? Human Torch? Firestorm? Helspont? |
No comments:
Post a Comment