Ghost Rider (2011) # 5

Cover Date: January 2012; On Sale Date: November 2011

Writer: Rob Williams; Artist: Lee Garbett; Letterer: VC's Clayton Cowles; Colorist: Robert Schwager; Editor: Stephen Wacker; Editor In Chief: Axel Alonso; Cover Artist: Arturo Lozzi 

In Mexico, a young girl is running in the desert, pursued by two men with guns.  When the girl fights back, the men prepare to kill her instead of taking her back to their boss, but a portal of fire opens up beneath their feet.  Alejandra, the new Ghost Rider, rides through the portal and stands before the two men.  Zarathos, the demon inside Alejandra, has told her that he would open portals to take her where she needs to go, to lead her to those most deserving of vengeance.  She incapacitates the two men and allows the girl to run away toward a nearby town.  That night, Alejandra sits in the desert and thinks about how she had been adopted by Adam and never knew her parents.

The next day, at a secure compound in the desert, a group of slave traffickers are loading a truck with women and children that they plan to sell.  The operation is run by a Texan man named Jones, who is known for punishing any of his men who fail to live up to his expectations.  From the desert comes a black cloud in the shape of a skull, out of which the Ghost Rider emerges.  She uses her abilities to attack the men with a plague of locusts, then frees the enslaved children.  She sees Jones escaping in a truck into the mountains, a truck filled with innocent children.  She chases Jones, who jumps out of the truck just before it drives off of a high cliff.  Despite Zarathos screaming for vengeance in her head, Alejandra uses her power to save the children by opening a portal for the truck to fall through to safety.  She later catches up with Jones on a mesa and realizes, through Zarathos' insight, that the man is her father.  She turns back to her human form and introduces herself as his daughter; he replies that he's had lots of children with women whose names he doesn't remember.  He sold all of his children, just like he sold her to Adam.  He tells her that he sees the strength inside of her, admits that she is his daughter and that he's proud of her.  She transforms back into the Ghost Rider and cuts away Jones' sin with her scythe, leaving him a soulless human shell.  She rides away while Zarathos smiles inside her.

The Mummy Returns?

THE ROADMAP

This issue reveals Alejandra's last name as "Jones", same as her father's.  The Ghost Racers series in 2015 will state that her last name is "Blaze", which is incorrect.

Ghost Rider makes her next appearance in X-Men (2010) # 15.1.

CHAIN REACTION

Alejandra gets her first issue as a solo protagonist, which results in the best issue of this series so far.

One of the major problems of the introductory arc of this series was the lack of characterization for the de facto lead, Alejandra, who was at best nothing more than a prop for other characters to fight over.  Even though he wasn't the Ghost Rider, Johnny Blaze was still without a doubt the lead character of the series for those first four issues, and only now are we getting to see Alejandra on her own without Blaze's shadow cast over her.  It was a desperately necessary development, because before this point Alejandra wasn't a character, she was a plot device with no personality to call her own.  It shouldn't surprise anyone that Alejandra's development as a character also results in the first truly readable issue of the series as well, because the leap in quality is astounding considering how terrible the last issue was.

One of my defining traits of a quality Ghost Rider story is the struggle against the demons inside the character, in most cases a literal demon, be it Zarathos or Noble Kale or the ambiguous "spirit of vengeance" possessing the human hosts.  We've seen the struggle for control before with both Blaze and Danny Ketch, but Alejandra gives us an inversion of that dynamic, because she's a host who is actually listening to and in some ways embracing the demon that's whispering in her head.  The narration from Alejandra, which while cliché in some places is still refreshing to read as it allows us insight to a character we honestly know nothing about, makes it clear that Zarathos is manipulating her, but she's accepting it because she doesn't know to do anything better.  For the first time, I actively LIKE Alejandra as a character, because her dominant trait as a character is that she IS a cipher that's only just now experiencing the world for herself.  Zarathos manipulates her by taking her to seek vengeance on her father, which is so incredibly sad; not so much because of the slaver plot, because it's a bit formulaic, but that she is now bound even further to the spirit of vengeance due to Zarathos' actions eradicating all sense of hope from her.  The writing is on the wall for Alejandra and the increasingly dark path she will be riding, she's a character that's doomed to failure (and not just in the sales sense).

The artwork for this issue is by Lee Garbett, who will be stepping in as the unofficial lead artist given the amount of fill-in issues he does for Matthew Clark, the supposed "regular artist" who never returned to the series after issue # 4.  Garbett has a nice, clean style that on first glance looks like it would clash horribly with the bleak tone of the series.  In truth, though, it works very well for a story that takes place during the daytime in a desert wasteland.  He also draws a much better Alejandra than Clark ever did, with the very nice touch of her skull flames subtly resembling long, flowing hair. 

While the first arc of this series was disastrous on nearly every level, this one-shot issue proves that the Williams series had potential to be something good, if not great.

World's greatest dad!