On Sale Date: March 2008
Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Roland Boschi
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Colorist: Dan Brown
Editor: Aubrey Sitterson
Executive Editor: Axel Alonso
Editor In Chief: Joe Quesada
Cover Artist: Marko Djurdjevic
The New Beulah police investigate the site of a horrific car wreck on Highway 18, where the bodies of the deceased couple are found mangled and dismembered. Deputy Kowalski, new to the town's police force by way of a transfer from a larger city, doesn't understand how the bodies could be so horribly mutilated. The Sheriff replies that it must have been coyotes and alludes to the fact that Highway 18 is known for its terrible auto “accidents”.
Meanwhile, Johnny Blaze sits at a camp fire and greets the awakening Lucas, who had been unconscious since his rescue from the New Beulah Hospital. Blaze asks about the strange marking on the boy's chest, which Lucas says is the mark of Zadkiel. During his near-death experience, Lucas was taken to Heaven only to find it under siege by the armies of the rogue angel Zadkiel, who has enslaved all of purgatory to do his bidding as he attempts to claim the throne of Heaven for himself. When Lucas was revived back on Earth, Zadkiel sent his earthly minions to find him and keep him quiet. Blaze gets up to return to the hospital, to confront the nurses that had kept Lucas prisoner, but the boy stops him by saying that the war for Heaven is deadlocked - that Zadkiel can't win without the power of Heaven's greatest weapons, the Spirits of Vengeance. Before Johnny can ask another question, Lucas is shot by the approaching nurses, who have come to recapture their prisoner. Blaze is prepared to fight, but Lucas begs him to keep him alive and away from Heaven. Blaze reluctantly agrees, and the Ghost Rider makes his way across the countryside with Lucas hanging on for dear life. The pursuing nurses take another shot with their rifle, striking Blaze and unexpectedly causing him to wreck. The nurses attack and quickly bring Blaze to his knees with their weapons that have been forged from the paving stones of Heaven's holy city. The Head Nurse approaches and prepares to inject him with a needle containing the fiery rain that Zadkiel himself used to napalm Sodom and Gomorrah. She orders her nurses to find Lucas and sink Blaze's motorcycle in the nearest lake - to which the Ghost Rider replies “nobody touches my bike” before releasing a massive blast of hellfire that scatters and decimates the group of nurses. Blaze finds Lucas and puts him back on the bike to find medical attention for his gunshot wound.
Elsewhere, Deputy Kowalski talks on the phone with the Sheriff as he approaches the Wojciehowicz Funeral Home. He tells the Sheriff that he's done some investigating on the Highway 18 murders and ignoring his superior's commands to stop he knocks on the funeral home door to ask the owner questions about the cursed road.
Night has fallen. Blaze and Lucas turn onto Highway 18 with the nurses in close pursuit with their jeeps. Suddenly, the nurses stop and Lucas sees the sign for Highway 18, causing him to frantically tell Blaze to get off the road. Johnny stops the bike, not noticing several ghostly hands coming out of the road beneath him. Back at the funeral home, Kowalski tells a man named Wojciehowicz his theory behind the deaths on Highway 18. In 1845 a group of settlers were snowbound and after several months resorted to murder and cannibalism to survive. When the rescue party alive, only one survivor out of 78 remained alive, Wojciehowicz's ancestor. This grisly incident happened on the exact same ground that Highway 18 now runs over. When Kowalski says that he thinks there's a connection between the cannibals and the high number of deaths on the road, Wojciehowicz pulls out a large butcher's knife and hacks off the deputy's hand, intending on eating the man's flesh.
Back on Highway 18, Blaze and Lucas are surrounded by the knife-wielding cannibal ghosts. He transforms into the Ghost Rider and takes a knife from a nearby ghost, setting it alight with hellfire before gunning his engine and starting his path through the army of ghosts.
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| Cannibal morticians, sure, why not? |
THE ROADMAP
Blaze discovered that the Ghost Rider curse was given to him by the angel Zadkiel in Ghost Rider (2006) # 18. He has been searching for a way to get to Heaven since Ghost Rider (2006) # 20.
Lucas mentions other Spirits of Vengeance besides Blaze, the first of which is shown in Ghost Rider (2006) # 28.
CHAIN REACTION
New series writer Jason Aaron continues his opening arc on the series and wastes no time teasing out elements for the rest of his run.
I've read reviews of this arc that compare it to a great 70's style Grindhouse movie, and I'm hard-pressed to think of a more apt description. This is Ghost Rider by way of a heavy Tarantino influence, and I can't believe its taken a writer this long to apply such a natural concept and style to the character. Where Aaron succeeds is that he doesn't treat the small-town backwoods people of New Beulah as stereotype Deliverance knockoffs; they're real characters just as much as the outsider Blaze and the angel-worshiping nurses.
Speaking of the nurses, Aaron's packed this arc to the gills with some fantastic antagonists that one wouldn't necessarily think to be much of a threat for ol' Johnny. The batshit crazy ideas keep spinning out effortlessly, from the origins of the Highway 18 curse to the nurses' weapons being forged from Heaven's paving stones (seriously, that idea is effing rad, lol). Something else that I failed to mention in last issue's review is how well Aaron writes Blaze himself; writing him as a haggard cycle bum from the midwestern wasteland without descending into the realm of caricature (to see how that looks, take a gander at Blaze as written by Garth Ennis or Daniel Way). Blaze may not be book smart, but he's savvy and crafty despite being incredibly headstrong; he's far from the imbecile that previous writer Dan Way made him out to be.
I'm finding it increasingly difficult to find flaws in these issues, but there is one nagging trend that creeps up here and in later issues of Aaron's run: a failure to give his characters names. The Head Nurse remains nameless throughout the arc, though that's something I didn't even realize until I sat down to write the synopses for the issues. It's a tiny annoyance, but its there all the same.
Artist Roland Boschi continues to impress the hell out of me with his work here, providing a gritty and stylized look that perfectly matches the tone of the wild ideas that Aaron's script demands. I live in a rural area of the country myself (Kentucky, for those wondering), and Boschi really captures how such an environment needs to look. Backwoods but not backward, I suppose. I also need to give some credit to colorist Dan Brown, who gives the art an eerie watercolor-like palate with lots of faded reds and yellows. I love it when an art team gives us nighttime scenes that actually look like they're taking place at night with appropriate shadows and color to distinguish from the daylight scenes.
We're really getting some great stuff here, people. Read this as soon as you possibly can.
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| Evil nurses, angels, cannibals, and now ghosts? What a town! |
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