Ghost Rider (2022) # 4

"Blood Circus"

Cover Date: July 2022; On Sale Date: May 2022

Writer: Benjamin Percy; Artist: Cory Smith; Inkers: Oren Junior; Letterer: VC's Travis Lanham; Colorist: Bryan Valenza; Editor: Darren Shan; Editor in Chief: C.B. Cebulski; Cover Artist: Kael Ngu

Johnny Blaze wakes up naked inside a gas station bathroom, where the Ghost Rider has burned the message "Exit 666" on the ceiling. Accosted by an aggressive biker, Johnny beats him up and steals both his clothes and his motorcycle. Meanwhile, Agents Whilmer and Talia Warroad rent out a garage where, using one of the feathers from the birds that attacked her car, Talia conducts a magic spell that brings the magician Zeb to them.

Johnny arrives at the town off of Exit 666 and finds it completely deserted with evidence of an evil circus that had come to town. The Circus of Crime, now possessed by demonic creatures, sets up shop in a small town in Minnesota and calls all of the townspeople to their tent to become sacrifices. Johnny tracks down the Circus and transforms into the Ghost Rider before riding into the tent. He is attacked by a creature made up of the fused bodies of innocent people, but the Rider is able to purge the Circus of Crime from the creature and send it on its way. The Ringmaster uses his power of hypnosis against the Rider, and Johnny wakes up in the middle of the highway. Blaze realizes that he hasn't been working with the Ghost Rider the way he should because he has been compromised by a demonic entity within his own body. The Rider takes over briefly and uses hellfire to burn another message in the road for Johnny, telling him to be at "Hell's Backbone" in three days to "ride or die".

THE ROADMAP

This is Legacy # 247 of the ongoing Ghost Rider series.

Ghost Rider first fought the (non-demonic) Circus of Crime in Ghost Rider (1973) # 72-73.

CHAIN REACTION

Ghost Rider faces the Circus of Crime in this particularly creepy issue that, again, falls flat at the end.

After the last issue's disappointing ending I had hopes that things would return to form for this series with this issue. I have to say, for the most part things were of the same high quality of the first two issues, except that Percy is starting to fall into a trap where his endings just don't work. There is, in fact, no resolution at all to the story told in this comic about the Circus of Crime touring the small towns of America to sacrifice people to demons. Ghost Rider saves the denizens of a town, sure, but when confronted by the Circus things just, well, stop. Just like with the demonic truck in the last installment, the climax isn't shown and instead things skip forward in time to Johnny on the road. I could forgive the last issue as just being a narrative trick that didn't work as well as the writer hoped, but with it being used again an issue later it shows a definite flaw in Ben Percy's writing.

That's a shame, too, because so much of this issue really works. The Circus of Crime are given a really chilling update, making them legitimately scary instead of just silly (because really, a traveling circus isn't exactly a common thing anymore, is it?). The creature made of fused innocents is a nice touch, too, though perhaps its dispatched a tad too quickly. I know the done-in-one approach is what this series has favored so far, but this really could have benefitted from being a two-part story. Fleshing things out and giving the story more room to breathe would have allowed Percy to perhaps give us a satisfying ending.

Cory Smith continues to be the perfect artistic compliment to Percy's dark writing style and he seems to really take to the Circus of Crime's horrific ways of sacrificing people. Lions are eating people, clown cars are crushing people, and the Fire-Eater is burning children alive. It shouldn't be a surprise when this series gets that dark, considering what's happened in the previous issues, but Smith really sells the shock value of it all. He also turns in yet another fantastic and gory transformation into Ghost Rider sequence, making it one of the highlights of the issue.

I so wanted to like this issue because it gets a lot of things right, but the ending sinks its overall impact. Sometimes its better to show instead of just allude to events, especially in the visual medium of comics.