Cover Date: September 2022; Publication Date: July 2022
Writer: Jason Aaron; Artist: Javier Garron; Colorist: David Curiel; Letterer: VC's Cory Petit; Assistant Editor: Martin Biro; Associate Editor: Analisse Bissa; Editor: Tom Brevoort; Editor in Chief: C.B. Cebulski; Cover Artist: Javier Garron
The Avengers have time-traveled to ancient Japan, the Edo Era, in search of the malevolent Mephisto, who is attempting to eliminate heroes of the past. Captain America and Nighthawk encounter the Ghost Ronin, that era's incarnation of the Ghost Rider, and assist him in fighting off some of Mephisto's time-displaced minions. The Ronin tells the two heroes that he knows about the Avengers and he is there to assist them with their task, then disappears.
The Ghost Ronin reappears in the presence of Namor and Echo, dispatching a boat filled with Mephisto's Viking warriors. Finally, the Ghost Ronin kills a squad of future-spawned assassins before the Avengers finally catch up to him. The Ghost Ronin tells them that they must make their way to the Genesis Point of Earth's heroes, millions of years in the past. The Avengers find Mephisto and go off in chase of him, leaving only Nighthawk to say farewell to the Ronin.
THE ROADMAP
Musashi Miyamoto, the Samurai of Vengeance, made his first cameo appearance in Avengers (2018) # 50.
CHAIN REACTION
Jason Aaron introduces another Ghost Rider from ancient history, this time from Feudal Japan, and gives the character a fairly spectacular spotlight.
I'll be honest, by this point I had given up on Aaron's Avengers series. I mean, I could appreciate his long-term plotting on the series and even the characterization of the various team members, but all the deep dives into alternate realities and ancient Avengers just weren't for me. Naturally, though, when I saw that this issue focused on a past Ghost Rider, I felt compelled to pick it up. Aaron has history, no pun intended, with creating Ghost Riders of the past; from his run on the Ghost Rider series from many years back, which detailed the history of the Spirit of Vengeance in America, to his most recent work with the Ghost Rider of 1,000,000 B.C. in this Avengers series. Jason Aaron has a knack for taking the Ghost Rider concept and applying it to various time periods in interesting ways. This issue, with the Ghost Ronin, was no exception.
Despite numerous pages being given over to their various subplots and character interactions, the Avengers themselves are barely an afterthought in this issue, which turns over the strongest parts of the narrative to the Ghost Ronin. Aaron tends to plod along with this narration at times on this series, making the text boxes a chore to read at their worst. Not so here, with each caption box almost poetically telling the story of the Samurai of Vengeance as he dispatches the time-displaced hordes of Mephisto. As it should be for any new character introduced, I wanted to read more about the Ghost Ronin after the comic was over.
The artwork by Javier Garron, who has been with Aaron on Avengers for quite a while, turns in a particularly bloody affair with his work here. Garron's art can sometimes get bogged down with the details, with so many lines cluttering the pages that it oft times looks too chaotic, necessitating a study of the pages to discern what's happening. There's a little of that here with the splash pages of the Ghost Ronin dispatching the villains, but I was overall pleased with the clarity of Garron's art.
This wasn't enough to win me back on board Aaron's Avengers series, but I'd certainly be down for a revisit with the Ghost Ronin somewhere down the road. Recommended for Ghost Rider fans, sure, but it's definitely not a necessary read.
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