Writer: Larry Hama; Artist: Gary Erskine; Letterer: Bill Oakley/NJQ; Colorist: John Kalisz; Editor: Marie Javins; Editor in Chief: Bobbie Chase; Cover Artist: Gary Erskine
John Blaze is fighting the vampires of the Undead Motorcycle Club when the Punisher arrives, wanting to kill the lead vampire Charnel for dealing heroin. Despite being shot full of bullets and hellfire, the vampires escape and retreat. Outside, the members of the Quentin Carnival have fought off more of the vampires. Clara utilizes the eyes of the Kristall-Starrer to show where the vampires have escaped to and joins Blaze on the back of his motorcycle. John, Clara, and the Punisher ride off to find the vampires, leaving the other carnival members behind to follow later.
Meanwhile, in another dimension, Craig and Emma Blaze beg Jesse Pinto not to kill Baal and instead go with them and the Wendigo to save their dad. Jesse uses the magic nail file to brand the number 7 on Baal's forehead as a promise that he will return for revenge.
At their underpass base of operations, the Undead MC accidentally releases the vampire-killing angel Uriel from his sarcophagus. Uriel manages to kill one of the vampires before he is stopped by Shelob, who seals him back inside the sarcophagus. Blaze, Clara, and the Punisher arrive and resume their battle with the vampires while the Wendigo and the children make their way back to Earth.
THE ROADMAP
John Blaze encountered the spider demon Shelob in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 11.
Blaze's children, Craig and Emma, joined Jesse Pinto and the Wendigo to track down and kill Baal in Blaze (1994) # 6.
CHAIN REACTION
The weirdness of this series takes a goofy turn with slapstick vampires and a straight-man figure in the guest-starring Punisher.
I seriously don’t get where Larry Hama was coming from with this arc. Did he know at this point that the series was going to be cancelled with issue # 12? If so, what made him decide to take such a bizarre tangent as this when the series had so many other (and arguably a lot more interesting) avenues he could have explored? Hama has stated that he isn’t much of a plotter and tends to write things on the fly as they come to him, and that’s definitely apparent here. Let’s dig in a little.
I don’t quite understand the rationale behind the Punisher’s guest-appearance in this issue. He clashes with the tone of the series while also being as one-dimensional as possible. He shows up, shoots the vampires with a machinegun, and doesn’t bat an eyelid at the fact that his bullets aren’t effective. It’s almost like he’s there to try and out macho John Blaze, who in this series is the manliest man in the room, and winds up looking like a parody of his character. That Hama carries him over into the next issue as well kind of boggles my mind.
Then there’s the Uriel reveal halfway through the comic, which goes back to Hama’s plotting dilemma. The mystery of what was inside the sarcophagus and why the vampires were so afraid of it was one of the few interesting hooks in the last issue, so blowing that reveal here was a mistake. Uriel appears only to be shoved back inside his coffin; keeping the character’s reveal for the next issue would have served the story much better than the page filler sequence we get here.
Gary Erskine steps up his game a little after his less than stellar debut in the last issue, possibly because he’s more comfortable drawing the Punisher than the rest of the characters. His design for Uriel, whose body is composed completely of chains and a giant lock with one human arm, is a blessing because it looks so weird and cool that it again deserved a bigger reveal moment than it gets here. Erskine still struggles with the Quentin Carnival members, but they get such little screen time that it doesn’t really matter.
I don’t like that this storyline sidelines the members of the Quentin Carnival, I don’t like the vampires and their storyline, and I don’t like that the series’ search for Blaze’s children gets shoehorned in as a side story. The Punisher brings some unintentional comedy but it’s still not enough to save this comic. Hard pass.
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