Ghost Rider (2022) # 3

"Red Road"

Cover Date: June 2022; On Sale Date: April 2022

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

In the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, Johnny Blaze hitchhikes on the "Red Road", a strip of highway where motorists are known to disappear and a haunted truck appears in rear-view mirrors.  While pondering who or what wanted the Ghost Rider off the map and imprisoned, Johnny is picked up by a passing car. Meanwhile, the Council of Night Magicians meet in a graveyard, led by a wizard named Alabaster. They are given an update on Blaze by Zebadiah, the magician who helped free Johnny from Hayden's Falls, but Alabaster forbids any more interference on their part.

Back on the Red Road, the driver that picked up Blaze starts talking about the balance between good and bad, stating that you have to let the bad happen to get the good. They drive up on a massive car accident between a family minivan and a semi-truck carrying livestock. The driver of the car pulls a gun on Blaze, stating that he 's going to sacrifice him to the road before the road kills him, but Johnny disarms him and exits the vehicle to check on any survivors of the wreck. The driver, whose trunk has popped open to reveal a collection of dead bodies, drives forward and is run off the road by a demonic truck that has mysteriously appeared. 

Elsewhere, FBI Agents Whilmer and Talia Warroad eat at a diner, where Talia explains how she gained her psychic gifts as a child. When they leave the diner they find Talia's car covered in bird droppings from a flock of crows. On the Red Road, Johnny saves a little kid that survived the wreck from the demon truck, then transforms into the Ghost Rider. Touching the wrecked semi, Ghost Rider transforms it into a hell-truck and drives it straight at the demon truck, the two massive vehicles colliding head-on. Later, Johnny wanders through the desert and hears the words "The Shadow Country", spoken by the demon hosted inside his body.

THE ROADMAP

This is Legacy # 246 of the ongoing Ghost Rider series.

Talia Warroad's origin story is told in detail in Ghost Rider (2022) # 18-21.

CHAIN REACTION

Ghost Rider's third issue stumbles a bit, providing a rather unsatisfying conclusion to its done-in-one story.

It's at this point that the mood and tone of the series is starting to feel too heavy to support its plots. After two really successful issues, this one just fails to keep up the momentum. The idea of a "red road" with a haunted truck is interesting enough, sure, but Percy seems to be juggling too many balls in the air at this point. Johnny's narration is starting to drone on and on without providing much in the way of characterization, and I've started to realize that this version of Johnny Blaze is fairly bland and generic as a protagonist.

I just think it's starting to be dark just for the sake of being dark, what with the egg-eating serial killer of hitchhikers and the slaughtered animals all over the place. It's grim-dark for the sake of shock value and for the first time this series falls for style over substance. I'm not very invested in the Night Magicians or the FBI agents, both of whom take up space needed for the story's conclusion. This comic doesn't end, it just stops and skips ahead, not giving any resolution to what happened when the Ghost Rider confronted the demon truck. That's a bit frustrating.

Smith and Peeples still split the art chores between the Blaze sequences and the subplots, and their styles mesh pretty seamlessly. If anything, Smith is the MVP of this issue, adding in all those gory details that Percy's script requires and providing yet another vicious transformation into Ghost Rider sequence. The Council of Night Magicians all get some pretty interesting character designs, particularly the one made of worms.

This one was a disappointment, only really because the previous two issues were so great. I'm still on board for this series, consider this one to be a victim of growing pains.