Elisa’s nature is starting to reveal itself.
Creative Staff:
Story: Chris Sebela
Artwork: Jan Duursema & Dan Parsons
What They Say:
Ghost is drawn into the dangerous underground of black market weaponry!
The tech-savvy bounty hunter observing Ghost has pinpointed her weaknesses—and now he’s ready to take her down and deliver her to his mysterious employers!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The relaunch of Ghost in her own series was definitely a welcome event, but the first issues left me a little uncertain at times about what kind of character she was. The scale of the story being presented could be worked for dozens of issues, but it was being streamlined and moved through quickly in order to largely bring a good chunk of it to a close within the first few issues. That left me feeling a little disconnected from the book and what it wanted to do, combined with some delays and a handoff in terms of the writing team. What helped to draw me back was the issue dedicated to Elisa’s youth as they made it clear who Elisa was. But Ghost Elisa isn’t Elisa and she’s struggling with who she is. And that’s a main theme in this installment of the series as she faces off against the nameless Hunter that repeatedly pushes back against her.
A large chunk of this book is that back and forth fighting that goes on now that he’s revealed himself after watching her for awhile, collecting data and understanding how she fights. It’s a bit more than how she fights though but rather how she exists, since she’s holding onto bits of her humanity and acting in ways that makes her use of her powers predictable to someone like him. That in turn, with his research play, makes for a pretty good fight between the two as he knows how to twist her to his advantage and she has a good bit of unpredictability to keep him off balance and hold her own. Hunter, for his part, is a little too talkative. Not in that he goes on and on about his master plan – he really doesn’t have one beyond acquiring the box that brought her into this world – but rather he goes on about her abilities and how easy it is to defeat her while also going on about her ties to humanity. Instead of threatening, he comes off more as snobby and annoying. Which does at least leave you rooting for Elisa.
She at least knows when she’s had enough and can’t go further, especially as her anger is getting the better of her, and she heads off to recover and plan her next move. Having acquired the box that he had, she’s able to use that with Tommy to try and figure out its connection to the box that brought her into the world. Tommy’s been a potentially interesting character with his ghost hunting side and I was glad that Elisa made use of that past to try and get to the bottom of the box she acquired, which takes them to a black market location that deals in all sorts of odd items. It’s kind of bland, which makes sense to a degree, but it loses some of that mysterious and interesting aspect that a place like that should have. It’s also kind of haphazard as they basically have her badgering an old woman for information, which further paints Elisa’s descent into not being able to control herself as she turns off more of her humanity to cope with things, but it does start having her asking the right questions. And it puts our Hunter on her path again with an intent to really take her down.
In Summary:
I’ll admit being irked at the fact that the antagonist for this issue didn’t introduce himself at at point nor did Elisa name him in her own fashion. While superhero/villain introductions are awful in general with how corny they are, the fact that I had to get his name from the little blurb at the start of the book with the credits makes me cringe. Spending half the book wondering what the guy’s name is just distracting. That side, while he is cocky and overconfident, I like what he brought to the table in taking on Elisa while trying to get what he’s after for his benefactors, which could be something interesting in itself if they’re actually filling in the vacuum that was left behind by the demons. With a nod towards Von Ghastly as well here, there are things going on but it doesn’t feel like we’re on the track to a really engaging story but rather just a standard story with no long term impact or goal. I want a sense of a plan here for the series rather than stories that feel a bit listless.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: July 2nd, 2014
MSRP: $2.99
