You can’t keep the Spirit of Vengeance caged.
Creative Staff:
Story: Benjamin Percy
Art: Cory Smith
Colors: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: VC’s Travis Lanham
What They Say:
JOHNNY BLAZE!! Johnny Blaze has the perfect life: a wife and two kids, a job at an auto repair shop, and a small-town community that supports him… But Johnny isn’t doing well. He has nightmares of monsters when he sleeps. And he sees bloody visions when he’s awake. This life is beginning to feel like a prison. And there’s a spirit in him that’s begging to break out! Benjamin Percy (WOLVERINE, X-FORCE) and Cory Smith (CONAN THE BARBARIAN, CAPTAIN MARVEL) are going back to basics with the Spirit of Vengeance in this extra-sized first issue!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With it being the fiftieth-anniversary of Ghost Rider, a relaunched title was no surprise. The character is not one that I got into during my teenage years but when they launched a new series along with a few other themed ones in the 1990s it was something that I really got into and enjoyed. I’ve not kept tabs on Marvel books for a number of years now but this one drew me back just to see how they’d handled it. Benjamin Percy is a solid writer and he crafts a good tale here that puts a lot of uncertainty on the map to play with and is open-ended enough to really go in some neat places. It’s helped a lot by Cory Smith’s artwork here with some great designs and a sense of dread with the supernatural side, which Bryan Valencia delivers in some great colors. When it plays in the darker colors and blackness toward the end of it, it really shines the most.
Focusing on Johnny Blaze, we’re introduced to him a few months after a bad crash on his bike that has left him with a nasty scar on the side of his head. And a lot of court-ordered therapy and medication to get him to realize monsters aren’t real as they try to ensure his hallucinations have ended. Johnny is trying to ignore all the dark things he sees, which the pills do help with, and a lot of his motivation is because he wants to do right by his wife and kids in this perfect little suburbia of Hayden Hills. But the headaches, which feels like something trying to get out of his head, are eating away at him and he’s struggling hard with it as the dark things and creatures he sees are feeling more and more real. You’re left for a lot of this extended issue with the basic of wondering whether he’s been trapped in a dream or if it’s a cage of his own making to cope with things. It’s a familiar setup by Percy executes it well with the therapy sessions and how he goes about his own life.
But the breakdown has to happen in this issue to hook the readers and we see a small segment of it early on with how he has dealt with a neighbor’s dog. We see how the things he sees are becoming more real to him and it’s pushing him over the edge as he skipped the pills for a day. The violence inside is slowly rising, which is played well and comes alongside the addition of a very supernatural-looking man named Zeb who has come to town as part of a group of “magicians” that have been seeking him out. Zeb’s role is to make him realize that the world has gone to hell because he’s not in it proper and it can’t be denied anymore. You know you’re going to get the Spirit of Vengeance back in the opening issue and Percy and Smith do not disappoint here, while playing to Johnny’s narration about it, delivering a familiar but strong return to the character that has to figure out how bad things have gone without its presence in the world.
We also get a little material outside of Hayden Hills as we’re introduced to FBI Special Agent Whilmer who really doesn’t like that he’s been assigned to a paranormal operations unit. He’s a by-the-numbers guy and is trying to get reassigned anywhere but that group, which is when the ostensible team leader for the group shows up with former SHIELD agent Talia Warroad. She’s got all the right look and grimness for the role and not being FBI – or even what most would think with SHIELD – but she’s the right type for this kind of actual work. Which is why she demands money and a mobile unit to hit the road to hunt monsters as things are getting worse out in the world. You can easily see how her group will be both friend and foil to Johnny in the issues to come as we’ve seen this kind of gig before, but it’s the right framing to use to get things underway before we get some more personalized trappings to make it its own thing.
In Summary:
There is a lot you can do with a character like Ghost Rider but there are demands by long-time fans as well. Percy basically gives into the standards that people want from the character with the foundation here and that’s fine. It assuages them while leaving open what you can do next. The next is what’s important in the long run (as long as a Marvel series is these days) and I’m curious to see if Percy can capitalize on it or just stick to the familiar. With Cory Smith and Bryan Valenza on board for the artwork, it’ll look pretty great – especially with all the demonic elements – and that makes it worth keeping up with alone. But the potential is all here and I’m curious to see what Zeb and Talia will bring to the story when given a chance to breathe.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: February 23rd, 2022
MSRP: $4.99
