Since it's a new ongoing series by one of the current X-writers, we might as well have a quick look at Ghost Rider.

I've never been a huge fan of Ghost Rider.  Of course, the visual is fantastic, but he's not a particularly compelling character.  In most hands, once you've seen the cover art, you've pretty much seen the show.

But Garth Ennis and Clayton Crain's Ghost Rider miniseries sold unexpectedly well a few months back, so here we are again with another attempt to revive him for good.  It worked in the seventies when the biker gimmick was fashionable; it worked in the early nineties when he drifted back into synch with the zeitgeist.  Has he come back round again?

Daniel Way doesn't strike me as the most obvious choice for this book.  His stories tend to be on the ponderous side, when Ghost Rider needs a lot of momentum and energy to cover for the essential silliness of the concept.  But then, they've teamed him with Javier Saltares and Mark Texeira on art, and that's a duo who are particularly good at going over the top.  They're certainly have a whale of a time drawing the flaming biker in hell, and they're providing the book with all the energy it needs.

As for the story, Ghost Rider is trying to break out of hell, and Satan keeps tricking him so that he never leaves.  And that's basically it.  I can't fault it as a starting point, I suppose, but it does nothing to draw me in.  None of the characters really interest me, and nothing seems especially memorable.  There's a decent enough finish, but it just doesn't make me care.

Then again, nobody else has ever made me care about the Ghost Rider either, and Way certainly doesn't fall into his usual trap of writing a story where nothing actually happens.  Plenty happens here; I just don't find it especially engaging.  But the art is excellent, and the Ghost Rider fanbase may well love it.

Rating: C+

back | continue