Oct 28, 2009
Posted in Ghost Rider by admin
Ghost Rider Volume 2: The Life & Death Of Johnny Blaze TPB
How did Johnny Blaze end up in Hell, anyway? It’s simple, really: He died. And when he died, his eternal soul – long promised to Hell in exchange for “saving” Crash Simpson – descended into the Pit, taking the Ghost Rider along with it. This is the story of how and why it all happened, courtesy of writer Daniel Way and horror-comic legend Richard Corben. Plus: In a small town northeast of Chicago, people are losing their heads. . . literally. The sheriff of this sleepy little town…
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October 28th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
I don’t get the negative reviews on this series at all. I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s fast, well written, has an interesting, spooky premise, has cool visuals, and has great, well done, well choreographed action sequences that have a lot of impact, use the environments the characters are in to great effect, and just feel brutal. In this particular volume, the art is handled by the normal artist, Mark Texeira, as well as guest artist Richard Corben. While I prefer Texeira’s art, both Corben’s art and Texeira’s art tell the story well and give the action a lot of impact. Neither is on the level of a McNiven or a Cassidy, but they (especially Texiera) work very well for Ghost Rider, and depict the action very clearly and intensely. Combined with Way’s plotting, Texiera also manages some very dramatic shots. As for the writing, Daniel Way comes up with a lot of little nuances that hieghten the story and are really appropriate for the character. There’s one scene where Lucifer litteraly rips off Ghost Rider’s leg and beats him with it — that’s not something you could do with just about any other character, but it works really well for this. There’s another part where Ghost Rider tells a hardcase sherrif to stay out of his way or he’s going to regret it. Naturally, the hardcase starts to tell Ghost Rider “well, you might as well kill me now then because . . . ” Before he can get any farther, Ghost Rider has already thrown him about twenty feet into the windshield of a car. Way seems to get the Ghost Rider character, and comes up with a lot of clever and cool ways for Ghost Rider to fight — again, many of them using his environment — and for me it just makes the series a lot of fun to read. Great action, well done characters, fun character and situation driven humor that doesn’t detract from the seriousness of the story (like the problems Lucifer has directing his army of the dead,) and an overarching storyline that’s interesting and epic in nature and even a little bit spooky, all combine to make this a fun, fast, exciting, enjoyable read. This series has made Ghost Rider and Johney Blaze cool to me, and, like I said, I just don’t get the complaints. My only complaint would be that I read through the collections too quickly — faster than most similar sized collections — but the writing, pace, and action are all very appropriate to the character, so it really shouldn’t be a complaint.
October 28th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
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The story has a few good moments, but is overall forgetable. The artwork is definately not in the same category as the other novels in this series. Get it only to complete the series if you must.