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Ghost Rider #22
Posted 29 Apr 2008
Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Roland Boschi (interior), Marco Djurdjevic (cover)
Letters: VC’s Joe Caramagna
Colors: Dan Brown
Publisher: Marvel
4.50 out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by Adam McGovern
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Every month Jason Aaron achieves new depth (in both senses) for the
medium in his uncompromisingly literary, relentlessly squalid Native
American mob saga Scalped at
Vertigo, so I had to see how he’d crash a stolen Cadillac
through the mainstream storefront window at Marvel. While his Wolverine is state-of-the-art but
nothing new, his Ghost Rider
is a mad masterwork – it’s as if they turned Gilbert
Shelton loose on Hellboy.
Shadowed omens and pseudo-solemnity are all well and good for your
basic theological thriller, but Aaron grasps better than anyone that
Ghost Rider’s heritage
is as much B-movie as biblical, with the Donner Pass exploitation and
the killer hicks and the ninja nurses careening through the current
arc. And with blistering FX and crazed-woodcut composition Roland
Boschi is the first artist to truly understand how distorted the rest
of reality has to be with an absurdity like Johnny Blaze at large in
it.
I haven’t crossed the street to pee on this book in 30 years,
but Aaron & Boschi have made themselves another addict (I’m
sure Gilbert would approve…).
—CCdC—
Cover image used without explicit permission in accordance with the "Fair Use" provision of US copyright law.
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