Marvel resumes the adventures of Johnny Blaze after a somewhat run-down reboot due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Now Panini Comics offers us a new number one Ghost Rider from the hand of Benjamin Percy and Cory Smith.
The calm before the storm
Life is far from perfect for any human being, no matter what the worries are, we will always have some once we reach adulthood, regardless of our economic position or social class. Problems may be different but each one of us has our own, those that take away our sleep from time to time, those that overwhelm us if they are not solved, even the smallest of them can cause us a headache until we manage to overcome it until the next one arrives.
We can find ourselves with the appearance that everything is going as we wish, but at any moment, just around the corner, a new difficulty awaits us that changes our plans completely. It’s what’s going to happen to Johnny Blaze. Apparently he has everything that a humble man could wish for, a wife, children, a roof under which to take refuge and where to have family moments… But when something beats inside him, when a force is about to be unleashed again, that’s when he arrives. the problem, it’s time to get Zarathos back, to bring back Ghost Rider.
psychoanalyzing the beast
In this new beginning of the adventures of Johnny Blaze as Ghost Rider. We have the character going to therapy after a serious accident that has left him with consequences, not only physical but also psychological. As a Blaze patient, he does not finish opening up to the therapist, he is elusive and hides some of the things that happen to him, such as certain nightmares that torment him, the visions that assail him at any time or the hobby that has now arisen to take refuge in the intake of high-proof alcohol.
Denying that monsters exist is a dogma that he cannot carry out. His life begins to become chaotic, to become what he does not want, to realize that he is living a lie and that the only way to return to reality is to once again embrace the demon with whom he has lived so many adventures, to get go to Zarathos to look for the one who has put him in a reality that is not his own, from which he can only come out being the worst of all those around him, becoming a manifestation of evil to find the one who has kept him locked up in such a delusion.
The brake and clutch levers have fallen into good hands
We cannot say that this first number clarifies many things for us, but it practically works as a self-conclusive number with some questions to answer. A purchase that does not disappoint and if it does not convince, it does not force us to continue after a great cliffhanger that leaves us with honey on our lips. Benjamin Percy executes an episode in which he comes to show us what he can do, he opens a path for us that he will start to walk next but it works as an independent entity with a final splash page worthy of a poster.
And that art to pencils is applied by a Cory Smith sublime that takes us by the hand from the brilliant life of a recovering Blaze after a motorcycle accident to confronting him with deformed demons that seemed to be something very different. Impressive sequence of a depressed, sleepless, tired and defeated Johnny who can’t find his place in a city that turns out to be not what it seemed at first glance. A good start with two contrasting authors who promise to bring back the wildest side of the one who comes when innocent blood is spilled.