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Advance Review: Five Ghosts #5

By | July 29th, 2013
Posted in Reviews | 4 Comments

Recently announced to be an ongoing series, “Five Ghosts” is the latest Image miniseries to be getting the “pilot goes to greenlight” treatment – a smart new way to give fledgling books a chance to go larger. If any books deserves this sort of treatment, it’s this one. With a rich mythology to play with, a sense of adventure, and a penchant for a dungeon-diving – the possibilities for “Five Ghosts” seem endless. Issue #5 makes for a fine ending for the first volume, and acts as an exciting tease for what has yet to come.

Written by Frank J. Barbiere
Illustrated by Chris Mooneyham

…THE END?

Teetering atop an increasingly impossible set of wobbly circumstances, our hero Fabian Gray has himself (and his loved ones) at the height of breathtaking danger. Then again, it’s probably pretty easy to get yourself in deep when you’ve got the power to call upon the skills of up to five different literary characters from classic fiction and have a predilection for treasure-hunting. Throughout five issues, Fabian Gray has been hog-tied and hanged in all sorts of insidious predicaments, to the point where he finds himself in issue #5 battling a sort of demon sorcerer for his very life.

And that’s all you need to know before you jump in. Pound for pound, there is not a better book on the stands when it comes to trusting its reader and letting the visuals breathe than Barbiere & Mooneyham’s “Five Ghosts.” Quite simply, it entertains and surprises you using the exact storytelling tools that comic books are meant to use. When Fabian calls upon a literary hero to solve a problem or complete an impossible feat, it is immediately clear why he’s doing it and what an asset it was. When the comic flashes back to an earlier event, we learn something about Fabian Gray’s character from it and we actually see how he has (or hasn’t) changed, depending on the current situation. Most of this is accomplished wordlessly.

Throughout the issue (and the miniseries as a whole), Barbiere only inserts dialogue where it feels needed. Exposition need not apply in “Five Ghosts” – Barbiere trusts the very talented Mooneyham to hit every beat with intelligence and clarity. “Five Ghosts” engages the reader in the art as much as the writing, making for a robust comic book marriage of art and writing. At the same time, this does make characters that we haven’t spent as much time with (especially the villains) feel undefined, but they pass under the lower bar of “pulp adventure” villains who cackle, craving power and treasure. The reader might not comprehend exactly what’s going on immediately, but it isn’t for lack of execution. Rather, the creators ask their readers to do something that comics do not ask them to do with as much frequency as “Five Ghosts” does – glean emotions, motivations, and internal thoughts from the art itself.

Mooneyham sets the issue off with a tone-setting torture sequence featuring Fabian having to re-live horrible images of his past mistakes. Over the course of the issue, Mooneyham takes the square-jawed hero and runs through depicting him as being something of a rogue, to being helpless and wounded, to regaining the heroism that characterized his ability to pass the trials of the adventure thus far. Mooneyham’s art peels back the layers to Fabian Gray as the story goes on. Action dominates the latter half of the issue and, once again, Mooneyham’s talents continue to shine in a different way. By tapping into the different powers of Fabian Gray, Mooneyham gives the final sequence a dynamism that keeps the tension ratcheted.

Not enough can be said about the colors of Lauren Affe, which lend a pulpy, weathered look to this gripping dime-store novel of a comic book. Nearly every page would look wonderful hanging individually on a wall somewhere and a lot of it has to do with the vintage look of the paper and the stark, almost psychedelic color choices that characterize each image.

Too often the sad story is told in comics, about the little book that ultimately couldn’t. Cancellations plague cult-favorite titles all the time, but “Five Ghosts” will not be one of them. With Image Comics continually gaining marketshare and visibility for its creator-owned upstarts, it’s becoming increasingly more common that guys like Barbiere and Mooneyham can get their weird visions out there and keep them going. With a premise that has been followed through on in ways that only a great comic book can, “Five Ghosts” #5 is a rousing success that teases our imaginations and thrills with plucky adventure. And though the story clearly plays to the strengths of it being a comic, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see this story in other media someday.

Final Verdict: 9.0 – Buy, buy the trade when it comes out, and brace yourself for the ongoing series.


Vince Ostrowski

Dr. Steve Brule once called him "A typical hunk who thinks he knows everything about comics." Twitter: @VJ_Ostrowski

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