What do you get when you cross a magnificent bastard, a merry band of Ghost Hunters (plus one skeptic), and a house of horrors with secrets behind every door? A pretty good comic – plain and simple.
Written by Joshua Williamson
Illustrated by Goran Sudzuka
Colors by Miroslav MrvaThe Trask Mansion has a bloody history of death and dismemberment. Jackson T. Winters’ #1 rule to survive it: Get out before the sun goes down. But how can his team of paranormal experts steal a ghost without breaking a few rules?
“Ghosted” is very much the heist comic that it sells itself as, with some unique strengths that make it different from your “Thief of Thieves” – though that’s an apt comparison. Rather than having action beats or fast-paced set pieces, Goran Sudzuka peppers the issue with a variety of creepy or weird sequences that favor the supernatural over high speed chases or gunplay. Sudzuka’s pacing makes a pretty wordy book significantly more interesting than it could have been. Sudzuka proves to have high-level chops when it comes to the pockets of horror he injects through the issue. The heist, in this case, involves stealing a ghost from a much-storied haunted house with a familial history of murder and cannibalism. In one sequence a character opens a door and reveals a room that is unlike anything we’ve seen in the otherwise conventional “haunted house” that the issue is framed inside. This image serves to give the reader pause and changes the landscape of the issue. It also allows Williamson and Sudzuka to drop another mystery into the proceedings.
Another artistic strength of the book is the way that the scant moments of violence stand out through their patient pacing and surprising circumstances. At the same time, the Sudzuka and Miroslav Mrva, the colorist, visibly present these in the same manner as the rest of the story, making them more creepy than horrific or intensely gory. The palette Mrva uses throughout the issue gives the impression that dusk is upon our team – making it imperative that they accomplish their goal as quickly as possible. There’s an eeriness to those dusky grays and browns that evoke a danger washing over the group. The aforementioned sequences of violence are quiet, disorienting, and alarming. The finale of the issue is so surprising and deliberate in its pacing that it may change the way you look at what the characters are doing and what their motivations might be.
And that final sequence is quite necessary, because until then, these characters could have easily come off as your standard stock set. Williamson presents the reader with a pretty large cast for a haunted house spelunking adventure. You’ve got your skeptic, you’ve got your true believer, you’ve got your opportunists, you’ve got your con man, and you’ve got your brash heist leaders. Again, it’s classic heist story material: complete with the “getting the band together” sequence. There are moments where Williamson comes close to sticking too closely to those character templates. The skeptic, for instance, can’t help but tell you at every turn how absurd this all is and give you a simple explanation for every weird thing they find. But mostly, Williamson does a tremendous job balancing the team and giving every member a reason for being there – one that serves themselves, and one that serves the group. It’s actually a veteran move on Williamson’s part, the way that he ensures that every member of the team has a reason for being there and that it actually makes sense. How often do you read team books that waste 2 or more characters as placeholders to just fill out the team? All too often, if you ask me. Here, the team gets a con man when they need one, but he also finds opportunities to slip away and try to benefit himself. Everyone is using one another for one reason or another. It’s a lot to fit into 20 pages, but Williamson does it and does it well.
Another deft use of the team dynamic is that it turns the “leader”, Jackson Winters, into what amounts to being a background character. He’s got the most personality out of anyone on the team, I would say, but it could easily become annoying or overwhelming (or crass, at times), if he wasn’t used so surprisingly sparingly. The “magnificent bastard” is a character that writers could easily fall in love with and overuse, but that never happens here. He’s witty and somewhat charming, but also aloof, gruff, and even sexist or derogatory at times. In the first issue, for me, it was a little much. Whether intentional or not, having smaller doses of this guy goes a long way toward making him a better character. The way “Ghosted” is structured, we don’t have to follow a self-centered hard ass the whole time, but he’s incredibly useful as a glue for a potentially fractured team.
Williamson and Sudzuka’s “Ghosted” succeeds by taking a couple of very familiar (and pretty in vogue) genres and mixing them up. There’s a little bit of horror, a little bit of “Hoax Hunters” paranormal procedural structure going on, and a whole lot of heist movie flair to tie it all together. With a balanced cast of characters and a pacing that never stays in one place for too long, “Ghosted” freshens up a bunch of things that we’ve seen in plenty of comics before. Sudzuka and Williamson are both veteran talents at this point – ready to be in the spotlight a little more. Hopefully, with enough support, “Ghosted” will get them there.
Final Verdict: 8.0 – Buy. A series that started off on the right foot gets better. And creepier.
