Ennis, Garth
AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:
3.5 out of 5
(2 books)
Ghost Rider: Road To Damnation
(Art by Clayton Crain)
Ghost Rider is freed from Hell to hunt down the demon Kazann on Earth. However, not only does he have to contend with other hunters working on behalf of both Heaven and Hell, but he also has to deal with the mysterious plots of his employers, the angel Malachi.
There's a nice air of wry humour to parts of this book, and especially to the characters of Kazann and Hoss, that I enjoyed. It's tonally interesting that those two hellspawn have an almost jaunty attitude, whilst the servants of Heaven are either schemers or ruthless killers.
Beyond that, however, there's not a great deal to this book and it is more or less just a straightforward tale of Ghost Rider hunting down a demon. In fact, it's slightly less than even just that, since the Ghost Rider we see here isn't really the Spirit of Vengeance that I'm familiar with and a fan of. Here Ghost Rider is pretty clueless, easily manipulated and has very little agency. The almost goofy speech patterns Ennis gives him are jarringly different from the the character I'm familiar with and I sort of got the impression that the writer would've happily told the rest of this tale without ever including Ghost Rider if he could've.
3 out of 5
The Punisher: Army Of One
(Art by Steve Dillon and Jimmy Palmiotti)
After being attacked by an enemy he thought to be definitively dead, the Punisher follows the trail of those behind the attack to the lawless Grand Nixon Island, where a sadistic general is plotting a devastating terrorist attack. His pursuit of the guilty ultimate leads Frank Castle to the halls of power in Washington itself.
I've always liked the Punisher (and Jon Bernthal is the definitive screen version, no matter what you say) as a great example of a character straddling the line between avenging hero and ruthless murderer but this was my first foray into the Marvel Knights era of the character and I was a little nervous to begin with, worried that it would just be too dark and gritty for my tastes. As it turns out, Ennis brings a surprising amount of humour to this story and whilst some of it is a bit juvenile (the Russian's cybernetically enhanced body now has enormous breasts), there's more than enough wry humour, very much in the vein of 2000AD, to take the edge off of the extreme violence threaded throughout the book.
Ennis also stops the book from getting too dark by having Frank's enemies be unambiguously terrible people and absolutely deserving of punishment. As such, you find yourself almost gleeful at the brutal ends inflicted upon these heinous characters. That's not to say there's not nuance, however, as Frank has to hunt down and confront a spree-killer who once heroically saved his life in Vietnam.
4 out of 5