Normally, a long-term, ongoing comic series can be difficult to jump into if you’re not well-versed in the characters and the background. Even if you know the main character, the origin, and the basic premise, a lot of lore can develop over the years.
Case-in-point: This comic directly follows the events of Giant Robot Hellboy. I know who Hellboy is, but when and how did he become a giant robot? What are the implications of this for the rest of the Hellboy universe? Fortunately, none of that matters to the understanding or enjoyment of Ghost of a Ghost. In fact, in the past, I’ve found spinoffs in the world of Hellboy to be just about as standalone as you can get, and this one is no exception.
All you need to know is briefly recapped on the title page, and again in the first few pages of the comic itself. After an accident on her last mission with the mysterious substance enkeladite, superspy Jian has become a super-powered spy. Now, she’s part of an elite team of other female agents with highly specialized skills, performing missions for a variety of different world governments, as needed. The job is easy for operatives of their caliber—even boring. Until…
Mad scientist Dr. Szasz is conducting experiments with the enkeladite that gave Jian her powers. He wants to turn it into a weapon to build an army of supersoldiers. He must be stopped, before the whole world is at his mercy. To do that, the entire team of elite operatives will have to come together and put their skills to the test.
So far, this is a fairly standard spy story. Underneath the surface details, the underlying premise is the same as every other spy story you’ve seen or read. When a plot is simple and familiar, what typically sets a story apart is the world and the characters. In this case, both are promising, but we haven’t been given much chance to get to know them yet.
The members of the elite team of female superspies all have their unique skills and weapons, but we haven’t really seen them in action yet—nor have we gotten to explore who they are as people, as individuals or to each other. As for the world, it’s one of superpowered beings, but we haven’t gotten to see the powers in action either.
Don’t get me wrong: This isn’t a bad comic, by any means. It’s an interesting premise, it’s fairly enjoyable, and the art is good. This issue just doesn’t have much to make it stand out. In fact, so far, it seems to be going out of its way to avoid any high-stakes action or confrontation—almost comically so, in parts.
Fortunately, the next issue does promise to give us a good, old-fashioned, superpowered spy brawl. Once we get that, it should be easier to judge what kind of a story we have on our hands. In the meantime, it’s a fairly decent, middle-of-the-pack spy comic with the potential to become a lot more.
Creative Team: Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson (story), Michael Avon Oeming (art, cover art), Taki Soma (colors, cover art), Clem Robins (letters), Dave Johnson (variant cover)
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
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