2 out of 5

I’ve prattled on about my appreciation for Chuck Austen, and love for some of his projects. You can check that prattle on some of his more major titles, like Strips or U.S. War Machine, but Ghost Riders certainly isn’t a major title. It’s also, eh, not something that would fall into the appreciate / love bucket; it’s more indicative of Austen’s indulgences when his guiding m.o. is to just play around.

Chuck can be really funny; he codes dad- and bro-humor, but that gets cut with some sharp pangs of self-awareness and absurd / surreal humor often enough to give his best books a fun flow. And though I kinda hate his CG art, it… “works” for some things. Like I think it was “right” for U.S. War Machine, I just also wish the technology was maybe a decade beyond where it was at the time – and yeah, my quotes also suggest that I also think there were likely hand-drawn choices that could’ve worked just as well.

Regardless, for a book like Ghost Riders, its use was only necessitated by that being how Chuck drew at the time. I mean, it achieved cartoonish – not manga – designs effectively, and I guess there’s some quirk to seeing that juxtaposed against realistic / CG backgrounds, but the coloring on this stuff is so muddy when the computer shading was used that it moreso becomes notable for how odd it looks. Also, any speed gains from the process are negated by Chuck’s overuse of statted panels, sometimes confusingly – like, the timing is off in some panels.

Standing back from this, this truly is a kind of “so bad it’s (almost) good” issue, with Damon “Hellstorm” (I know it’s sometimes spelled that way, but it comes across as part of the so-bad-etc. clunkiness) meeting his brother, Johnny, at “Beelzebub’s” cafe on “Heaven” street – art of subtlety, thou are not invoked – prior to them teaming up to fight a giant, skull-bikinied Satana. Yes, they make a joke about her giant, and apparently fake, boobs. And yes, underlining that she’s wearing a skull bikini. Hulk is there as a giant, godzilla-sized monster. There are also a lot of cartoon demons, that look like Ghostbusters cartoon extras.

None of this makes any sense. It’s implied that Damon has been talking this Son of Satan bit for all of his and Johnny’s lives; I’m not sure why Johnny calls Damon “Hellstorm” if they’re brothers and maybe have the same last name; also odd why Johnny would have to explain to his brother that he’s an orphan. Yeah, in typical Chuck fashion, there’s actually a story you could piece together here that we picked up in the middle of, but it’s hard to take the time to do that when Satana starts hocking fire loogies.

Actually, the more I read this, it’s pretty great.