Five Ghosts Volume 1: The Haunting of Fabian Gray TP Author: Visit Amazon's Frank J. Barbiere Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1607067900 | Format: PDF
Five Ghosts Volume 1: The Haunting of Fabian Gray TP Description
From Booklist
Thanks to a popular Kickstarter campaign, comics fans can enjoy a story so unique yet so familiar it’s like slipping on a pair of old slippers worn by a stranger. Famed treasure hunter Fabian Gray has the remarkable ability to channel ghosts of five archetypal figures—the wizard, the archer, the detective, the samurai, and the vampire—a power that comes in quite handy in the midst of his swashbuckling exploits. Barbiere’s writing and Mooneyham’s art are reminiscent of classic adventure comics, crammed with rubies to snag, helicopter ladders to lunge after, and biplanes that crash into deep jungles full of magic-wielding cults, all wrapped up in a plot dripping with revenge, regret, greed, and deep hubris. But Barbiere and Mooneyham aside, it would be a mistake not to acknowledge the book’s colorist, S. M. Vidauri, whose muted tones and deep purples mix the nostalgia of iconic adventure tales with the rich, heavy visuals of contemporary comics, such as Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Scott Snyder’s American Vampire, and Jeff Lemire’s Animal Man. --Ben Spanner
- Series: Five Ghosts
- Paperback: 128 pages
- Publisher: Image Comics; First Edition edition (October 1, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1607067900
- ISBN-13: 978-1607067900
- Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 6.7 x 0.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
The `five ghosts' refers to five literary entities that have possessed Fabian Gray. He can draw upon them when he needs them to help solve one of his cases, but sometimes they try to take over his body causing uncontrolled bursts of power and requiring him to knock himself out to stop them. A lot of the first part of this book feels very contrived. I remember reading very early Fantastic Four comics where at the beginning of each issue they would find a reason to use their powers to remind the reader what they were all about, often for no reason other than to get somewhere faster. The intro to this story feels just like that, a setup event, tailor made just so he can show off each of the five entities abilities. The problem is, most of the time you wonder if the powers of one would not be better used than the other, but they had to show them all off. It just does not work for me.
Part of the problem for me with this book is that it is not actually one book. Each issue is effectively a `done in one' story that is very loosely tied to the next until the last two issues. Many trades read like one continuous story as they take out the `next issue' boxes and all you are left with is a flashy splash page which was the end of the previous issue, but other than that it feels like one long story. This one rushes to conclude the issue, throwing in the tenuous connection to the next issue, before a complete change of pace as the new issue starts. By the end it all starts to come together, but a good ending does not make up for three issues I really contemplated not reading.
The art in this series gets one thing right and quite a few things wrong. I actually had to break my own rules when reviewing this series.
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