Review by Ian Keogh

If you’ve come here expecting a conclusion to Jason Aaron’s story of Heaven falling under new control you’re going to have to wait until Ghost Riders: Heaven’s on Fire for that. This instead supplies solo stories featuring some of the major players.

It’s not immediately apparent, but this process begins with Sara, the new Caretaker. Before she appears Aaron solidifies his Ghost Rider mythos by explaining how and why the spirits of vengeance exist, and her experiences are shot through with glimpses of Ghost Riders through the ages. Each of them is unconventional, and each of them is amazingly drawn by Tony Moore (sample art left). Until her destiny’s revealed at the end, Sara’s actually the least interesting thing about the story.

Pleasingly Moore also draws two of three remaining stories, and equally well. The next spotlights Danny Ketch, unconvincingly recast as an enemy during The Last Stand, before equally unconvincingly seeing the light. The experience has left him changed, and transforming into a Ghost Rider is now an extremely painful process. Aaron resurrects an old foe in the Highywayman, a satanic long haul driver, but Moore carries much of the story in illustrating bike vs. truck. It’s bloody, it’s violent, and it’s fun.

Johnny Blaze stars in the remaining two stories, only the first of which is by Aaron. With Heaven lost, he ran away. He seems to have ended up in Japan, where Aaron explores some aspects of the culture in bizarre demonic form. It’s very silly, and again brilliantly drawn.

Mark A. Robinson is also a good artist, but more stylised, and not best served by the excess of purple colouring as Blaze comes across another demon. That’s well designed by Robinson as gnarly, thin and lumpy rather than the usual musclebound specimen coloured red. Si Spurrier writes of Blaze’s visit to Mercy, a town experiencing too many suicides. The plot’s stretched a little, but fits the theme overall as more is learned about Zadkiel.

Against all the odds, this collection of solo stories is the best of Aaron’s Ghost Rider, and his work is also found in The War for Heaven Book 2, and naturally enough in Ghost Rider by Jason Aaron Omnibus.