Review: Cosmic Ghost Rider Destroys The Marvel Universe #1

Are you a fan of Donny Cates’s Cosmic Ghost Rider? If so, this little spin off from Paul Scheer and Nick Giovannetti might interest you. Okay, I know some of you might find the premise slightly groan worthy. Even just mentioning the fact that this title had come to life managed to inspire that sort of noise from a few friends who are avid comic readers. I get that. Truly. I can’t say I wasn’t a little apprehensive diving into the pages that were in front of me because there had already been so many of the same premise. So and so saves the Marvel Universe, blah blah blah kills the Marvel Universe, etc etc. I understand the slight bias to not want to read.

But here’s the thing…underneath the pretense of what this issue is, illustrated by Gerardo Sandoval (who is fantastic,by the way) and the inks by Victor Nava, with colors by the man himself, Antonio Fabela, and letters by VC’s Travis Lanham, is a really really great story about what – at his core- Frank Castle might be like. It touches on things like him losing his mind, his slightly skewed view of things that happen around him – as illustrated in the way that he recants stories to his son, Frankie, and the fact that the man that so often gets written off as some psychopath who only knows killing can actually have a soul.

Granted, things that Frank may or may not have done in the past don’t always align with most people’s perceptions of good and bad as he walks a very narrow line in gray, but it’s a very stark constrast to the violence that he so often gets called out for, be it from other teammates, from people who know of his reputation, or otherwise. While some of that does, indeed, take front and center and obviously causes some distress between those that he does work with, the balance of his time and his attention to his son – who has no clue that uncle “Fredo” might actually be his father, is quite sweet.

The biggest question I have for this title is that if Frank actually went back in time to right wrongs, all while acknowleding the fact that his travels created time paradoxes, how will this effect the future and who the man actually will become? Is this perhaps the reason why Cosmic Ghost Rider ends up “destroying” the Marvel Universe as we’ve known it so far? I can only guess how things will unfold in the next issue of this 3.5 out of 5 surprisingly human little title.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

(W) Paul Scheer, Nick Giovannetti (A) Gerardo Sandoval (CA) Gerardo Zaffino