The early days of isolation during the pandemic (idk what that was as evinced by Sweden's totally-great-strategy) meant Dark Horse gave away a fuckton of old comics for free. I read through the
Comic's Greatest World stuff with
X,
Barb Wire (I had no idea it was a comic and not just an excuse to see Pamela Anderson do a strip-tease!) and some other ill-fated try for a multiverse. But I was reminded of
Ghost and a
blogpost I read about it, so I decided to check it out to see if it was bonkers with odd gender politics. Lo and behold, three days later I've read over 40 issues and man, it was a ride.
The "men bad and lustful predators" schtick is fun, because Eric Luke's sympathies lie with the protagonist, and it's far from any misdirected "angry woman all the time means feminism" that the late eighties and nineties yankmerican media propagated. Early villains tend to have very exploitative superpowers, whether making women docile, men unable to control their urges or just pump everyone full of pheromones until they get stupid horny. It gets into ridiculous lengths later on, and there's a real grating mismatch between the arguably anti-patriarchy message, clumsy as it is, and the insanely cheesecake art. Ghost's lace-up cleavage bodice is weird, but when Adam Hughes took over the art almost every other artist had to keep up with the increased levels of badonkadonk he established. Ivan Reis gave her some truly '90s gazongas when he took over as a regular artist. The 2013 reboot has a less
outré costume design.
There's queerbaiting galore after about episode 19 (Ghost kissing Barb Wire freaks out a town of heteronormative gender essentialists that they crumble), self-cest (getting it on with others means Ghost can escape her self-made psychic hell or something, even if that someone is herself) and a scene in which our protagonist has to perform a striptease for a sleazeball villain and the artist really leans into it. You could argue that it's showing us, the readers, as mirroring the behaviour of sleaze-ball Parker, but eh, screw that type of media criticism. "herp derp titty lady on cover means you want everyone to debase themselves for you hurr durr" The comic has many failed attempts at having its cake and eat also it, but it's still much better at it than contemporary bad girl comics.
As for the actual plots, they're passable for the most part, but the wheels start to wobble after issue 24 or so, and the last six issues of Eric Luke's run are highly missable. It was cancelled for a reason, and we didn't even get around to reveal the actual central mystery of the comic! I daren't read the 1997 run for fear of its grimdarkness reaching very edgy levels. Also, I can only take so much nineties media before I start having nightmares about backwards baseball caps, Kevin Smith films, and stonewashed jeans. The characterisation is very even, but deep character studies are left out. Loved ones get killed off for angst, hunk heroes show that #notallmen, vicious robber baron criminal gangsters want profit over all, and Dr. October keeps flashing her tits to show off the duality of sex and horror. The usual nineties fare. Oh, and there's a dominatrix villain who wants to kill all men but also all the women she deems to be victims or complicit in exploitation, just to show us how our protagonist could've turned bad.
All in all, a fun excursion into '90s grimdarkness.
