Trail of Tears # 1 has been added on
Vengeance Unbound, and you can read the review for the issue below. As always, spoilers ahoy!
REVIEW
Garth Ennis and Clayton Crain are back for round 2 with the Spirit of Vengeance, but this time things are very different. It's a historical piece with a brand-new character as the Ghost Rider's host, and the creative team are using their storytelling freedom to their advantage.
It's perhaps wise that Ennis seems to be staying away from the established - and oft-times confusing and cluttered - origins for the Ghost Rider that have been told over the years. While some fans may balk at a story that, at least so far, pays no heed to the canon legacy of the character, I think it's a smart move. Ennis has made it clear in various interviews that he's not a fan of the characters but of the concept, and while you could almost feel his contempt for Johnny Blaze during the "Road to Damnation" story this one is a very different animal. Ennis is getting to build his own Ghost Rider from the ground up, and this is merely the first stepping stone for the story of Travis Parham.
What's unfortunate is the sheer obviousness of this series being written for its eventual trade paperback collection...in other words, it's slow as molasses and a lot of time is spent on the characters' philosophical musings on war and manifest destiny, among other subjects. While this does allow the readers to really get to know Travis and Caleb, it also brings up a problem that was also displayed in the first issue of "Road to Damnation": there's no Ghost Rider to be found, other than a vague one-panel appearance. But whereas "Road" was disappointing in that it was the first Ghost Rider issue to be published in five years, "Trail of Tears" gets the benefit of the doubt due to the sheer volume of Ghost Rider material currently being produced. There's already an ongoing Ghost Rider series, so Ennis is allowed more patience and leeway for setting up his story. It also must be said that Ennis isn't just picking up with established characters - he's creating a whole new status quo for new characters, and though I feel he veers the wheel a little off the road with some of the philosophy mentioned above I still appreciate the time given to fleshing out Travis before he becomes a Spirit of Vengeance.
As for Travis Parham himself, I find myself liking him quite a bit. He's a broken soldier who's seen that war is not what he thought it was, something shown in visual brutality during the opening battle sequence. Parham's crisis of confidence on the battle field and later rejection of the war mentality throughout the issue goes far in showing that the character is growing and changing even in the span of one issue. He's a likeable antagonist who starts out as honorable but misguided before coming round to a more worldly sense of self.
Clayton Crain's return to the art chores is a mixed bag as well. I enjoy his work immensely, and I like that he's gone for a brighter choice of colors than what was used in "Road to Damnation". But there's still a problem with some of his sequences being frankly hard to decipher without long minutes of careful study. This is most evident during the opening battle sequence, colored only in black, white, and brown tones, where things are difficult to discern in some panels. What I did really like, on the design front, is the choice to make the background panel borders look aged, like an old photograph or parchment. It really lends a lot to the atmosphere that the creative team is trying to convey, and it's just a small touch that enhances the whole package.
So far, "Trail of Tears" is hovering on a "wait and see" pattern. There's no sign of the Ghost Rider yet, but we can see that bad things are coming in the next issue that will most likely call for a Spirit of Vengeance to rise up in Travis Parham. This issue, though, spends just a little too much time preaching at the expense of possibly boring readers. It's not bad by any means, but the next issue is really going to need to kick things up a notch to hold my interest.
Grade: B
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