Ghost of the Badlands: Comic Review and Controversy
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- Опубликовано: 14 окт 2024
- Ghost of the Badlands is a comic written by Razorfist and drawn by George Alexopoulos, also known as GPrime85 on instagram.
The comic follows the "Ghost," but mostly follows a character called Righty. It is a western with a mysterious masked man doling out justice in the Painted Desert.
There is also a little controversy with this book, as it was put up as a campaign on Indiegogo, but copies are available now on Amazon while not all backers have received their comics.
The campaign graphic novel is larger format, and the hardcover features many more extras. However, some question why this is being fulfilled by Amazon before original backers.
The hero of the story is not the Protagonist of the story. This was actually common among pulp stories. The term for this is a Proxy Hero. This is done so the hero can remain a mystery while you still experience the world through the eyes of someone living in that world
If a person doesn't like this style of writing, that's a matter of taste. It's not something to criticize though. It would be akin to saying a negative of Lord of the Rings is that it's a fantasy story
Before I give my opinion I do want to be honest and say I am a huge Razörfist fan and was going to back this as soon as the teaser imagines came out, so, feel free to consider that with what I’m going to say next.
So when they put the IGG campaign up, Razörfist did mention they would be doing the Eric July method, so the campaign was going to be used as a pre-order; not a funding tool.
With that being said though, I can absolutely agree with everyone in saying: this needed to be put as a disclaimer on the page, or expressed clearly in some manner.
Separately the whole back-end as you mentioned-from fulfillment to rolling out the Amazon product-needed to be handled better.
As the story in the book itself goes, I loved it. Thought the pacing, setting, theme, tone, plot, and most importantly characters were all interesting, well designed, and all felt important. I liked the Ghost above all (even loved when he gave him multiple nick names, especially “Brimstone”) and I was happy that he took the more is less approach for the Ghost, because otherwise the mystic essence of the character would have been gone. Also thought telling the story through a surrogate character is a brilliant idea, and still allows him the flexibility to give the Ghost opportunities to learn more about him. If you know how much Razör loves the shadow, then you know how he’s going to approach the Ghost for subsequent stories.
Only things I thought could have been improved or didn’t like was the family could have had a few more panels to give them a little more weight in the climax in the story and I am not super into Alex’s art style. By no means is he a bad artist, but I don’t like the manga style and felt like at times his perspective and body anatomy were too off to ignore.
His splash pages all were amazing but his regular pages left some things to be desired. All in all it was a great read and I can’t wait to read the color version. Also thought the back up story was great.
Also I don’t like the oversized format. Sure it helps a lot with the art, but it’s annoying a crap that I can’t put in on my bookshelf properly.
I also would have liked it if there was a little more for the IGG campaign, but I don’t think that they short changed us in comparing the IGG and Amazon versions.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment and explanation, as a casual comic fan, I wasn't aware that he was upfront about the method of printing/distribution. It's good that the information was out there, but I had no idea from looking at the IGG page.
You're right, the oversize makes the art stand out, but it does stand out on my bookshelf now.
@_Snafu_ then you'd hate Bandes Dessinées. I have a bunch, and Ghost of the Badlands fits right in among them
Nice review. I had heard of the book but had no idea there was a controversy. Sounds like a twitter thing
Thanks, and yea, I probably would have never known had it not shown up in my feed randomly. I don't even follow the people who brought it up, so I'm not sure why it even came up.