Space Ghost #4: The Wider World at War

The easy approachability of this year’s Space Ghost run continues in Space Ghost #4. In fact, the issue is less about Space Ghost, Jace, and Jan and more about events in the galaxy at large. The result is an atypical issue of Pepose’s Space Ghost run and an easy to digest story.

Space Ghost #4 is unusually text heavy. Pepose has done a good job maintaining this world’s consistency as the series has gone on, but he seldom engages in any kind of large scale world building beyond what an immediate story requires. The very nature of this story requires a lot of world building, though. A story about safeguarding a treaty signing between two galactic powers necessarily requires some backstory about the conflict and the belligerents involved. The setup is interesting enough, but the issue does bog down in the opening pages.

Fortunately this slow start is balanced by a big increase in action once the world building is complete. In that regard, Pepose doesn’t slow burn Space Ghost #4’s story at all. Indeed, the pace of the story increases such that there is very little tension until the final pages. Space Ghost #4 races to the end as soon as the action begins.

Slow start and limited tension aside, Pepose delivers an exciting issue. He quickly puts Jace in jeopardy which gives the three main characters a personal stake that doesn’t exist when the issue begins. Additionally, the issue goes out with a tense cliffhanger.

Lau’s attention to detail serves Space Ghost #4 well. The treaty signing is a crowded event, full of people from each side of the conflict. Several panels in the issue present a wider view, in some cases full of groups of individuals and in others a number of ships. The detailed art brings a wider sense of scope to the issue, and it’s well suited for this part of Space Ghost’s world as developed by Pepose.

The Shard People also benefit from Lau’s higher level of detail, albeit on a smaller scale. The individual Shard People are replete with uneven and at times jagged lines. Despite their larger size and the strength that that implies, Lau makes them look fragile, as though they could break into any number of pieces during a physical confrontation. Lau remains an ideal collaborator when it comes to realizing the world of Space Ghost.

Most Space Ghost issues feature characters who unleash powerful energies when they fight–Space Ghost chiefly among them. This isn’t quite the case with Space Ghost #4 where individual Shard People and Space Sharks fight each other in more of a direct melee. Dalhouse’s most expressive coloring here comes during the space sequences. Ships and their weapons are rich in color against the black background of space. The same is true of the Space Sharks’ planet, Liquo, and its star. Much as the story’s action elevates non-stop until the end, Dalhouse’s coloring becomes brighter and richer as the conflict goes on.

Esposito uses rectangular and square dialogue bubbles with shaved corners and a crisper, straighter font for the Shard People. With none of the other dialogue bubbles and caption boxes in the issue having quite the same style, these choices add an inorganic feel to the Shard People that creates an effective contrast with their enemy, the Space Sharks.