Space Ghost #1: Strange New Worlds (Spoiler-Free)

Shaking the dust off of Space Ghost and company can’t have been easy for writer David Pepose. After all, the property has been (mostly) moribund for decades, and an entire generation knows the character best as the avuncular late-night talk show host of Space Ghost Coast to Coast (this writer included).

But that lack of pop media presence allows for the perfect opportunity to create Space Ghost more or less anew whole cloth, while sticking to what made him cool in the first place. (And by definition, anyone designed by the late master artist Alex Toth is cool indeed.) Who is Space Ghost? What does he want? Why does he do what he do?  These are questions Pepose sets out to answer throughout this new series from Dynamite. And like most everything else from the prolific writer, he does so with skill, aplomb, and enough skill to bring down the house.

There’s a lot of world-building that goes into Space Ghost #1. Space Ghost himself actually plays secondary banana to POV characters Jan and Jace, whose space colony has just been marauded by space pirates. Thrust into unknown circumstances, Jan and Jace (a long with their Very Special Monkey, Blip) are in full-on survival mode, when help arrives in the form of Space Ghost – who, despite saving the day, can’t help but come off as a bit scary in his own right. Space Ghost is a distant, mission-only oriented kind of hero at this point in his journey – not unlike certain portrayals of a young Batman – and comes off as a little scary to the just-orphaned Jan and Jace despite his best intentions. As far as first impressions go, Space Ghost is off to a rough start with these two.

It’s a bit of a tightrope that Pepose walks this issue. He needs to a) establish the world, b) establish the hero, and c) give readers reasons to care about either. It’s maybe a little early to judge whether or not he’s succeeded, but as far as action-packed blockbusters go, the story is on the right track. There’s a palpable sense of tension from the first panel, and Jan and Jace – though a tad too precocious for their own good – make for good POV characters, as they’re likeable and empathetic enough for readers to immediately impress upon. I’m hoping we get time to decompress with them a bit in the next issue, as they need some space to be portrayed as individuals, not just victims of circumstance. As for Space Ghost himself – he’s very much “Batman in space,” but like Jan and Jace, will need some space in future installments to show readers who he is as a person and reveal a bit more of his motives. As far as this issue goes, he’s a bit of a cypher, which makes it harder to root for him as a protagonist. That’s likely by design, and I’ve learned to trust Pepose over the years, but insofar as first issues go, Space Ghost himself is all killer with little to no filler.

On the art side of things, Jonathan Lau and colorist Andrew Dalhouse do a spectacular job of building Space Ghost’s world. The man himself is large and imposing but never brutalist or over the top in design. Jan and Jace actually *look* like kids, not just miniature adults, with appropriately complementary body language and expressions. Brak and the other space monsters are detailed and frightening without resorting to cheap gimmickry. There’s also a great sense of space throughout the issue, which feels appropriately claustrophobic as Jan and Jace flee from their situation. Details abound but never distract, and the world feels lived-in and real.