- Space Ghost Annual #1
- Dynamite Entertainment
- Written by David Pepose
- Illustrated by Jonathan Lau
- Colors by Andrew Dalhouse
- Letters by Taylor Esposito
After the thrilling events of issue #12’s second-story-arc finale, the fine-tuned creative team of DAVID PEPOSE and JONATHAN LAU pull out all the stops for their very first Space Ghost Annual!
With the Council of Doom seemingly defeated, our heroes now face a terrifying new threat – one that strikes from beyond the fourth dimension! To have any hope of survival, Space Ghost and his crew must find a way to break the dominion of… TEMPUS THE TIME-MASTER!
Featuring 28 action-packed story pages, Space Ghost Annual #1 boasts an equally exciting array of covers from FRANCESCO MATTINA, JAE LEE & JUNE CHUNG, BJORN BARENDS, and ANTHONY MARQUES!
This past year has been a banner one for me as various publications (Dynamite being one) have taken a step through the Way-Back Machine to dig up classic properties ripe for a new start. A major figure in that playground has turned out to be the Trope Killer himself, David Pepose (Spencer & Locke, The O.Z., Savage Avengers, Going to the Chapel). Doing some of his best work in areas where he’s allowed to create a sandbox to call his own, David has nestled into the realm of the intergalactic vigilante, Space Ghost!
Long before he was the host of a goofy late-night talk show, Space Ghost was a man of mystery, blazing through the cosmos of the 1960s with his Inviso-Belt and Power Bands. While his impact on the minds of impressionable young children (point of order, I wasn’t around to watch his adventures until the 1970s) was great, there was surprisingly little meat to the episodic stories. Space Ghost, with his teen sidekicks Jan & Jace, tries to right some wrongs, but he gets into trouble while facing down his menagerie of foes until the power of teamwork sees them through for the win!
It’s in the many gaps that David Pepose has been able to find more than enough wiggle room to do some serious building, and his sandbox runneth over. The heroics are grand, supported by a backstory fans have never been privy to and a host of characters who are finally given their due. The villains have all been integrated into this growing universe, with an eye toward true menace, and are brought together to form the Council of Doom! Over the last few issues, Pepose has turned the action up to 11 and kept the pressure on our hero from the Ghost Planet and his feisty teen charges. Through it all, he’s managed to maintain the feel of the old episodic cartoon show, using the formulaic story elements to guide the action without being smothered by it.
Lending a truckload of talent to those efforts is the artistic team of Jonathan Lau and Andrew Dalhouse. Lau’s work is nothing short of outstanding, breathing new life into those old Hanna-Barbera characters and undoing the damage done by the goofball antics of Space Ghost, Coast to Coast (oh, Brak, what they did to you was criminal…). Space Ghost himself has never been more dynamic and imposing, and his host of villains (even Brak) are truly menacing. Building on Lau’s foundation, Dalhouse lends the artwork solidity and a sense of grandeur. If this series had nothing else going for it, the artwork on its own would be a standout.
The last piece to the puzzle, as in every comic book ever written, lies in the lettering. Taylor Esposito is remarkable in that he does his job well enough to remain unremarkable. The very best letterers do their jobs in a way that helps a reader through the story without taking over the page. Have you ever watched a movie or TV show filmed in another language, and once you’ve gotten used to reading the subtitles, you forget that you’re even reading them? That’s the idea. Esposito lays Pepose’s script on the page without interrupting or disrupting the work done by Lau and Dalhouse.
With this annual issue, the first “season” comes to a satisfying conclusion. Whether you come into this series, like me, with a sense of nostalgia, or you’ve been drawn to pluck it from the shelves by the many gorgeous covers, Space Ghost is a ride. It has its own rhythms, with David Pepose laying out story beats with an eye toward the character’s roots. But on top of that, it’s all building something new, bigger than the sum of its parts. If you like your space opera action with just the right amount of cheese, I can’t think of a better place to start than right here.
Final Score: 12/13
