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Five Ghosts, Vol. 1: The Haunting Of Fabian Gray (2013)

by Frank J. Barbiere(Favorite Author)

3.42 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1607067900 (ISBN13: 9781607067900)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Image Comics

review 1: I picked this up because I thought it would be kind of a tongue-in-cheek homage to classic adventures stories. Like, nothing with a premise this corny sounding would take itself 100% seriously, right? It'd be kind of a parody? Sadly, no.This comic is confusingly cliche. I mean, it's actually so cliched that I was literally confused about how it even got published. And not just boring cliches, but racist and sexist cliches too!We have our English adventurer protagonist, Fabian gray, who we see with a naked woman draped over him near the start of the book, which is the 'subtle' cue that he's supposed to be sexy. We learn that his sister is stuck in a magically induced coma, in order to provide him with a tragic source of angst. He encounters some evil black native tribesmen ... morewho worship an evil spider god, then a mystical east asian magician rescues him and teaches him about his powers, only to die nobly after serving that single purpose in the story. Fabian somehow passes a series of mystical trials of the soul (the trials are so simplistic that literally anyone off the street could have passed them with ease, and they had so little emotional relevance to the character or the readers that it's actually laughable), then we finish off the story by discovering that Nazis are plotting to get their hands on him.I honestly don't think I could make a comic this sexist, racist, trite, and poorly written if I tried to. The only redeeming feature was the art, which I found very nice (though not not really exceptional). I hope the poor artist gets to work with writers that can actually write next time.
review 2: The amazing art really is what keeps this first volume of the series going. Very reminiscent of my time spent with hellboy, every time I felt as if the story was too shallow or too quickly paced I took a step back and admired the art and was able to let everything else slide. Speaking of hellboy, isn't this book just a splicing of hellboy and league of extraordinary gentlemen? Not that I can complain, both of the series' rule and they never broke so I guess Mr. Barbiere isn't too worried about fixing em. Probably won't invest in the upcoming releases of this particular series, but I will certainly keep my eye on any other works the artist, Chris Mooneyham, contributes to. less

Download links for: Five Ghosts, Vol. 1: The Haunting of Fabian Gray

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