The Ghost Fleet: The Whole Goddamned Thing

Here’s another title from Donny Cates’ pre-fame days.  Not only does it fall into the same “Cancelled Early by Dark Horse” category that “The Paybacks” found itself in, but it’s also an early showcase for the talents of “Extremity’s” Daniel Warren Johnson.  It’s got a great setup too:  After establishing that the Ghost Fleet is our nation’s extra-secret way of transporting things whose existence needs to be kept from the world at large, the series wastes no time introducing protagonists Trace and Ward.  They’re both seasoned veterans of escorting the fleet’s shipments, but this latest one has come under attack from parties unknown. Things go very badly for them in the fight, to the point where one of them is left minus an eye and with a major score to settle against those who set him up.

What follows from there is something that combines the excess of 80’s action movies with the supernatural conspiracy intrigue of “The X-Files.”  If that sounds like your gig, then go get it now. For those of you who need more convincing, Cates gives us plenty of entertaining dialogue and if the story seems kind of dumb and over-the-top at points, that’s tempered with a welcome amount of self-awareness.  Amidst the chaos, he manages to give us characters who actually have some depth to them, which in turn allows the dire circumstances they find themselves in to fuel the story to its fate-of-the-world conclusion.

There’s also Johnson’s spectacular art which is great at selling all of the explosions and the supernatural stuff that shows up in the back half.  His character work is pretty spot-on too and it’s easy to see how he was able to deliver something like “Extremity” with this as his starting point.  The catch here is that “The Ghost Fleet” was originally planned to be a twelve issue miniseries that was cancelled with issue #8. Under those circumstances Cates and Johnson serve up a perfectly serviceable conclusion, which they elaborate further on in the very welcome exit interview at the back of the volume.  Even with its abrupt ending, this series is still a good example of of why Cates and Johnson went on to bigger and better things afterwards.