Two Moons vol. 2: Ghost War

The story here picks up a couple of decades after the events of vol. 1.  In that time, Two Moons has embraced his Pawnee heritage and lived as (what white folks call) a medicine man among his people.  Fate is a strange thing, however, and it’s on one snowy night that he and two of his tribesmen come across his old comrade, Dr. Frances Shaw.  She’s able to provide medical attention to one of them, and shelter to all three, charity that Two Moons is able to return when some bad men come upon her home.  Two Moons’ and Dr. Shaw’s fate turns out to be further intertwined when, a few months later, her husband is given the job of transporting Indian War criminal Little Knife to a reservation in Oklahoma.  While some people want to see Little Knife dead, one wants to help him continue his path of vengeance against the white man.  There are plenty of Native American souls who are restless because of the way they did and it’s their anger that will be harnessed into a ghost war across the plains.

“Native American Fighting Supernatural Threats in Post-Civil War America” is apparently a harder sell to the direct market than “Barbarian’s Soul Inhabits a Scarecrow to Fight Monsters in the Present Day.”  I could be wrong (I hope I’m wrong) but this appears to be the last volume of “Two Moons” that we’re going to see.  Which is a shame because it’s a solid dose of supernatural action and weirdness that reminds me of Arcudi’s best work on “B.P.R.D.”  The focus on Native American mythology and the racial dilemmas of the time are handled well while the action itself is served up incredibly well by artist Valerio Giangiordano.  He’s an artist who can make supernatural threats look credible on the page, but deliver enough detail to them to captivate your eye as well.  It’s all done solidly enough to make you wish that the characters were a little more distinct or that the plotting took some more unusual turns, but “Ghost War” is still weird and different enough to be engaging.  As well as to make me wish that we were going to get more of it.