Coming after The Slavers story in The Punisher, Ghost Rider ought to be a disappointment from Ennis. Fortunately, it’s mildly amusing... Ghost Rider is more of the Ennis-lite, the broad chops he uses in limited series, the ones that don’t make a comment on men and their place in the world. Ghost Rider, in the first issue when he referenced the original, 1970s appearance of the character as happening in the 1970s (something Ennis is about the only comic book writer to do, everyone else just has a hazy, “ten years ago” past thing going), felt like it might be about Ghost Rider and his place in the world. Except Ennis’s contempt for the character became obvious real fast.
Ennis likes to write smart characters--Frank Castle in The Punisher, Nick Fury in Fury, whatever. Ghost Rider’s whole point--the guy who sells his soul to the Devil (who, in turn, tricks him)--is to be a gullible half-wit. Not the kind of character Ennis ought to be writing and he knows it. Ghost Rider is filled with supporting characters who get as much, if not more, page-time than Ghost Rider himself. They get all the good conversations about Heaven and Hell (well, “good” in this series’ context, they’re really just half-backed Preacher conversations) and most of the action revolves around them. While Clayton Crain’s CG-art looks nice, it’s a tad dark in the action scenes, so I don’t really think Ghost Rider does very much... Spraying fire-breath is a lot less impressive than the lady throwing the bus.
Ghost Rider manages to have an amusing conclusion (the Road to Damnation story title describes the situation for a surprise character) and Ennis has a handful of really neat scenes, so the series just passes over without involving the reader too much either way. He and Crain are supposedly doing a Western Ghost Rider series (Marvel had Western heroes in the 1950s, I think, a different Ghost Rider being one of them), and it might be a better subject for Ennis. He likes talking about things that matter and nothing much matters in Ghost Rider. It’s just a chance for him to make fun of rednecks....*
* Which needs to be done, but someone with less talent can probably do it just as well.