During the 1990s Dark Horse took a shot at creating their own branded superhero universe and created characters like X, Barb Wire, and Motorhead. One of the most successful characters to spin out of the line was Ghost, a female reporter (Elisa Cameron) that digs a little too deep into a story about the corruption in the city of Arcadia and is murdered in order to keep her quiet. She returns as a phantom spirit sent back to avenge her own death, while keeping her love ones out of harm’s way.

After more than a decade, Dark Horse brought Ghost back to life starting with a 3-part serial in Dark Horse Presents, which is now collected here as Ghost #0, and the upcoming mini-series “In The Smoke & Din”. Dark Horse have given writer Kelly Sue Deconnick (Captain Marvel, Avengers) and artist Phil Noto (X-Men) the job of resurrecting Ghost and rebooting one of their most successful properties.
Phil Noto is a master at drawing beautiful women and in Ghost #0. The original Ghost series emerged out of the 90s bad girl craze that was happening at the time, so the character tended to be portrayed at times in cheesy sexual poses that distracted from the overall storyline. Noto has managed to bring some class back to the character by perfectly setting capturing the dark supernatural element of the book with his simplistic but gorgeous artwork. Noto also turns out two visually stunning splash pages that perfectly capture the essence of his expressive and elegant style.

On the writing side of things, Kelly Sue Deconnick does a good job of setting up the mystery of Ghost and making it intriguing. The dialogue in this issue is rock solid and the premise of building the story around a pair of paranormal ghost hunters allows the creative team to take the series in a number of different directions. Deconnick does a good job of keeping things a mystery to reader as the issue ends on a cliffhanger that will leave readers hungry for issue #1. How fast things will unravel is still unclear or if any of the premise/plotlines of the original Ghost series will be revived in this reboot.

Ghost #0 is essentially a teaser issue that sets up the impending mini-series “In The Smoke & Din”, but overall this is good first effort from the creative team and it will leave readers aroused enough to stick around to read the next few issues.