G-G-G-G-G-G-GHOST!
Art By: Sonny Liew, Lee Loughridge, Saida Temofonte
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: March 16, 2016
*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
I guess we're fated to deal with this title until Rebirth comes and saves us from all its nonsense. That's right, it's time to get back into Doctor Fate and man, I don't know if I've been subconsciously protesting this book or what, but when I went to go see what the last issue I reviewed was........ it turns out it the fifth issue........ Yeah, I don't know how that happened, but let me assure you in case you were wondering....... I didn't care for those issues. In the previous issue of Doctor Fate, we saw our hero attacking police officers and it came off weird as hell because....... well, because he's supposed to be a hero! Yeah, you could argue that the police were getting a little aggressive towards the protesters outside the Egyptian consulate, but wrapping the police up in fencing and dumping them in the river isn't cool and then Khalid went on to electrocute officers to allow his friend Akila to escape their custody and even created a fissure in the street to separate the police from apprehending out of control protesters. It all just came off wrong to me and as that issue ended we found out that the Egyptian consulate took some protesters prisoner for some reason and when Doctor Fate went to go set them free, he came upon some ancient Egyptian ghosts........... Let's jump into this issue and see if Khalid can begin acting more like a hero that doesn't attack the police and find out why the Egyptian consulate is harboring ghosts. Let's check it out.
Explain It!:
Our issue begins with Doctor Fate surrounded by ancient Egyptians ghosts........ and a Egyptian General, but throughout this issue we never get an answer about how or why ghosts are guarding the protesters being kept. What we do get is a brief fight, where Khalid explains to us that the ghosts can hurt him, but he can't return the favor, which leads to Khalid out of nowhere simply knowing that light is the key and Nabu acting like Khalid is finally understanding how magic works. So with no real explanation about anything really, Khalid creates some magic light and the ghosts disappear before they could line up behind Khalid and make some pottery while Unchained Melody plays in the background........... After writing that I'm not even sure that half of you out there will get that reference and I just have to shake my head a bit because that scene from the movie Ghost was parodied everywhere when it came out.......... getting old sucks. So yeah, Doctor Fate defeats the ghosts and sets all the protesters free.
Meanwhile, Khalid's social life and academic life are going to hell as we see that Akila, his friend but not girlfriend, which we're constantly reminded of, is hanging out at the Nassour family home because.......... well, I'm guessing she has a whooping or some great shame coming to her when she finally gets home for the rioting taking place outside of the Egyptian consulate, but really we know that she's all about Khalid and probably wanted to have some really awkward sexual tension with him before all that inevitable shame. Too bad Khalid's out battling ghosts for some reason so Akila's going to have to take a rain check for that tension. At college........ well, Khalid's been missing a shit ton of classes and apparently is on the verge of academic probation. Shit just isn't going well for our hero, not to mention all these ghosts he has to fight............. What? What's that? You don't think a couple of Egyptian ghosts, which Doctor Fate easily dispatched constitutes "all these ghosts he has to fight"? Well, hold on.
In the end, Khalid leads all those protest leaders that he saved out of the Egyptian consulate, while intimidating the hell out of the security guard with all his talk of fate and whatnot, but before our hero could leave the building he's surrounded by a bunch of Roman ghosts, who for some reason don't have the same weakness to light that the Egyptian ghosts had. What does Khalid do then? Well, I guess he figures that the answer will just come to him if he looks within himself, but instead of the answer he was looking for, he goes through an acid trip depicting everything that anyone on his father's side of the family did throughout the centuries, before finding himself in an unknown time and place, where he's confronted by......... Great Caesar's Ghost!.......... for some reason.
That's it for this issue of Doctor Fate and while we didn't see our hero attacking any of the NYPD this issue, I can't say that I liked this story much better because we just have our hero fighting ghosts without any kind of explanation about why or how. I mean, we ended the previous issue with a cliffhanger showing us Doctor Fate Vs. Ghosts and call me crazy, but I just imagined that we'd get some kind of explanation about that here, not just show us ghosts and then some more ghosts that are more powerful for no reason whatsoever. It just wasn't that interesting and on top of the "Who Ya Gonna Call?" situation, we have no explanation about why the Egyptian consulate or an Egyptian General are even in cahoots with the afterlife. We just seem to be spinning our wheels in keeping this series going until Rebirth and even the writing has given up. As for the art........ well, it isn't bad, but I'll never be able to fully support it because it's just not a style that I enjoy and besides for our title character, the colors are just drab as hell.
Bits and Pieces:
Doctor Fate is losing what little steam it had as it approaches Rebirth because now we're just given issues where things happen without so much as one explanation about why or how. I have not been a fan of this series at all and now I'm just counting down the days until it's gone because in ten issues we really haven't gotten anything that makes this character interesting and for the majority of the series, not even hero like.
Explain It!:
Our issue begins with Doctor Fate surrounded by ancient Egyptians ghosts........ and a Egyptian General, but throughout this issue we never get an answer about how or why ghosts are guarding the protesters being kept. What we do get is a brief fight, where Khalid explains to us that the ghosts can hurt him, but he can't return the favor, which leads to Khalid out of nowhere simply knowing that light is the key and Nabu acting like Khalid is finally understanding how magic works. So with no real explanation about anything really, Khalid creates some magic light and the ghosts disappear before they could line up behind Khalid and make some pottery while Unchained Melody plays in the background........... After writing that I'm not even sure that half of you out there will get that reference and I just have to shake my head a bit because that scene from the movie Ghost was parodied everywhere when it came out.......... getting old sucks. So yeah, Doctor Fate defeats the ghosts and sets all the protesters free.
Meanwhile, Khalid's social life and academic life are going to hell as we see that Akila, his friend but not girlfriend, which we're constantly reminded of, is hanging out at the Nassour family home because.......... well, I'm guessing she has a whooping or some great shame coming to her when she finally gets home for the rioting taking place outside of the Egyptian consulate, but really we know that she's all about Khalid and probably wanted to have some really awkward sexual tension with him before all that inevitable shame. Too bad Khalid's out battling ghosts for some reason so Akila's going to have to take a rain check for that tension. At college........ well, Khalid's been missing a shit ton of classes and apparently is on the verge of academic probation. Shit just isn't going well for our hero, not to mention all these ghosts he has to fight............. What? What's that? You don't think a couple of Egyptian ghosts, which Doctor Fate easily dispatched constitutes "all these ghosts he has to fight"? Well, hold on.
In the end, Khalid leads all those protest leaders that he saved out of the Egyptian consulate, while intimidating the hell out of the security guard with all his talk of fate and whatnot, but before our hero could leave the building he's surrounded by a bunch of Roman ghosts, who for some reason don't have the same weakness to light that the Egyptian ghosts had. What does Khalid do then? Well, I guess he figures that the answer will just come to him if he looks within himself, but instead of the answer he was looking for, he goes through an acid trip depicting everything that anyone on his father's side of the family did throughout the centuries, before finding himself in an unknown time and place, where he's confronted by......... Great Caesar's Ghost!.......... for some reason.
That's it for this issue of Doctor Fate and while we didn't see our hero attacking any of the NYPD this issue, I can't say that I liked this story much better because we just have our hero fighting ghosts without any kind of explanation about why or how. I mean, we ended the previous issue with a cliffhanger showing us Doctor Fate Vs. Ghosts and call me crazy, but I just imagined that we'd get some kind of explanation about that here, not just show us ghosts and then some more ghosts that are more powerful for no reason whatsoever. It just wasn't that interesting and on top of the "Who Ya Gonna Call?" situation, we have no explanation about why the Egyptian consulate or an Egyptian General are even in cahoots with the afterlife. We just seem to be spinning our wheels in keeping this series going until Rebirth and even the writing has given up. As for the art........ well, it isn't bad, but I'll never be able to fully support it because it's just not a style that I enjoy and besides for our title character, the colors are just drab as hell.
Bits and Pieces:
Doctor Fate is losing what little steam it had as it approaches Rebirth because now we're just given issues where things happen without so much as one explanation about why or how. I have not been a fan of this series at all and now I'm just counting down the days until it's gone because in ten issues we really haven't gotten anything that makes this character interesting and for the majority of the series, not even hero like.
4/10
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