Silver Surfer: Ghost Light

Silver Surfer: Ghost Light #1-5

by John Jennings, Matt Milla, Valentine De Landro

Un fantasma del passato torna nella vita di Silver Surfer! Toni Brooks e la sua famiglia si sono trasferiti nella tranquilla cittadina di Sweetwater. Ma la loro nuova casa nasconde un mistero! Anni fa, la Sentinella dello Spazio pensava di aver seppellito per sempre il suo amico Al Harper! Ma si sbagliava! Chi ha trasformato Harper nell’ultraterreno Ghost Light? John Jennings, scrittore campione di vendite del New York Times nonché vincitore del premio Eisner, e Valentine De Landro, illustratore e fumettista canadese, introducono un nuovo super eroe Marvel… apparso oltre cinquanta anni fa! [CONTIENE SILVER GHOST LIGHT (2023) 1-5]

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels

Kindle Edition

First published September 5, 2023

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whichever way you slice it this just wasn't particularly good, or much of a Surfer story of substance for that matter. Scattered charming moments with the kid protagonists of the first issues save it from being a total waste of time.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75 stars. So this story focuses on Al, a character from way back in Stan Lee’s Silver Surfer run. Luckily, I read that omnibus so I knew who he was. He built a device to try and help Surfer escape the barrier Galactus put around earth to trap him here. Al dies during that. Due to some not completely understood shenanigans, Al ended on Labworld with The Stranger. Then he somehow ends up back in his body on earth. This energy signature catches the attention of Sliver Surfer who comes to earth. They discover The Stranger has gone mad in the mind and it’s up to Al aka Ghost Light and Surfer to come up with a way to stop The Stranger from destroying the earth. Some of the explanations of things in here got a little choppy which hurt the story. But I liked the concept? The art had the very basic simplistic look to it but it was kind of cool looking. If the concept was executed a little better, this could have been really cool.

[Peter Derk · Rating 1 out of 5]

Um...okay, Silver Surfer sees, like, a light and comes to Earth where there's this family who just moved from NYC, and then this dead guy is resurrected and also he has cosmic powers and a super suit or something made of nanobots, he was kidnapped by The Stranger because The Stranger is having a problem where his body is splitting into like 10 dudes, Ghost Light is supposed to fix him and maybe can, there's a good manifestation of The Stranger who helps too, and then AIM shows up and starts trying to do...something because they saw a flash of light that was left by Silver Surfer as a memorial, and that flash of light was used to bring Ghost Light back to life somehow, and an AIM lady goes into a portal and sees infinity and her dead parents and gets super powers and turns evil-er for a while, but then she's not, and there's a town that experienced a time-loss event, but then that's explained, the kids get super powers somehow, but Ghost Light lies to them about it or something, then jazz teaches nanobots how to save the day, and the Stranger is turned into one guy again (I think) and the infinity lady is back to being a regular lady, but maybe not, and she's hanging out with The Stranger, and I guess the kids have superpowers forever now, and then Stranger and AIM lady were in a closet and they had a baby and it fell out and looked at me.

I'm not sure why there is SO MUCH STUFF in this book, but there is SO MUCH STUFF in this book to a degree that I can't hang with. I was super confused, a little bored, and after reading other reviews of this book, which are overall positive, I can see I wasn't alone in my confusion.

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Jennings desenvolve uma bela história do Surfista Prateado, honrando a cultura negra estadunidense, sem necessariamente colocar o singrador do espaço como protagonista. Quem protagoniza mesmo a história é a família de Al Harper, um cientista que ajudou o Surfista Prateado a romper a barreira da Terra imposta por Galactus, na edição 8 do primeiro volume do personagem, em 1968. A trama desta minissérie gira em torno do reaparecimento de Al Harper, algo que chama a atenção do Surfista e também do ser cósmico chamado o Estranho, que, em sua dissociação, quer destruir a Terra. O roteiro de John Jennings é envolvente, sem soar forçado, e os desenhos de Valentine Delandro são ótimos para o tom familiar e real, ao mesmo tempo em que ressoa a cosmicidade própria das histórias do Surfista. Achei uma bela aventura e uma bela homenagem a um dos primeiros personagens negros da Marvel.

[kuusela harry-pekka · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good self contained old school but with modern art Surfer story.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars overall
Based on a massive callback to Silver Surfer (1969) #5 this involves the scientist Al Harper who helped the Silver Surfer to escape the Earthbound strictures imposed on him by Galactus for the Surfer's rebellion to defend the Earth alongside the Fantastic Four, but in doing so attracted the attention of the The Stranger on his inter-galactic home 'Labworld'. Since then Al had been thought dead. Side note: despite the original story being written 55 years previously this particular tale really highlights the compression of history in the Marvel universe, because it keeps being repeated that Al Harper went missing (presumed dead) only ten years before 🤯
It turns out that 'The Stranger' is another of Marvel's mad mad aliens, although in this case it is a composite of minds from a world previous destroyed/consumed by Galactus and over the years it's programming/construction has lost its cohesion leading to a fracturing and heinous, cruel actions (including alien dissections).
Al's resurrection has been enabled by his incorporation of nanobots that effectively grant him superpowers and the ability to manipulate matter and a consolidated intelligence that helps him realise that he can 'fix' The Stranger, through the power of jazz (yes, not a typo)! Throw in a mad A.I.M. scientist Dr Sombra Solomon and Al's niece & nephew, transformed by exposure to the Surfer's cosmic power, this is a fun, pulpy read with art by Valentine De Landro that reminded me of Tommy Lee Edwards art, in a clean-line simplified way.

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deep cuts lie ahead...this story has deep connections to Silver Surfer #5 (from the late 60s)

Al Harper was long thought dead, but in actuality he was transported away by The Stranger to be experimented on. His family moved on, thinking he had died years ago. Now, his niece is having dreams of a shining man in the woods nearby (the woods that Silver Surfer left an Eternal Flame to honor Al Harper). Plot twist! Al Harper awakens, glowing. Turns out that the Stranger is a collective, similar to the Eternals Unimind. As thousands of years pass, the collective is breaking down. The Stranger has become psychotic. He experimented on Mr. Harper for years.

Maybe they can fix the Stranger. Maybe they can fill in the gaps in their memories.

Nice to see the connections to classic Surfer stories, but something about this just seems off. I don't know if it's the arbitrary mcguffin or the chaos that's just summarily fixed and forgotten.
====
Bonus: BIPOC and they just jump into a pseudo history of the town and Mr. Harper...that family is off. Actually, they all seem off. All the way down to the 'Scarlet Sector' of AIM
Bonus Bonus: Nanobots? Cosmic powered nanobots? ...bonding him to the Earth??

[Alex Sarll]

I mean, it was never likely to be my favourite tale of a cosmic wanderer called Ghost Light, but early on it was fairly engaging, somewhere along the lines of a black Stranger Things. Except then the kids who've reluctantly been relocated upstate from the Big Apple solve the mystery before the first issue is done, and are promptly relegated to the sidelines. Because it turns out their vanished uncle is a character from the Surfer's first solo series, and if there was already a bit of a tendency towards hokey exposition in the dialogue, that's as nothing to what ensues once we start picking up loose threads from a comic which, lest we forget, Stan Lee considered his potential masterpiece, the book in which he was most personally invested - and which turned out to be just too Stan Lee even by the standards of that era's more forgiving audience. If you love that run, maybe you'll enjoy this belated return to see what became of Al Harper - equally, you might consider it a travesty, I really don't know. For me it felt like a solid homage in that it reminded me exactly why I can't be doing with its original.

[Greisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read. Not a Surfer story, it’s a Ghost Light story with Surfer being the hook. I was looking to catch up on where Surfer was at as a character but this was just him in the background. Ghost Light is an interesting enough character and I would check out his future adventures.

I’m struggling with current art in most of the comics I’ve read since starting reading again. Storytelling is good enough but it just isn’t that clean/nice to look at. I grew up with Jim Lee, Joe Madureira, Mark Bagley, Mike Wieringo, Steve Epting, JRjr, George Perez, Carlos Pacheco, Gary Frank, Dale Keown, Ian Churchill and so on. So many great artists. Miss the style from back then.

[Tyler Jenkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t know much about Silver Surfer, and I know nothing of this Al character that has now been introduced as Ghost Light, but I like him. This was an alright story but it is not a good point for new readers. It is deeply tied to a past I don’t know so I was a little lost on every character. Literally the only person I had heard of was Silver Surfer. I think the art style was really interesting and I’d be interested in seeing more if it in Marvel. Even being confused I did enjoy the story.

[Timothy Pitkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do love seeing the Surfer just interacting with regular humans and this one we do get to see the Surfer helping out the family of an old friend. I do like that they gave background for this and provide a plot summary as I never heard of this character before but it was helpful and did show that this was a big deal. The Stranger is also an interesting character and I do like how a being like him still needs help from others.

[Adam Fisher · Rating 1 out of 5]

Error... not really a Silver Surfer story. More focused on a friend he had from one issue way back in the 60's. This was all over the place and was much more a family story. Overall, not really for me, and looking forward to a more traditional Surfer story.
Not really recommended, unless you like obscure stories.

[The_J · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't be fooled this is not a Silver Surfer comic, there are some appearances and the "new hero" is suddenly able to use his surfboard, but this is a bait and switch to get purchasers to buy a book when they would not have bought a "Ghost Light" comic. The only good page in this comic was the last one so there was nothing more from which to be disappointed.

[Dair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tied to a classic Silver Surfer story in subject and tone. It was as much about the supporting cast as the Surfer in a good way. Not just another boring superhero smash up but a story with realistic people and some heart.