Dystopian Sci-Fi Samurai Spaghetti Western — Reviewing Your New Favorite Comic ‘Ghost Pepper’ #1

Welcome to the table,

Samurai films make me happy. There is something about putting down my phone, closing my laptop, dimming the lights, and sinking into a story that, for the most part, is fairly formulaic and always a ton of fun. I tend to watch most things dubbed in English because I have this problem where I can’t stop myself from working. If I’m sitting too long and find myself enjoying something, I start to panic. I feel like I am not producing enough or grinding enough, and somehow everything in life will fall apart because I gave myself a break. Blame childhood trauma, I guess.

Samurai films, most notably the Zatoichi films, however, have this ability to pull me out of everything else I’m doing. They allow me to lock into the closed captions and epic storytelling playing out on the screen.

The setup for most of the stories is pretty much the same. Zatoichi, the blind swordsman, shows up in a town. He sits down for a meal or to have some tea. Within the first 10 or 15 minutes of the film, some jerk shows up and hits a woman, knocks over Zatoichi’s tea, or is mean to an elder. Zatoichi does his best to defuse the situation, making a joke at his own expense. The jerk pushes the issue, and what follows is roughly 45 minutes of a blind swordsman absolutely obliterating an army of thugs, gangsters, ninjas, samurai, or whoever the heck else is in collusion with the jerk.

Like a good pizza, there are sometimes different toppings. Those could come in the form of a powerful, troubled swordsman, or an assassin musician or something. At the end of the day, it’s all pretty much the same, and every time it’s wonderful and refreshing and hits like comfort food for the soul.

Ghost Pepper, the new Image comic from Ludo Lullabi and Adriano Lucas, hits my soul in the same way as a solid samurai film does. I’m absolutely here for it. Let’s get into it.

The story takes place in a world that has been ravaged for centuries by something called The Great Cinder. As near as I can tell, The Great Cinder is some massive humanoid thing that has laser eyes and poisonous breath and leaves destruction in its wake … if the stories are to be believed.

A dystopian hellscape with a baked-in mysterious mythology checks so many boxes for me. Within the first few pages, I was totally locked into this book. And then it got even better!

<<<SPOILERS FOLLOW>>>

Gears shift slightly, and we are introduced to one of our three main characters, Loloi. Loloi is a cook on a junk-punk food truck in the middle of a small pocket of civilization somewhere in the wasteland of the world.

Out of nowhere, this bird-looking spider mecha shoots a bunch of pods down, unleashing humanoid bird robot death machines who get really pushy with this wandering stranger sitting quietly at Loloi’s food truck, eating a bowl of noodles.

We are around the page 15 mark, and we have a wandering stranger trying to enjoy his meal in peace, and a bunch of pushy jerks have shown up to start trouble with him. Can you see why I love this book already?

Jiminy, a weird little goblin-turtle-robot-thing that perches on the quiet man’s shoulder, tries to tell the robot death machines that the quiet man is trying to finish his meal. It informs them they can move along, but as is the nature of jerk-faced death machines they do not listen. What follows is a brilliant display of “Don’t start nothin’, won’t be nothin'”

It’s so cathartic as well because our quiet wanderer, who we will learn goes by Ash, performs a speed blitz on the first jerk-faced death machine and rips it in half long ways before unleashing a bunch of barehanded attacks on the other jerk-faced death machines in a dazzling and brutal fashion.

There is an introduction to some kind of creepy observer who is watching the Cinder titan thing walking around on the moon. It seems the moon serves as a prison for the hulking humanoid thing. The observer then gets some kind of notification that “he,” referring to the man calling himself Ash, is active in the world. That fact is supposed to be impossible, and he freaks out.

Why is it impossible? I have no idea. I care, but I am fine not knowing until they tell me. I think that is the perfect tell for me when I really adore a story like this. I don’t theory craft, I don’t speculate, I just turn the page and sink into the story as things unfold.

Now, not everyone can pull this off, mind you. It helps its Ludo Lullabi, the man who helped helm the newest iteration of Battle Chasers, a comic that I love so, so much.

Much like Battle Chasers, there are so many story threads just kind of hanging out there in the wind. If they get explored, great. If they don’t, also great. It took almost half my life to figure out more about a sword. I may not live to see all these threads come to fruition, but I can tell you without a doubt that I will read this book until they stop making it.

Ghost Pepper is an action-packed, unapologetic romp through a dystopian landscape full of brilliantly designed death robots and charmingly chaotic characters who you want to learn more about with every page turn.

Until next time, I mean that from the bottom of my heart. This is the kind of book I wait for month after month. I can’t wait to see what happens next. It could be rocket-launching unicorns and rainbow plague pirates. If the style and story keep us at this pace and quality, I will keep coming back month after month.