Five Ghosts: The Haunting of Fabian Gray
by Frank Barbiere and Chris Mooneyham

After a tragic encounter with an artifact known as “The Dreamstone,” infamous treasure hunter and a dashing adventurer Fabian Gray was possessed by the spirits of five literary ghosts: Merlin, Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes, Miyamoto Musashi, and Dracula. Then by tapping into their essence he can channel their power.

Fabian’s five “literary ghosts” are five primal archetypes of fiction from which countless stories are spawned.  If called upon to exhibit a feat of outstanding marksmanship, he calls upon The Archer, inspiration for Odysseus and Robin Hood.  If required to perform an act of magic, he channels The Wizard, inspiration for Merlin and Gandalf.  If needed to become a master swordsman in combat, he taps into The Samurai, the figure that has created enduring heroes of Eastern fiction such as Zatoichi, or Lone Wolf and Cub, or famed swordsman of Western stories like Zorro.  If he needs to use extraordinary deductive reasoning to work his way around a problem, Fabian turns to The Detective, whose mystery-solving inspiration for Sherlock Holmes and Batman.  Finally, if all else, fails, and Fabian is pushed into a desperate plight where the only option left is to tap into the deepest, darkest recesses of his soul and unleash violent destruction on all around him, he resorts to The Vampire who is the primal, monstrous force that has emerged in the public consciousness in the shape of Dracula and everything that goes bump in the night.
Five Ghosts is a pulp adventure throwback comic that reaches back long before the days of post-modernism and irony. It forgoes deconstruction, and genuinely behaves, as a pulp adventure comic magazine should.  Five Ghosts never feels like it is just doing an impression, or that its creators were experimenting in styles.  From the concept to the cover, it all seems like it could hop into a time machine and blend into the newsstands of other eras when pulp comics were king before superheroes took over.

Click here to put the superheroes away for a while and give Five Ghosts: The Haunting of Fabian Gray and Pulp a try.

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