Ok, I missed the part about the cataclysmic world altering events only taking place in the West and not effecting anything else in America. Apparently, Delano doesn’t like the Huron.

Though there was that great picture of the yachts fleeing Manhattan.

It’s a confused conclusion, really more about the bad guy getting his comeuppance than anything else. I’m not even sure the ostensible lead has a part in the comic past a non-talking, one panel appearance.

He never, for example, gets reunited with his mother, which Delano has been promising since the second issue. Instead, she gets a great finish, but one where it’s now moment important to see meet her son than vice versa.

Instead, Delano goes with a far cuter ending, with the coyote guy getting the final pages.

I assume Delano was leaving the end open for another series.

Ghostdancing isn’t bad, it’s just painfully mediocre.

Well, the issue I’ve been dreading, the one where Delano explains all the backstory, here it is. And is it as bad as I’d anticipated? Oh, yeah.

As the American people flock–nude–to the wilderness to become one with the land (it’s an interesting idea, the land of America is magical, whereas the rest of the world maybe not), Delano sticks the reader in a car for the bad guy to give the good guy a lengthy, false history lesson.

Then the good guy meets maybe his dad, who gives him a truer history lesson.

Then there’s a bunch of stuff about how the white man ruined America when they came and colonized. But at least there’s no real illuminati nonsense this issue.

Ghostdancing is, five issues of six completed, a good idea for a comic, but not a good comic. Delano needs lots more space.

Or maybe less.

See, a cliffhanger. The bad guy is getting ready to do something bad and “to be continued.”

It’s an awkward issue, a bridging one, setting up the big conclusion. The comic takes place over a few hours, giving the reader a few pages (at least) with each member of the cast.

Unfortunately, Delano gives one of the illuminati an emphasis too and those pages, no surprise, are the worst in the issue. He just can’t make them work, not with the explanations he’s got in play already. They distract–as does keeping the most interesting thing in the issue (bones reincarnating at a museum and dancing) in dialogue instead of showing it.

After a third issue, it appears Delano has gotten back to his outline for scripting.

I’m still somewhat hopeful for the last two issues, but it’s unfounded.

Oh, and there’s some rather weak art from Case this issue.

For the first time, Delano just writes an issue–meaning there’s no crazy illuminati explanations this time around. Instead, it’s just an issue. And it’s a good comic book.

The potential finally starts to be fulfilled here, with the coyote guy meeting up with the comic’s messiah figure (who just happens to get a romantic interest as well). Delano layers the issue, showing some of their adventures in the present action, then having some of them shown as others discuss them.

The comic finally feels like Delano is enjoying writing it, instead of just presenting information to the reader.

Unfortunately, the better writing made

me pay more attention to the artwork, the first time so far.

Richard Case’s work here is mediocre at best. He’s frequently lazy with proportions and his work has a cramped feel to it.

I’m a little wary as Delano has to eventually sort the book.

The second issue has a whole bunch of problems. Some relate to the first issue, some don’t. The biggest one–Big Brother is real and has been fighting the Native American culture for five hundred years, all of Western culture is a fake, controlled by them–really annoys. Delano’s got some solid ideas, but when he tries to explain this illuminati nonsense? It flushes the book down the toilet.

For a page, it’s actually seeming like it’s going to be interesting, a bunch of unrelated stuff coming together… instead it’s all connected. The rest of the series, besides some cliffhangers (Delano introduces bad guys this issue to hunt the good guys), will undoubtedly reveal and resolve.

It fills entirely plotted and unimaginative, in the narrative sense. Delano fills it with characters and spends his time on them, instead of on the work itself.

It’s not lazy, just a bad approach.