'Three extraordinary supernatural heroes join forces with Ghost Rider to capture Lucifer himself and return him to Hell, in this staggering Super Hero adventure from Marvel: Untold
'Johnny Blaze, aka the Ghost Rider, has accidentally released Lucifer from Hell, and that’s a serious problem. While hunting the 666 fragments of Lucifer’s soul now loose on Earth, Johnny enlists the aid of witches Jennifer Kale, Satana Hellstrom and Topaz to track down a sliver of the demon which is possessing the body of Jennifer’s cousin, Magda. Lucifer is looking for the Tome of Zhered-Na, aiming to release the demon within its pages and unleash hell upon the world. But the witches are the Tome’s protectors, and they aren’t going down without a fight. Now the witches must work together, trust the Ghost Rider, and put their personal demons aside to stop the King of Hell in his tracks.'
Before picking up Witches Unleashed the only character that stars in this book that I'd heard of before was Ghost Rider. I'd read several books with him in it before, and watched the wonderfully terrible Nic Cage movies, and was excited to see more of him in the Marvel Untold range, but I'd never heard of the witches before. Thanks to Carrie Harris providing a wonderful breakdown of who the three of them were and how they'd come to work together in a twitter thread I was hooked on learning more about them. A Charlies Angels of supernatural, magic powered women? That's something I definitely need in my life.
Whilst I haven't had the chance to track down their comic book team-up yet, and I will because I need more of these characters, Carrie Harris manages to make this book completely accessible to people like myself who've not had that prior experience. I'd say you could come to this book with no idea who any of them, even Ghost Rider, are and still find an engaging and enjoyable story here.
The book begins some time after Johnny Blaze, the Ghost Rider, has escaped from Hell. You'd think that escaping from Hell would be a good thing, and that Johnny would be trying to enjoy his time back on Earth, but sadly in escaping Hell Johnny allowed Lucifer to break out too. To make matters worse, Johnny isn't only dealing with one Lucifer, as upon escaping Hell his soul split into 666 fragments, each of which has inhabited its own host. We find Johnny towards the end of his mission to track down and eliminate all of the parts of Lucifer's soul.
Unfortunately, each time a fragment of Lucifer is destroyed the rest get stronger, and now Johnny has discovered that one of these remaining fragments is in the body of a mystic; and a member of the Kale family. The Kale's are guardians of the Tome of Zhered-Na, a powerful spell book that also contains the demonic entity, the Hellphyr. Fortunately, only a Kale can unleash the demon from the book, meaning that only Lucifer's new host will be a problem.
It's also fortunate for Johnny that there's a Kale guarding the book, his cousin Jennifer. And Jennifer isn't alone either. Having been brought together by Doctor Strange years before, Jennifer has her own coven with the half demon succubus Satana Hellstrom, and the powerful empath Topaz. When Johnny comes into their lives to warn them that Lucifer is on his way the three witches will have to put their new life together at risk and decide how far they're willing to go to protect what they have.
This book isn't like a lot of the other books in the Marvel Untold range, it's focused less on super heroics, and more on the people in the story. Even the magic and the supernatural is kind of just set dressing, there to help the story progress and for the action to take place. What's at the real heart of this tale is the characters.
The story begins by introducing us to Johnny, a man who has been the Ghost Rider for so long that it's kind of become routine for him. He's no longer battling against the idea that he's sharing his body with the spirit of vengeance, and he's even begun to form a decent working relationship with Zarathos, the demonic entity inside of him. However, it's the more recent traumas that Johnny has had to live through that still haunt him, namely the deaths of his wife and children. As such, Johnny begins the book a pretty closed off man, and it's only through his coming to work with the witches that we see that there's more to him, and that he's actually quite desperately lonely and in the need of connection.
This kind of connection is something that the witches already have, thanks to having formed their own little family after being brought together as a team several years before. Over the years they've not only come to like each other, but love each other like sisters, and have developed some strong bonds. The three of them come from vastly different backgrounds, their magics are different, and their personalities sometimes clash, but by being together they all help each other. They know how to pick each other up when they're down. They know when another in the group is about to lose their temper and needs to be challenged or given a shoulder to cry on. They know how each other works, and because of their connections and the life they've made together they've all never been happier.
Obviously, this is disrupted when Johnny arrives on the scene, not just because he's telling them that Lucifer is on his way to town to wreck their shit, but because it changes their dynamic. Their comfortable life is thrown out of balance, and they're having to face long buried fears and anxieties that they've been trying to avoid processing. This brings about some of the more important conflicts in the book, not the fight with Lucifer, but having to confront the issues that threaten to break their family apart.
Thankfully, the characters in Witches Unleashed aren't afraid to open up to each other, to talk and to help each other; and this even translates across to Johnny too. Just by being around these three women his life is made a lot better, and you get the sense that he's made very real connections that will exist long after this story has come to an end. There are some genuinely touching moments across the course of the book, particularly one where Johnny opens up about the loss of his children that were really quite moving.
For those that have come to this super hero story for some action, there's plenty here that will keep you entertained too. Whether it's the opening chapters where Johnny is hunting down a Lucifer shard that is running amok with a tank, or the final confrontation with the King of Hell in a Halloween themed circus, there's plenty of action packed moments throughout the book. Carrie Harris shows that she's not just great at writing interesting interpersonal moments, but can craft exciting and engaging action sequences as Ghost Rider and the witches take on some powerful foes across the book.
Witches Unleashed: A Marvel Untold Novel is a lot of fun, it introduced me to some characters I knew nothing about, and gave a lot more depth to one I had only a passing familiarity with. I really enjoyed this focus on the dark, more mystical side of the Marvel universe, and hope that we get to see more of this kind of content in the future.
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