Akihiro is a character who doesn’t get a lot of play. Less bankable than his world-famous father or his fan-favorite clone sister, he’s often been relegated to support or plot device rather than a solo adventurer of his own. He’s got (figurative) demons of his own, beyond the Wolverine umbrella of concepts and tropes, but without the right hook, he might not find a platform in which to wrestle them.
Giving him his own literal demon might not have been the most obvious solution to his problems, but it is exactly the right hook that he needed. The Hellverine concept – originally a toss-away gimmick for a crossover event – has just the right amount of dynamic to pull people into the book, but not enough weight to hold readers without the ballast of a strong, driven protagonist to steer the ship.
Marvel
Hellverine Vol. 1: Lost Highways proves that blending the two concerns was a smart call. Though the previous miniseries led us to believe that Akihiro would be spearheading an occult government agency, this book smartly drops us into a solo journey, uncluttered with the baggage that might bring. This gives us more space for Akihiro – and the demon, Bagra-Ghul – to stretch their legs and focus on their own narratives.
Those narratives are more distinctly sketched out as Mephisto is drawn in to be the book’s big bad. Where Mephisto has traditionally bound Ghost Rider characters to demons like Zarathos and other Spirits of Vengeance, Bagra-Ghul serves a different purpose altogether. The demon, which had been a sort of sculptor in Hell, has been applied as a sort of focal point for hatred and distrust: sites important to Akihiro’s life have become sites of hellish and gruesome hauntings, places that are altar-like in their purpose. Akihiro is meant to be totemic, to draw ire and generate fear.
Marvel
Drawing Akihiro back to these places gives the book the ability to refresh the character in reader’s minds, and to draw a quick outline for new readers as to who he is and where he comes from; the book focuses a bit more on the infernal aspects, slowly deepening the larger Ghost Rider/Spirits mythology. You would think Mephisto would learn not to empower agents who are so clearly going to turn on him, but this has been his system for who knows how long.
Lost Highways is a book filled with more depth than it might promise at first glance. It clearly cares about its characters and inflates what might seem like an overly hokey core concept – flaming Wolverines – into an enriching and compelling story.
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