The Good
Phantom Stranger and Pandora meet up, as Pandora needs his help with something. The son of Trigon, Belial, intrudes on Phantom Stranger's home life in order to give him a warning, and Phantom Stranger comes face-to-face with The Haunted Highwayman.
On the story side of things, I really like this book, and I really like where this is heading. Most of all, I like the incorporation of Haunted Highwayman, from the book ALL STAR WESTERN, into THE PHANTOM STRANGER. The character has to deal with many facets in his life. Aside from his family, Phantom Stranger has dealing with Trigon and kin, he's part of the Trinity, and now he has dealings with Terence Thirteen, a direct descendant of Dr Thirteen, whom was cursed by the Haunted Highwayman.
While there is a lot going on in this book, it doesn't feel like it. At times, the transition between the scenes is a tad clunky, but I truly enjoy how this book is turning out. There's tons of set-up here from some great characters and stories, and hopefully, the book will focus in more on one of these things rather than all of them at the same time. However, that's one of the things I like. His "life" is hectic because of who he is and his powers. He doesn't get downtime.
The Bad
There is one page, in this issue, where the art is incredibly hard to read. Simply, it does not look good at all. Belial, the son of Trigon, goes over recent events, which involve Raven, on a very hard to read page featuring a few small scenes. These scenes are not in panels, and they all flow into each other. It's a common technique in comic book storytelling, but it simply does not work here because the art is muddled and in a few cases, pretty sloppy.
After this point, the art has numerous moments where the art is a bit weird. In a few panels, There's a lot of wavy lines in the background of Phantom Stranger's house. A couple pages later, we gets a close-up of Phantom Stranger that looks incredibly awkward. While I ultimately like style of the art in this book with Brent Anderson, Philip Tan, and Ulises Arreola working together to create this mixture of the old and new, It is pretty rough in this issue.
The Verdict
THE PHANTOM STRANGER is a book I really like. It's a book I now look forward to every month. However, PHANTOM STRANGER is not everyone's cup of tea. The art, can be rough, at times, even thought I find it a unique mixture of the old and new. It's the weakest aspect of this book.
This can be a tough character for readers to latch onto; however, it's a character and book people should give a shot. It features some incredibly cool and interesting characters from the DCU that you may or may not know, and the events that happen here may eventually lead to some answers of what happened after Flashpoint.
This issue isn't as strong as the first one, but it's still pretty good. I give this issue a mild recommendation.