Haunt Vol. 5

Haunt is a dark superhero comic created by Todd McFarlane and Robert Kirkman. The story centers on two brothers in the Kilgore family: Daniel, the younger, is an imperfect priest carrying the frailties and desires of an ordinary man; Kurt, the elder, is an agent of a secret government agency, hard-edged and estranged from his brother for years. A murder binds the two together in the most unexpected way—Kurt's ghost cannot rest and can only merge with Daniel's body, wrapping his brother's frame in an ectoplasmic "costume." Together they become the entity known as Haunt. In this merged state Haunt possesses astonishing strength and speed and can use ectoplasmic tendrils to climb, swing, and strike—but it also means the brothers must share one body and one set of judgments every time, and neither can decide alone. McFarlane and Kirkman deliberately place the emotional thread of "brotherly reconciliation" within a bloody world of gangsters, agents, and supernatural conspiracies: there are government-style institutional maneuverings as well as the pursuit of ancient ghostly forces. The first eighteen issues were written by Kirkman and drawn by Ryan Ottley, Greg Capullo, and others; the art is gloomy and bluntly violent, and readers often compare it to Spawn and to Marvel's symbiote characters. This volume is the fifth of the series; the specific contents and plot should be confirmed against the edition information and are not speculated upon here.