Let's Talk About THE RIDE: BURNING DESIRE #5

Today, the final issue of The Ride: Burning Desire dropped and oh boy, it was intense. The issue was brought to us from author Doug Wagner and artist Daniel Hillyard and gives a solid conclusion that could potentially allow for more adventures if they ever get the itch to revisit Samantha Vega. If you haven’t been able to read The Ride: Burning Desire #5 yet, you can check out a preview as well as my interview with Hillyard and Wagner before going to read it yourself. There’s your warning.

Burning Desire #5 has fans seeing a lot of troublesome things. Sam shows up to where the bad guys are and ends up blowing the place to Kingdom Come. There is a brief moment where I got a little lost (it’s the panel that’s in red), but I think that’s supposed to be inside of Sam’s mind and show us her internal struggles.

Sam eventually runs into the head bad guy who wants to kill her to avenge his son who died in the original series The Ride. There’s some back and forth until Sam gets the upper hand. She then talks about how this is not what will bring peace to him. She talks about her own struggles a little and how going after revenge wasn’t helpful to her and how she’s going to change things around a little this time. He almost shoots Sam, but then finally gives up and gives in. This is a very intense fight because they trade a lot of blows and it’s a little hard to tell what the result is going to be. I’m also a little bummed that her friends didn’t seem to do much here. We do see some of the dancers from the club rescue Annabelle, but I was hoping for a little bit more from them.

Finally, we see Sam at the club which appears to have been fixed up and it sounds like she’s going to start up her own little detective agency.

Overall this was a decent series. It’s not my favorite, but I’m sure many people loved it. If you like dark comics, The Ride: Burning Desire is probably a series to consider.