Ghost Rider #27 (July 1992)

J-Max was challenged to review 30 issues of Ghost Rider in (roughly) 30 days. Should J-Max succeed he shall earn his freedom (probably not). However should he fail in this task then he shall be subjected to an attack by Bees...DEADLY BEES.

So let's join him for his review of Ghost Rider #27

Vengance: Pure and Simple.

Credits: Howard Mackie (writer), Ron Wagner (artist), Gregory Wright (colourist), Mike Witherby (inker).

Overview: Ghost Rider and the X-men fight the brainwashing aliens.





1 DAY UNTIL Beemageddon!

This issue was the first Ghost Rider comic I owned as a kid. I didn’t pick it up in the store because it looked good or because I was interested in Ghost Rider at the time or even out of curiosity - I’m sure many did. I picked it up because it had somehow became wedged in with the X titles that I was buying and purchased by accident. It's appropriate for both of these reasons that I end with it.

By The time Ghost Rider #27 was released, the comic was in trouble from heavy competition in the widening anti-hero market. Frank Miller's Sin City had just finished its run in Dark Horse Comics - offering a competitive vigilante styled suburban crime noir. Todd Mcfarlane had brought Spawn to massive commercial acclaim through Image comics – offering a competitive hell themed vigilante book. Both writers brought new readership to their prospective companies with their pop cultural lore and their willingness to remove inhibition from their heroic figure. 

There were no rules anymore.

Not only were these issues a problem, the comic was deeply struggling with its own sense of identity. Where before Ghost Rider would be attacking rapists in an alley or fighting city wide corruption with chains and hellfire he was now battling aliens and acting as a supporting cast member in his own comic.

It seems I had missed even more story as this issue follows on from X-men #9 so Ghost Rider is normal again and out for revenge but I don’t feel cheated in the slightest because once again all this issue offers is a wall to wall fight with uninteresting villains. The Brood are a note for note take on Ridley Scott’s Alien creatures. They have an insect like appearance, gunk people to walls and come out of the walls to attack. The heroes stumble through the hive and kill the queen before meeting up on the surface.

The Brood characters in this arc seem to sole be here to give Ghost Rider a legitimate excuse to become more violent and callous in his own comic which, for some reason, he is not allowed to be when real people are involved. Here he is free to go full Deathwish.

Everything is high octane, explosive daemon carnage porn cranked up to eleven with lots of shouting and flashy art that admitedly would look great on a wall but perhaps even better in the bin. Suddenly, I realised I wanted to stop reading. I was looking at splashy nothing. How Ghost Rider had finally arrived at this point was beyond me. 

Zap there’s an alien dead.

Tink there goes another.

If he had just had his origin story told years ago we wouldn’t need to reach the point where he is so stuck for villains that we need to have him in the earth fighting insects to see who has the bigger chain or mandible. Ghost Rider and the comic had lost its humanity but I was not about to lose mine. I couldn't stop. The insects couldn’t win.

This comic was clearly an example of fan service. Given the growing anti-hero climate. Cyclops, Beast, Jubilee, Rouge and Psylock just sit down somewhere in the hive while Wolverine, Ghost Rider and Gambit head off to have the big fight because it will look even better that way.

Ghost Rider occasionally comments hinting that Dan may not be as dead as we think he is so I’m guessing this is Marvel damage control as they try out what the comic would be like without human characters and going full daemon. The answer is self-evident.

Meanwhile, we have a splash page of Dan floating around in the ether with shattered mirror fragments dancing around him showing the X-men alien showdown. “What have you done to me?” wails Dan. What an appropriate thing to ask.

Slash “dis feels good.”

Crack “They bleed.”

“In your exhausted state, you will come to serve me.” says the insect queen.

The one good that is preventing me from feeling lost in the hive of action is Johnny Blaze coming back into the comic. He’ll move the plot forward! Hearing about a Ghost Rider sighting he rushes in and joins the daemon as he rips the alien’s skin off from the mouth down. Then he shoots it with hellfire to kill it. Then wolverine stabs it in the eye. Then Gambit throws an explosive card at its head – just to be sure. Then cyclops comes in and vaporizes the body. 

Then all the gritty, edgy heroes head to the surface and fist bump before wolverine has a cigar. Thus bringing the issue and insect menace to an end. 

The buzzing around me had stopped, and now there was stillness.

Ghost Rider #26 (June 1992)

J-Max was challenged to review 30 issues of Ghost Rider in (roughly) 30 days. Should J-Max succeed he shall earn his freedom (probably not). However should he fail in this task then he shall be subjected to an attack by Bees...DEADLY BEES.

So let's join him for his review of Ghost Rider #26

Blood Feud!

Credits: Howard Mackie (writer), Ron Wagner (artist), Gregory Wright (colourist), Mike Witherby (inker).

Overview: Ghost Rider is captured and brainwashed by aliens.






1 DAY UNTIL Beemageddon!

Review: Never before have I found it so hard to continue with my 30 days review as I have as I have at the point of finishing this issue. It almost seems a cruel joke that the worst is left till last. With less than three hours to go the buzzing sound below has moved to the very walls around me and the ceiling far above. I can hear the vibration humming as I type. Humming like the roaring motor of Ghost Rider hell bound motorcycle as he moves into an unknown future without his villains, his human cast or his human identity. 

Ghost Rider drives to a graveyard, ends up in hell and is attacked by aliens. The end. Oh, how I really wish I could end it there. How I wish I could give you everything the comic offers as shallow as it stands. But I can’t because I have to talk about X-men. 

The story is a through and through X-men tail about the mutants tracking down the aliens who are being worshipped by a clan that has apparently murdered Gambits bother. None of this adds anything to the series at all other than being an opportunity to have the X-men appear – who had recently had their animated series showcased on television. Why was Ghost Rider suddenly playing second fiddle to other Marvel titles? It was still selling rather strongly at this point. I already feel like I’m talking about an x-men comic book and not a Ghost Rider one.

This is a story crossover than began in X-men #8, if you haven’t read X-men #8 – which I haven’t - you’re supposed to think you’re in trouble but, I’ll save you the concern by telling you it’s about aliens and them punching aliens.

So how do we get to this point? I hear you ask. Ghost Rider is in New Orleans during Mardi Gras for some reason – perhaps explained in another marvel comic, perhaps not. I suppose now that Dan is dead there really isn’t much of a reason for him to remain in New York but there’s really no reason for him to be at a Mardi Gras festival either. He drives to a church. A shadowy figure bursts from the stained glass window and kills someone right in front of him. He follows this person into the church which is apparently a portal to hell, and he winds up in a room filled with daemon aliens and daemon alien cultists. They completely overwhelm him and leave him in a position where he needs rescuing by the x-men. The x-men show up and begin wiping out the demons but are too late and Ghost Rider has been possessed and is now the villain in his own comic needing to be taken down by the heroes.

With issue #25 we saw the hero loose his identity as Dan Ketch was finally, cold bloodedly murdered by Blackout and left abandoned on the cold earth. With issue #26 we have the only logical outcome to this: the comic losing its identity. Sure Ghost Rider has fought strange foes in the past with perhaps Zodiak being the strangest, stupidest and purest of these but he’s never fought aliens and alien cults. And here he does: in hell. We have no returning characters, a completely foreign environment, a narrative continuing over from another comic book, demon aliens, and, in the end, Ghost Rider isn’t even the hero – let alone the main character.

The thing that had really worked for the series issue to issue was the gritty suburbanite feel to it with Ghost Rider playing the role of vigilante against a rouge gallery of psychopaths and eccentric action villains. The hero was an underdog who gradually became more confident and active as time went on and when issues were too dark we had the humanity brought out by the family and friends in the main characters life. All of these elements created or could create scenes that were funny and quirky, tense or horrific and allowed the comic to move in different directions at once.

All we have here.  All that’s left is hollow action without any personality or colour or entertainment beyond the admittedly excellent drawings. The only consistency to this comic and all the comics that came before it are the creative team and the fact that still, three years in, the comic is dropping hints at some large scale origin story. Only now, it is far beyond being annoying it is simply boring. And I was ultimatly bored by this issue. And no mind controlling daemon alien could convince me otherwise.

I was nearly there, nearly finished. One more review, and I was free. I closed my word document down to find a pop up had emerged on my screen. It was Nicholas Cage, his eyes glowing wildly with madness.

2 hours to go.

Ghost Rider #25 (May 1992)

J-Max was challenged to review 30 issues of Ghost Rider in (roughly) 30 days. Should J-Max succeed he shall earn his freedom (probably not). However should he fail in this task then he shall be subjected to an attack by Bees...DEADLY BEES.

So let's join him for his review of Ghost Rider #25

You Can't Go Home Again.

Credits: Howard Mackie (writer), Ron Wagner (artist), Gregory Wright (colourist), Mike Witherby (inker).

Overview: Dan receives a phonecall from an old "friend".






1 DAY UNTIL Beemageddon!

Issue 25, the big milestone issue, you know that because the book proclaims it on the front cover. Up until this point, Ghost Rider had been really good with avoiding gimmicky covers other than that issue 15 glow in the dark cover which I could never get to work. Before turning to page one, I was struggling to get past a pop up section in the middle of the book and hold it flat so I didn’t have any immediate spoilers literally hit me in the face.

By the time the comic had arrived at its third year, Mackie had written himself into a corner. We still had no origin story which wouldn’t have bothered a reader too much were it not hammered in their faces almost every issue seven through eighteen like some school bully jeering at you from across the playground. But, it seems, either to increase sales by having privy information that readers lack or simply due to not having written one yet, nobody is saying a word. 

Instead, Mackie sent Ghost Rider on a rampant destruction of the comics villains. As exciting and intense as this was during the latter half of year two: I couldn’t help but think Ghost Rider was digging itself into a deeper and deeper hole. What’s left of an action comic with well crafted, for the most part, villains when all those villains are dead?

It seems Mackie agrees with this point as perhaps Ghost Rider most formidable foe - Green Goblin to his Spiderman - Blackout returns and we return to their dramatic conflict. The origin story simply abandoned because how could it be otherwise?

Some psychotic, bulldozer of a man is laying waste to Manhattan and babbles about being removed from an organization called The Firm who will let him back in with Ghost Riders demise. It turns out to be surveillance footage being observed by a shadow organization during some board meeting and it looks like these may be the new big bad now Deathwatch is out of the picture. The man was used as a test dummy so they could assess Ghost Riders wanton take down of him but now they want to test on the creature himself. They give the task to Blackout, who they have released from prison, and promise that should he be successful his facial features will be restored.

 It’s good to have Blackout in the story again as it avoids the danger of changing too much in the comic and making it deviate too much for its frequent audience but by this point I really need the origin story to begin paying off. Yes, I’m not dropping this. Bare in mind, this is something that the comic has been making a big deal about since the same time Blackout killed Barbra which was over a year and a half ago. Even with this being a double sized issue, I’m beginning to feel cheated as a reader. 

Meanwhile back at the Ketch residence Dan’s mother is having a birthday party while a massive drawing of a Pepsi bottle dominates the table – is that really necessary? Ok, I’m picking too much now. Fair and balanced. Fair and balanced. Move forward. Dan almost seems to be in denial when Blaze calls him as he begins mentioning rudimentary details about his mum’s party; the name of every person there etc. until Blaze cuts him off and asks him how he is. Dan really hasn’t been there for her as much as he’d like to be and it seems he’s overcompensating for this here. There’s a great sense of realism in the scene. Later, he approaches Stacy with confidence assuming everything will be ok again and is shocked when she isn’t interested. Against Blaze’s advice. Dan has retreated too far into the Ghost Rider identity and it has cost him his own.

The Firm release Blackout attached with a homing beacon and pursue to ensure his cooperation. Unfortunately for them, it was all a ruse to be released from captivity. Blackout no longer cares about promises of repairs to his face, about working under anyones banner for protection. All he cares about is revenge. He kills the two trackers quickly to prevent The Firm fom discovering the betrayal and sets out for Dan. 

In a scene worthy of Stephen King a phone call comes through to Dan’s kitchen and when he answers it Blackout creepily sings Danny Boy down the line to him. I began playing the song while I continued to review. The comic hasn’t lost its ability to toy with the reader and pull in several directions at once. Blackout informs Dan there are “no hard feelings” and hopes he can forgive him for his past wrongs. He hangs up. Dan’s face is a mixture of fear, confusion and horror at this literal wakeup call. He freezes, hand on phone. 

The phone rings again only for the villain to inform him it was a joke. “I’m coming for you, Danny…but first, I’m going to kill someone close to you tonight.” The call ends. Dan looks out the window to his bike. Sees the medallion and pulls his leather jacket up as he prepares to leave. The phone rings again. “Oh, one more thing…feel free to come after me. Try to stop me. I know you want to. I welcome the struggle, but if that flaming headed freak shows up they all die. I know where they all live, Danny…Stacy, Jack, mommy. I’ll bathe in their blood. He hangs up for the last time as Dan stares down at the phone in his hand with open mouthed, painful astonishment. 

Mackie is often accused of being a hack writer. But he can carefully develop humour, tension, revulsion and tragedy in his story and sometimes pull all these together in one scene. The number of calls and look on Dan’s face are awkwardly funny and intended to be. The language is harsh and cold and intimidating. These scenes only work if the characters do, if we are invested in them and their development has worked. Mackie has achieved all of this He has a keen sense of pacing that can play very well to Ghost Riders advantages. 

The problem is not the characters, the art, action; battle between good or evil. It’s the promising of depth and offering none. The hint at some massive underlining of every single event when all the fans of this comic really want is an off the cuff, visceral action story which is investable because of its human characters.

In the end, Blackout leads Dan into a trap. Tears his throat out. And dumps his body on the grass. We are left with just the Ghost Rider character. Now free to do whatever he wants without the restriction of Dan’s personality. 

And, quite honestly, who cares? With the death of Dan, the book simply becomes aggressive, splashy, dark action without any depth or joy or compassion to invest in. In a way the childish pop up page with Ghost Rider falling on Blackout is the bookmarker to this abandonment.

 Ghost Rider punches Blackout for a bit, then another villain for a bit, then the police chase him, then he locks Blackout in a coffin. The comic couldn’t finish quick enough for me. Too much damage had been done. Dan’s dying words summarize exactly how I felt by the end of this milestone “Just cold.”