Articles with the Tag Ghost Rider

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 35: Essential Ghost Rider Vol. 2

books and books review, Comix
Published on

cover of Essential Ghost Rider Vol. 2


Essential Ghost Rider Vol. 2
Gerry Conway, Jim Shooter, Roger McKenzie, Michael Fleisher, Don Perlin and friends
Reprints: Ghost Rider #21-50 (December 1976 – November 1980)
Get this for: a series in search of a rationale — three stars

I wasn’t much impressed by the first volume of the Essential Ghost Rider, not in the least because the Ghost Rider, Johnny Blaze was kind of a dick. Things started to improve at the end of that volume, as Tony Isabella built up a setting and supporting cast for him and got him the trappings of a proper superhero, but one based in L.A. as opposed to New York which most of the rest of Marvel calls home. With this volume Gerry Conway is the writer and he builds on Isabella’s foundations, as does Jim Shooter who succeeds Conway after only three issues. Not for long however: with #26 Shooter sends Blaze packing, after he reveals his demonic nature to all his friends, forced into this by Doctor Druid, in an early example of his dickery.

As originally concieved, Blaze would become Ghost Rider automatically every night, which was changed by Isabella into whenever danger threatened and further refined by Conway and Shooter into something Blaze more or less controlled. Once Shooter abandons the L.A. setting however and puts Ghostie on a road trip with no specific goal, Blaze and the Ghost Rider more and more become separate identities. Roger McKenzie is the next writer having a shot at the title and he continues this trend. Under McKenzie Ghost Rider has to survive a quest for vengeance by one of his first villains, the Orb, then a Dormannu manipulated showdown with Dr Strange, followed by a hell spawned bounty hunter not so very different from himself and finally the wraith of a centuries old mutant child and his robotic motor cycle killers.

By now Ghost Rider has moved away from plain superheroics again into more occult/horror flavoured stories. With the last writer in this volume, Michael Fleisher (ignoring a fillin issue by Jim Starlin between McKenzie and Fleisher) the superheroics are entirely left behind, as the Ghost Rider becomes a pure spirit of vengeance. Each story has Blaze coming into a different town, city or village, getting involved with whatever menace is waiting for it, defeats it, then leaves. The villains he fights are either small time punks and hoods, or the local supernatural phenomenon, or both. There’s no real supporting cast, just the people Blaze meets and helps on his travels, usually involving at least one not too bad looking girl. Reading these stories in short succession you can’t help but notice how formulaic they are, though Fleisher is a good enough writer to hold your interest anyway.

The art for most of this volume is in the capable if pedestrian hands of Don Perlin, who was quite prolific in the late seventies and early eighties. His art was never spectacular or had much of his own style, but he was one of those pencilers who could be depended on to do a good job month in month out. It tells the story and that’s good enough. It’s a bit of a shame really that it was Gil Kane who opened this volume: after him almost everybody else is a disappointment. Having his art in an otherwise lackluster Essential collection is always a bonus.

Essential Ghost Rider Vol. 2 shows where the horror boom at Marvel from the early seventies ended up eventually, as just another variation on the superhero formula. There’s nothing really interesting or novel to the comics collected here.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 24: Essential Ghost Rider Vol. 1

books and books review, Comix
Published on

cover of Essential Ghost RiderVol. 1


Essential Ghost Rider Vol. 1
Gary Friedrich, Tony Isabella, Michael Ploog, Jim Mooney and friends
Reprints: Marvel Spotlight #5-12, Ghost Rider #1-20 & Daredevil #138 (August 1972 – October 1976)
Get this for: Mike Ploog, Jesus and Satan — three stars

The first thing to remember about The Essential Ghost Rider Vol. 1 is that Johnny Blaze, the Ghost Rider is well, kind of a tool, as well as dumb as a bag of rocks. Created by Gary Friedrich and Mike Ploog in Marvel Spotlight #5, Johnny Blaze is the adopted son of Crash Simpson, stunt motor cyclist extraordinaire, who took him in after his own father died. Though a natural motor cyclist himself, Blaze made a vow to his adopted mother on her deathbed not to stunt ride himself. Then Crash gets cancer, plans to do one more great stunt to make sure his daughter (Blaze’s love interest, natch) well be taken care off after his death and Johnny, unable to help out due to his vow, makes a pact with Satan to make sure his adopted father does not died of cancer, in return for his own soul. Satan cheats of course, Crash dies doing his stunt and when Satan comes to take his prize, it’s only Roxanne’s love that saves him. But that night he finds out his curse: to be transformed into the Ghost Rider!

Now this origin has been retold everytime the Ghost Rider guest starred in another title and when recapped it sort of makes sense, but reading the original story here for the first time just made me realise how incredibly stupid it actually was. The vow Blaze made to his dying stepmother is dumb, but Johnny selling his soul to Satan is even worse. It’s al stated matter of factly, as if the only choice you could make in such a situation is indeed to sell your soul. As a superhero origin it sounds noble when recapped, but Johnny does it for purely selfish reasons, as he would keep doing things for purely selfish reasons as long as Gary Friedrich was writing him. He’s completely unsympathetic as a protagonist, so unsympathetic that you have to have some admiration for Friedrich to keep on writing such a character.

But there’s another aspect to Friedrich’s writing that made me uncomfortable. I don’t mind an unsympathetic hero, though Johnny Blaze did get on my nerves, but I didn’t like the worldview that Friedrich build around him. Especially in the the Marvel Spotlight stories it reminded me too much of a Jack Chick tract. Not only is it possible for a stunt cyclist to call up Satan pretty easily, but there are Indian shamans dabbling in black magic, whose daughter is herself a satanist witch woman, inducted into satanist by a cult of liberaled college women, not to mention satanic biker gangs. It’s all a bit too sleazy for my liking.

I’ve never been so glad as to see Tony Isabella take over a series; he may not be the best or most original writer in the world, but at least he manages to lose that Chick tract vibe, as well as make Blaze an actual hero, of sorts. The Ghost Rider, who at that time still clearly is Johnny Blaze, unlike the more demonic figure he would become later on in the series, becomes more of a regular superhero, fighting foes like the Trapster. It’s more mundane and not so wild, but I liked it better. What I also liked is Isabella’s solution to Johnny’s struggle with Satan: a beared, long haired hippy with a certain resemblence to you-know-who stops Satan by reminding him of the power of love. More neat Isabella touches: a demon named Slifer (Roger Slifer perhaps, or is that coincidence) and two members of the supporting cast once Johnny hits Hollywood: Wendy and Richard Pini…

Artwise, the Ghost Rider never looked as good as in his first few appearances in Marvel Spotlight, when Mike Ploog was drawing him, inked by Frank Chiaramonte. Granted, he does have the same sideburns as that other Ploog hero, Jack Russell of Werewolf by Night, but it’s gorgeous, pulpy, atmospheric art. Ploog inked by Jim Mooney on the other hand doesn’t do anything for either artist. After Ploog, it’s Tom Sutton on the art in his last few Spotlight and first solo title appearances, followed by Mooney, Herb Trimpe and Sal Buscema. In fact, these first twenty issues of Ghost Rider are a parade of Marvel most dependable if least exiting artist of the seventies. Apart from the ones mentioned above, there’s also Frank Robbins, Bob Brown and George Tuska. Only at the very end, in the two part crossover with Daredevil, written by Marv Wolfman and penciled by John Byrne does the art even come close to the standard Ploog set. Byrne is completely the wrong kind of artist for Ghostie though, much too realistic.

Essential Ghost Rider Vol. 1 then shows the evolution of a flawed but original concept into something that’s much more closer to a standard Marvel anti-hero, with his demonic possession degraded to his version of the standard Marvel Hero Handicap. Nothing that’s really unmissable, but Ghost Rider was a mainstay of seventies Marvel, so recommended reading for anybody interested in that era.