Vengeance Rides Again!

Good old Ghost Rider. Frankly, one of the coolest character designs ever. One of my all-time favorites. Never lived up to his potential. Sigh. So I'm a nerd -- sue me : P

He came up on my radar twice today!

For those of you who don’t know:

In the 50’s, there was an old West character named the Ghost Rider. He was a cowboy who, through his friendship with the local Indian shaman, had access to some strange substance that he put on his clothes, his face, and his horse to make them all glow in the dark. He would then scare the bad guys into repenting. Apparently he was pretty popular.

Then in the 60’s, since the company that had published Ghost Rider had collapsed, Marvel Comics picked up the character and tried to revive him. They were not so successful.

However, since they already had the rights to the name, there was no one to protest in 1973 when they applied it to a new character. Johnny Blaze was a motorcycle stunt rider in a traveling circus. He ends up making a deal with Mephisto (not to be confused with the Devil – they are very separate in the world of comics!) which goes bad, and he ends up sharing his body with a “demon of vengeance” named Zarathos, who has a flaming skull for a head. At first, every night Blaze would transform into the flaming shape of the demon, but would keep his own personality.


With powers like creating a motorcycle completely out of hellfire and the dreaded Penance Stare (which forces criminals to experience all of the pain they have put their victims through), he would (ironically) go out and use these powers to fight evil. After awhile, the transformations would happen whenever evil was near, instead of just at night. And later, Johnny could trigger them at will. But apparently the more often he became Ghost Rider, the more powerful Zarathos became, and Johnny was worried that someday he would lose control and the demon would be set free on Earth. He eventually got rid of the demon (trapping him in a “soul crystal”) and stopped fighting evil. It’s never been clear to me whether that was a natural progression of the character, or if the book got cancelled : )

Then in 1990, a new Ghost Rider was born. This is the one shown up at the top, and my personal favorite. Barbara and Danny Ketch were walking in a graveyard when they witnessed some ninjas killing a guy, and then were attacked themselves by said ninjas. Barbara was killed. Danny found a motorcycle in the junk yard next door to the graveyard with a glowing magical rune on the gas cap. When he touched it, he was transformed into Ghost Rider. The gas cap would glow whenever innocent blood had been spilled (like Barbara’s was), and when Danny touched it, this new spirit, by the name of Noble Kane, would take over his body and go punish the guilty. There were some significant differences between the new character and the old: 1) Danny was never in control as Ghost Rider (although he did sometimes choose not to touch the gas cap), and as a demon was much more bad-ass than the old GR. 2) Updated for the new decade, this Ghost Rider had a motorcycle with flaming wheels, rather than a motorcycle made entirely of flame; and he liked to wear black leather, instead of that goofy blue one-piece that Blaze used to wear. 3) This Ghost Rider had some other cool powers, like his magic chain that could do all sorts of crazy stuff. 4) Well, that’s about it really.

Johnny Blaze showed up in this series, as a normal human (with a shotgun that fired hellfire blasts), and it was later revealed that Danny and Johnny were long-lost brothers. It got pretty confusing for awhile, because while this series was incredibly cool to look at, the writing left a lot to be desired. Oh, and there was another guy in here named Vengeance (real name Michael Badilino), who was a cop whose father had been killed by the first Ghost Rider, so he sold his soul to Mephisto to be possessed by some other demon to take revenge, but then he found out that the new Ghost Rider was a good guy, so they teamed up and fought against Zarathos, who was the demon that originally possessed Johnny Blaze, if you can keep all of that straight.

To make things more confusing, this then happened: it was also revealed that Johnny and Danny were both related to Noble Kane. Apparently, Noble Kane was the first Ghost Rider. He was given half of a mystical medallion and told to protect it from Zarathos, and it gave him his powers. Eventually he was betrayed by his father and ended up committing suicide. His soul went to Hell, but because of the good deeds he did (or something) he was really more in Limbo. The powers of the medallion became somehow internalized into his descendants. Mephisto wanted the medallion, and the story is now that that’s why he wanted Blaze’s soul in the first place. The new story is that Blaze’s powers were despite him being bonded with Zarathos, rather than because of it.

Apparently there had been a big shake-up in Hell, with Mephisto’s son Blackheart (a main villain in the series) killing big M and taking over. This allowed Noble his chance to reach out to Danny and work through him to thwart Blackheart’s efforts on Earth. Also, Vengeance’s family had the other half of the medallion, and that’s where his powers came from. So, eventually Danny and Vengeance sacrifice themselves to destroy Blackheart, and Noble takes over as ruler of Hell. This ended the series (in 1998).

Johnny now found the power of the medallion within himself and went back to being Ghost Rider. He had a short limited series in 2001, and that’s pretty much the last time anyone heard from old skull face.

But the big news is that Ghost Rider is back!! Next month will begin a new limited series about the character, written by Garth Ennis, who is one of the best writers working in comics today, and known for his dark and twisted stories. Hopefully he will be able to inject some much needed life into this underappreciated character. There was a full page ad in this week’s Comic Shop News, and it looks cool:



The other news is that I saw the first trailer for the new Ghost Rider movie today. The movie will be some sort of unholy mishmash of all of the above, and stars Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze, Peter Fonda as Mephisto (apparently changed to Mephistopheles for the movie), Wes Bentley as Blackheart, Sam Elliott as Caretaker (a useless character they should have done away with when they had the chance), and Eva Mendes as the stupid reporter love interest. I have to say that the trailer looks awful. However, the movie is not coming out until next August, and so should not be considered in any way complete. This trailer is one that Marvel cobbled together for this year’s convention circuit, and was not supposed to be released to the public. Of course, I found it online. On the other hand, it’s being directed by Mark Steven Johnson, the auteur responsible for inflicting both Daredevil and Elektra on the world. I hold firm to my belief that as film is primarily a director's art, this more than anything will determine the shape of the movie to come. But only time will tell.....


Any questions?