On 2017's Ghost Rider/Wolverine/Punisher: Hearts of Darkness (again, apparently)

(UPDATE: So funny story, and by "funny" I mean "slightly alarming." I wanted to revisit 1991's Hearts of Darkness due to some of my recent reading of Ghost Rider comics, so I looked for it in my library catalog, found the above 2017 collection, checked it out, read it and then spent a few hours writing, oh, almost 4,000 words about it. Once I was finished and was attaching tags to it, I noticed that I already had seven for "ron garney" which seemed like a lot to me, so I clicked on that to see which of the comics he drew I had already reviewed and—surprise!—I had already reviewed this very trade, back in 2017, when it first came out. What's worse, that review was much shorter, punchier and funnier than the one I had just written. So not only is my memory deteriorating to the point that I can't remember which comics I've already written about—hell, I didn't even remember having read Dark Design before, and thought I was doing so here for the first time—but my comics-writing-about skills are apparently deteriorating, as I've grown increasingly used to writing super-long posts and publishing once or twice a week, rather than writing something daily-ish. So that's...great. Just great. Anyway, since I wasted an afternoon re-reviewing this book, I might as well go ahead and post it. But do keep in mind there's a shorter 2017 review that makes pretty much the exact same points as this one, only in fewer words. Ugh...)

This trade paperback collects a pair of Howard Mackie-written team-ups featuring three of Marvel's most violent, most badass and most popular heroes of the 1990s: Ghost Rider, Wolverine and The Punisher. 

The first, sub-titled Hearts of Darkness and featuring art from John Romita JR and Kalus Janson, was released in 1991 as a $4.95 special, with a spine and sturdier cover, essentially what DC Comics used to call "prestige format." 

The second, 1994's The Dark Design, was a fairly direct sequel, gathering the same heroes, the same villains and even a supporting character, but this one was drawn by Ron Garney and Al Milgrom (And, I see, cost a buck extra, which seems like a lot of inflation for just three years). 

As I mentioned in the first of my recent posts about Marvel's Ghost Rider character, I had actually read Hearts of Darkness before, shortly after it came out, when I was around 13 or so. If I recall the circumstances correctly, my grandfather had taken my sister, brother and I to downtown Ashtabula on a Saturday afternoon, and I convinced them to let me stop into the comic shop that was then on Main Street. My grandfather offered to buy my little brother a comic too, even though he wasn't a regular reader like I was. 

I suggested he try a Marvel comic, as I figured it made no sense for both of us to read DC Comics, and if he started reading Marvels that would double my access to comics. This book, which had a neat wraparound cover, the right half of which was reused for that of the collection, is what he chose (Why my grandfather agreed to pay almost $5 for a comic book, given that he grew up buying them for a dime, I can't imagine).

At the time, I knew almost nothing about the title characters beyond what I read in that comic (and had gleaned from the covers of their books I had seen previously in the shop), and less than that about the book's villain Blackheart, and his adversary/father, Mephisto. 

I didn't remember too much about it, other than that I kinda liked the art (At that point, the only name I was familiar with on the cover was "Klaus Janson", which I knew from reading a friend's copy of The Dark Knight Returns). That and, despite the chains, claws and guns, it must not have really spoken to me, as I didn't start following the adventures of any of these characters after that. (My brother went on to read Wolverine #48-50, which I still have in a longbox somewhere....Say, that fiftieth issue with the claw marks through the outer cover didn't ever end up being worth anything, did it...? Oh, and I did pull Ghost Rider #33 off the new rack out of desperation a few years later, but otherwise it wasn't until about 2000, when Marvel started hiring favorite DC creators and launching their new reader friendly Ultimate line that I started reading any Marvel comics regularly.)

I was curious to revisit the comic now, in part because reading Wolverine: Evilution and the first couple hundred pages of the '90s Ghost Rider comic put me in something of a mood to see more of those characters from that time period, and in part because I was curious to see how much the experience of doing so at this point might differ, decades and hundreds of comics later, when I was so much more familiar with the characters, having seen them in various cartoons, movies and TV shows...in addition to the comics.

Oddly, I have to admit my regard for Hearts of Darkness hasn't changed all that much. I still think the art is pretty great (in the years since 1990, I got to know the name John Romita JR, and gained a great esteem for his work, although I think this is maybe the earliest of his comics I've read), and the story so-so, a somewhat strained plot offering little in the way of characterization, beyond a very tell-not-show summation of these darker superheroes as belonging to a newer, more modern breed of Marvel champion.

The 46-page story opens in the town of Christ's Crown, apparently so named because of a nearby hilltop ringed in thorns, like Jesus' own crown of thorns. There some people in hoods and cloaks have gathered by torchlight to sacrifice a pretty blonde woman, her modesty preserved by a blanket, in the name of a devil that sounds more like that of an X-Men character than something from the Bible: Blackheart. 

Apparently created by JRJR himself just about a year or so previous, with writer Ann Nocenti for their Daredevil run, the character is the son of Marvel's devil figure Mephisto, and has an interesting look: He's an all-black humanoid with a tail, giant red eyes, thorny skin and a huge mane of hair that looked more like porcupine quills than dreadlocks to teenage Caleb (Wes Bentley played him in the 2007 Ghost Rider movie, although he looked far more like Wes Bentley than JRJR's weird design in that movie). 

He bubbles up from the blood spilled to summon him, strips the flesh from the bones of all of his worshipers, and then seems to have a nervous breakdown of sorts, complaining to himself about his lot in life, that his father stripped him of his free will and, holding the skull of one of the victims' head aloft like Hamlet, he talks about how "There is a new breed of man...one whose fall towards the corrupt will not be so far", a breed of man that will help him kill his father. 

Cut to Dan Ketch motorcycling into what seems like a pretty typical small town, arriving at a local boarding house with a big sign reading "BOARDING HOUSE" on it, and meeting its proprietor, a woman named Flo, and her daughter, a little girl with a ponytail bouncing a ball in the driveway.

He's only the latest boarder there, and he meets the other two at dinner: A "Mr. Logan", who, thanks to his distinctive hairstyle, any reader would immediately recognize as Wolverine, and a "Mr. Frank," who looks a lot like The Punisher wearing sunglasses indoors...save for his pencil-thin mustache.

"Something about these two," Dan thinks to himself. "I feel like I've met them before."

He has, of course. According to Comics.org, Hearts of Darkness was cover dated December of 1991; Ghost Rider met Punisher in issues #5 and #6 of his own book, September and October of the previous year, and he first met Wolverine in a string of issues of Marvel Comics Presents during the winter of 1990-1991. 

Dan apparently can't see through their disguises and aliases though, and they don't recognize him without his skull on fire, I guess, although Wolvie will later tell The Punisher "something about him tickles my nose," regarding Ketch.

This happens at night, when Wolverine sticks a claw through Punisher's door with a "SNIKT" and a "Guess who?" 

"Mr. Logan?" Punisher says, opening the door. "Thought it was you. Didn't think you'd recognize me."

"The phony mustache ain't that good of a disguise," Wolvie answers. "Besides you've got the stink of death on you, Punisher-- --Just like me!" 

Here Frank peels off his mustache, which, sadly, never reappears throughout the rest of the comic.

They compare notes, and we learn what brings the three anti-heroes to the Christ's Church boarding house: All three received short, hand-written notes signed "B.H.", each promising what might seem like their heart's desire. Knowledge about the Ghost Rider, Wolverine's true origins and how he received his claws, and who really killed Castle's family.

So not really all that sophisticated a plan, for a demon, really, this anonymous mail scam. For some reason, they had to come to Christ's Crown, too? Is that where Blackheart lives? Can he not tempt long-distance?

Anyway, that night Blackheart appears to all three separately in their rooms, apparently simultaneously, tempting them further, and talking about them as a new breed of hero:

All three of you represent humanity's newest breed of hero.

A hero that isn't afraid to approach the edge when need arises.

It's an intangible thing. A gray area which resides within each of you, in a place that my father would call your soul. 

I mean, I guess...? But it seems more of an aesthetic thing, at this point. The Punisher and Wolverine seem to kill enemies without compunction, and not fret over the morality of doing so all that much (I wouldn't exactly say The Punisher works in a "gray area," for example; he just seems to murder bad guys and save good guys). 

And while I'm obviously not sure about what happens later in his career, but at this point, Dan's Ghost Rider has never killed anyone.

Anyway, Blackheart's pitch involves making them more powerful, helping them tap into the gray area of their souls and, in exchange, all he wants from them, he says, is their help in killing "the greatest evil your race has ever known, my father, Mephisto." A little later, Blackheart refers to Mephisto as "your world's devil," which seems pretty appropriate.

Still, all three don't want to work with Blackheart, and all three answers in a curt declarative: "No."

Blackheart then, realizing he will have to try a different approach, disappears from their rooms. Flo and seemingly all of the people in the town start to walk as if in a daze towards the top of the hill. As for Blackheart, he's stolen Danny's bike and abducted Lucy.

Punisher and Wolverine struggle to get through both the mass of innocent people and then, later, the thorns. Dan, meanwhile, shouldn't be able to transform into Ghost Rider without his bike, but then looks at his palms, and sees symbols on each. His hands then burst into flame, the flesh melting off of them, and then off his face, and, transformed, he jumps onto a motorcycle stolen from a sports store and speeds through the thorns.

After a bit more tempting (during which Blackheart refers to Ghost Rider as "Zarathos! If that is who you are"; it is, we will eventually learn, not who this Ghost Rider is), the heroes all follow Blackheart to hell in an attempt to free Lucy, and there they fight hordes of little green, frog-like creatures (those seen on the wraparound cover), and, eventually, take on Blackheart. 

One would think such a thing would be impossible, but Ghost Rider takes off his gloves to reveal boney, burning fists, and shouting "Feel the pain!" he lays into Blackheart, punching him so hard he pulps half his face. Another punch, and his fist breaks through Blackheart's torso, exiting the demon's back.

From there, Wolverine lops off one of Blackheart's arms, and then Punisher spends a few panels shooting him with what I think are a machine gun ("BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA") and a grenade launcher, maybe? ("POOM POOM POOM POOM"). I don't know; I've never read an issue of The Punisher Armory, so I'm not sure what guns he carries when. 

Soon, Blackheart is just a severed head sitting in a pool of black goo, but as much punishment as his physical body seems to have taken, he can't be killed like this, and his body starts to reform. Before he can do so though, the heroes are all dismissed by Blackheart's dad, Mephisto.

This Mephisto looks nothing like the red-skinned devil with the cape and fright wig that John Buscema and Stan Lee created for Silver Surfer in the late-sixties. Rather, he looks more like a behemoth red humanoid frog of sorts, with a prominent beak, a long, long tongue and prominent breasts, each with a long, ribbon-like nipple. His weird head is crowned with an explosion of thick red hairs or tentacles, and he's surrounded by gingerbread-shaped forms that I assume are meant to be human souls in long-shot.

He scoops up the puddle of Blackheart and swallows him, making a vague threat to Ghost Rider: 

Go now, Ghost Rider-- 

--But we will meet again. 

Soon. And there will be no gray areas involved.

The truth will be revealed.

And that's pretty much the entirety of the adventure, our heroes reappearing atop the hill with Lucy, who they reunite with her mother. And while the skeptical Punisher asks Wolverine if all of that was real, and what he thinks of the business about "us being close to the edge," Ghost Rider gets the last word in, saying that, "As long as the innocent are protected-- --our cause is just."

The price tag would have been fairly steep for a book that's only twice the length of a regular comic book—that month's issue of Ghost Rider was only $1.75, after all—but I have to imagine Marvel fans appreciated the opportunity to see three of their favorite heroes in a single story like that, and Mackie certainly writes them all well (even if Ghost Rider, whose book Mackie was then writing, seems to get the most attention), and he does a fine job in the tough guy, alpha male personas (Originally, I took this as 100% straight; re-reading it today, I wonder to what degree Mackie might have been parodying a certain kind of action hero with Mr. Logan and Mr. Frank's macho portrayals).

I really can't say enough good things about JRJR and Janson's renderings of the characters (colored by John Wellington). They are big, thick and bulky as one comes to expect from JRJR, but they all also look like "themselves" in ways that other artists aren't always able to pull off (And I appreciated JRJR making Wolverine so short, particularly when standing next to the big Frank Castle).

Did the story deserve a sequel? Well, probably not, but it got one anyway, in the form of Ghost Rider/Wolverine/Punisher: Dark Design.

Things have changed a lot in Christ's Crown in three years, and things have changed a lot for at least one of the heroes. At this point, Wolverine has exchanged his brown and yellow costume with the big red belt for his blue and gold one, complete with the shoulder pads I don't think make any sense.

Additionally, he seems to have lost the metal on his claws, as here he has those jagged bone claws he sported for a while.

Oh, and for some reason, his eyes are red much of the time, whether he's wearing his cowl or not. Other times, they are white. Should we blame colorist Paul Mounts for this? Maybe, but we'll come back around to the coloring in a little bit.

The plot begins in media res, with Ghost Rider on foot, carrying a now much bigger and older Lucy, while a woman wearing a tank top crop top with no bra and carrying a big shotgun urges him on. Garney's Ghost Rider has the same basic design as the one I had gotten used to, save for in his drawings of him, G.R.'s skull seems to float in a pillar of flame rather than be connected directly to his torso, and, for some reason (the nineties, I guess?), there is often strings of spittle between his skeletal jaws.

They are on the run from Blackheart's followers, who are apparently members of the town who have been corrupted by his touch. They now all have prominent black veins visible in their skin, they dress in revealing, tight-fitting black clothes that look like they might have been worn to a goth dance club or a fetish ball, and they wield weird-looking sci-fin guns that seem to shoot lasers.

They are after Lucy, who seems to have maybe developed some kind of (mutant?) power around the time she "began...coming of age". 

The town has been physically transformed into some sort of weird hellscape with scary-looking buildings more bizarre than those even the most creative artists might draw in Gotham City. And the population divided between Blackheart's corrupted, who want to capture Lucy for him, and the regular folk, who are trying to defend Lucy from them.

Our three heroes have returned to the city, compelled by psychic distress signals from Lucy who, as Garney draws her, has apparently hit puberty in the intervening years, although her breasts aren't as prominent as those of all the other women he draws in this issue, corrupt and uncorrupt. 

Meanwhile, Blackheart is hanging out in a cathedral of some sort, looking much as he did before, only now wearing a trench coat. He talks to himself, ranting about his descent into madness, while his father, in the form of a dove, seems to torment him.

Ghost Rider, the first hero we see, has his hand touched by one of the corrupt, which spread their infection to him. In order to try and stave it off, he turns back into Dan Ketch.

Wolverine, who Garney draws not with that weird wolfman hairstyle and prominent muttonchops he always sports, but with a long, lion-like mane; after his first skirmish with the corrupt, when The Punisher saves him by gunning down a wave of a half-dozen attackers from a rooftop, Wolvie suits up, and I can't imagine how all that hair fits so snugly beneath his cowl. 

Shortly after the heroes all meet up at a camp, the corrupted attack and make off with Lucy who, back at Blackheart's cathedral, is dressed in a white wedding dress (complete with veil), where she is apparently to become his child bride, and the key to his victory over his father.

Our heroes attack, are briefly strung up on strands of ink black something-or-other and subjected to mental images to torment them. A naked Wolverine, his hair seemingly having gotten even longer, has no patience for this when he seems to find himself in the snow Canadian wilderness: 

GRRR! The north country...Canada! 

Pretty original takin' me back to my roots.

It's been tried too many times.

Don't even know what's real myself anymore.

Don't really care! Get out of my mind, Blackheart!

He's able to get through to Ghost Rider and Punisher, and once again the three triple-team the demon, Ghost Rider beating him with flaming fists, Wolverine slicing him with his claws, Punisher pumping rounds into him.

What's different this time? Well, this time Lucy runs from the heroes back to the fallen Blackheart, seemingly offering him forgiveness, at least according to Mackie's narration. But when Mephisto again arrives to collect his son, Blackheart pulls a knife, the tip of which is dripping with blood.

"I do not need the child," he says. "Only this! The blood of a child. INNOCENT BLOOD!"

So I guess Lucy either slipped him a knife with her blood on it, or, when she went back to forgive him, allowed him a bit of her blood...? That, or he cut her just deeply enough to get a few drops of her blood on his blade a few pages earlier, when the heroes first stormed his base and he briefly held a knife to Lucy's throat.

At any rate, that's apparently all one needs to kill Marvel's devil (temporarily, I assume), as Blackheart stabs his dad to death, and the last panels shows Blackheart standing triumphant, having doffed his trench coat and raised his arms in victory: "Mephisto, King of Hell, is DEAD... Long live the new king!"

I imagine that was a significant event in the Marvel Universe and was probably reflected in a few comics for a while, but I also imagine it was relatively short-lived. Certainly, I've seen Mephisto alive and well since (notably in Jason Aaron's Avengers run, which I read the first two-thirds of or so. And now that I think of it, I can't remember the last time I saw Blackheart in a comic...).

For Mackie's part, I think the script for Dark Design suffers from the classic affliction of so many sequels, that of repeating something because it was popular and there was demand for more of the same, and not because there was anything new to say. The story thus suffers from diminishing returns.

Also, because it is essentially just a few action scenes strung together, only interrupted by Blackheart ranting at his father, it doesn't have anything as fun as seeing the characters in their secret identities...or The Punisher's clumsy attempts at a disguise that we saw in Hearts of Darkness. 

And then, of course, there's no real need for Mackie to meditate on the dark nature of these heroes, because, well, he already did that three years previous, and, in that time, they all just kept on doing what they've been doing with, I imagine, little change (In this story, for example, Ghost Rider refuses to kill human beings, even those corrupted by Blackheart, while Wolverine and The Punisher mow them down without a second thought). 

I did not care for the art at all, which came as a bit of a surprise to me, given that I genuinely like Garney's art on JLA about a decade or so later (He drew the "Pain of The Gods" and "Syndicate Rules" arcs toward the end of the series). I suppose we can blame much of that on the times, as even a quick flip-through will reveal this to be a very nineties looking book.

Aside from his specific design choices, the colors, the letters and their various fonts and special effects, the layouts, the inset panels...the story reminded me a lot of the look of the earlier issues of Spawn I had read, and seemed a significant departure from the first year or so of Mackie and company's Ghost Rider, or Hearts of Darkness. 

Indeed, because it's just a page-turn away from Hearts of Darkness, I think Dark Design suffers in comparison, although I wonder how much of this is really a matter of, say, the JRJR/Janson team being better at telling a comics story than the Garney/Milgrom one, and how much of it is due to the first being published in 1991, and the second in 1994. 

Certainly, the advances in comics coloring technology and lettering style (and/or technology?) seems to have informed the latter book, which seems to take full advantage of all the new choices a colorist had to work with in the mid-nineties, whether it necessarily ended up benefiting the book in the long run or not. 

Reading both stories back to back today, Dark Design looks much darker, muddier and harder to read than Hearts of Darkness. (Also, one can't tell from this particular collection, but Dark Design was apparently published on glossy paper, which might have accounted for its higher cost, whereas I don't think Hearts of Darkness was. I'm now a little curious what similarly glossy paged books from the time might now look like in trade collections, but I'm not even sure where I could look to see...). 

Anyway, I disliked Dark Design as much as I liked Hearts of Darkness, and I would hesitate to recommend this particular collection to any reader...unless, of course, said reader was simply curious about Marvel Comics in the first half of the nineties, in which case I guess this book is a decent encapsulation, both good and bad.

Oh, and as I mentioned on Bluesky, after reading this particular trade paperback, I now find myself, for the first time in my life, as a person with opinions about Wolverine. Those being that the brown and yellow costume > than the blue and gold one, and that metal claws > bone claws. 

On the first 450 pages of Marvel's second Ghost Rider (via 2023's Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch Epic Collection: Vengeance Reborn)

As I noted after reading 2005's Essential Ghost Rider Vol. 1, many of the things I associated with Marvel's Ghost Rider character were absent from his earliest adventures, and I assumed they must have either been introduced later in the title, which ran for a total of 81 issues between 1973 and 1983, or have been innovations that accompanied the introduction of the second of Marvel's flaming-skulled, motorcycle riding Ghost Rider, the Danny Ketch version from the 1990s.

Beyond curiosity about when the character started swinging chains or driving foes mad with his "Penance Stare," after spending so much time with the Satan-powered Johnny Blaze of the 1970s, I was also curious to see how the character might have been updated for a new readership a generation or so later. 

Luckily, my library had a copy of 2023's Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch Epic Collection: Vengeance Reborn, which collects the first 12 issues of the1990 Ghost Rider series, a series that would ultimately run 93 issues and not be cancelled until 1998. It also collects an eight-issue run of the character and Wolverine from Marvel Comics Presents and his guest-appearances in an issue apiece of Marc Spector: Moon Knight and Doctor Strange. (As well as some backmatter of some interest, like some pin-ups and covers, a Fred Hembeck comic strip and a 1991 prose piece from writer Howard Mackie about his reinvention of the character.)

My curiosity was sated. 

It was indeed this series that introduced such aspects of the character like the chain, the flaming-wheeled motorcycle and the Penance Stare (While the two live-action films featured the Johnny Blaze secret identity, it's now abundantly clear that the Ghost Rider in them was actually the later, Ketch version). 

And, somewhat surprising to me, the character was very, very different from the original, the connections between the two Ghost Riders apparently not being made until later than Mackie's initial resurrection of the character (somewhat frustratingly, this Ghost Rider's origins don't start to be spoken of at all until the last few issues collected, about the same time that a mysterious, red-haired motorcyclist who would turn out to be Blaze starts making brief appearances; in fact, the last issue of Ghost Rider collected herein ends with a next issue box reading, "Next Month...Johnny Blaze arrive[s] in Manhattan!")

Here are some random thoughts on these comics, in the same bullet-pointed random thought format as my previous posts on Essential Ghost Rider Vol. 1 and Champions Classic Vol. 1...

•First, I was struck by how extremely different the two Ghost Riders are, despite visual details in common, like the flaming skulls for heads, the leather jackets, the motorcycles. 

Their powers, for example, are quite different. Both are tougher and stronger than mere mortals, of course, but the second Ghost Rider seems more-or-less invulnerable, able to survive most punishment, even reconstituting himself when he's blown up, as well as super-strong, bending a gun with one hand. 

And while Johnny's "super-powers" were limited to projecting "hellfire" from his hands (and occasionally summoning a motorcycle made of pure hellfire), Danny fights instead with a magical chain, which he usually uses to entangle opponents, but which can also stiffen into a spear or separate its links into projectiles. He also possesses his "Penance Stare," which Mackie describes thusly upon its first use, upon a low-level hood:

Eldon Lambert peers into eyes which reflect every transgression from his past--

--he experiences all the pain that he has inflicted on others.

His mind burns with the mental anguish of his victims.

Eldon wishes that the Ghost Rider had dropped him and allowed him to escape this misery.

Oddly, everyone seems to know about this ability and call it "The Penance Stare"; maybe Eldon Lambert spread the word around? 

This Ghost Rider's goal seems to be to deliver this stare to his foes, as though he calls himself "The Spirit of Vengeance" and to more-or-less talk about vengeance constantly. And perhaps this is something of a contradiction, but he also completely eschews killing, even stopping others, like The Punisher, from taking human lives.

Of course, Ghost Rider seems to avoid killing people similar to the way Batman does: It's mainly a matter of luck that those he fights don't ever end up dying in the process of him brutalizing them. For example, in one panel he punches a guy in the face with spiked knuckles. Throughout these early issues, he will also run people over with his motorcycle.

Oh, and apparently this Ghost Rider can also explode at his enemies...? 

At least, he does so in one panel of the not-very-good Marvel Comics Presents story. 

•Their rides are also pretty different. Johnny went from riding regular motorcycles, to being able to summon motorcycles, to his signature "skull cycle"...and/or red skull cycles conjured from hellfire. 

Danny's motorcycle looks like a regular motorcycle, but when he transforms into Ghost Rider, it transforms as well, into a futuristic-looking, high-tech bike with wheels seemingly made of the same flame as that emanating from G.R.'s ever burning skull. It also gets a vaguely skull-like metal shield where a windshield might be; this can be lowered into battering-ram. 

Additionally, this motorcycle seems to have a variety of super-powers of its own. It can be controlled mentally, it too can be reconstituted when destroyed, and it can drive up the sides of buildings, on the surface of water and when this Ghost Rider jumps off of something, he seems to almost be able to fly. 

•Their origins also differ. Johnny's transformations into Ghost Rider were presented as a curse that befell him as part of his doing a deal with Satan (eventually retconned in 1983's Ghost Rider #77 to the devil Mephisto having bonded the demon Zarathos to Johnny, kinda like Etrigan was bonded to Jason Blood in Jack Kirby's The Demon, I guess); other than his head changing and his gaining access to his hellfire powers, he remained himself and in control of his own body and actions (At least in the earlier issues; in later ones, Ghost Rider seems like he was more and more of a distinct entity, at least in the few comics I read in this collection).

Danny, meanwhile, became Ghost Rider after finding a magic motorcycle in a junkyard. When its gas cap starts to glow, usually in response to an innocent person being in danger or someone needing avenged, Danny touches it and becomes the Ghost Rider, a completely different entity, the Danny/Ghost Rider relationship being akin to that of the Billy Batson/Captain Marvel one (Danny retains memories of what Ghost Rider does, but they're otherwise completely different individuals in these stories, only able to communicate in dreams...and/or in the dream realm of Doctor Strange villain Nightmare). 

Finally, Johnny and Danny seem completely unrelated at this early point in the narrative; it's not as if Johnny curse or powers or the demon Zarathos were somehow transferred from Johnny to Danny. 

No one seems to acknowledge that there even was another Ghost Rider prior to this one throughout the book. Not until issue #11, anyway, when Nightmare visits Ghost Rider (The cover features the very 1991 "Hex, Lies & Inner Escape!" echoing the title of the movie Sex, Lies and Videotape), when the villain refers to Ghost Rider as "Zarathos", and an asterisk refers readers back to a 1983 issue from the end of the first Ghost Rider run. 

Then in a two-part story stretching from #12 to an issue of Doctor Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme seems familiar with the earlier Ghost Rider, and also assumes that this one is a demon of some sort, but that proves not to be the case.

As for his part, Ghost Rider doesn't seem to know anything about his own nature, aside from the fact that he's the spirit of vengeance and he must avenge the innocent via chain lashings and Penance Stare. 

Like I said, a relationship between the Ghost Riders will eventually be revealed (I've read and re-read Wikipedia pages and Internet summaries; they all seem as long, dumb and complex as most superhero histories do when decades of stories are so summarized into paragraphs of prose), but not in these issues. 

I see the cover of issue #14 features the title "Johnny Blaze Vs. Ghost Rider," and shows a '90s version of Johnny in a trench coat and sunglasses pointing a gun at G.R., but the next batch of issues doesn't seem to have been put into an Epic Collection, yet (The only other Danny Ketch Epic Collection, Siege of Darkness, seems to include a few issues from much later in the run, and a lot of other Marvel titles featuring the character).

•In addition to writing these first 12 issues of the series, Howard Mackie also writes the Marvel Comics Presents serial. As for the art, Javier Saltares pencils 11 of the first 12 issues, each of which was inked by Mark Texeira. The only issue Saltares doesn't draw, #7, is penciled and inked by Texeria. Texeria also pencils the Marvel Comics Presents story. 

All in all, then, the character had a very stable creative team at his outset, far more so than Johnny Blaze had in the 1970s, and these early adventures have a fairly consistent look and aesthetic. The Saltares and Texeria art team provide a quite realistic look to the book, one that only accentuates the overall strangeness of the inhuman lead character, whose empty eye sockets and expressionless mouth full of teeth are always inscrutable. 

•I'm not sure why we call the character Danny Ketch "Danny Ketch," but that is how Marvel always refers to him in the titles of various comics starring him, including this collection. The character always refers to himself as Dan Ketch, as do his friend and girlfriend. His mother calls him Daniel. The only characters who regularly call him Danny in this volume are villains attempting to mock him.

•The comic is markedly more violent than the first chunk of the original Ghost Rider comic, although never gory, as much of the actual killing seems to happen off-panel. Still, there's a lot of blood splatter and chalk outlines, and talk of people being killed, even children and babies. 

•In the first story arc, which spans the first three issues, teenager Dan Ketch (said to be 18 at one point, and 19 later in these issues) is in a cemetery with his older sister Barb...and a local gang of younger kids, who call themselves "The Cypress Pool Jokers." They all more or less end up stumbling into a meet between various criminals, and one of the Jokers makes off with a mysterious briefcase full of more mysterious yet cannisters that was meant to be exchanged; meanwhile, Barb is badly wounded by an arrow (some of the criminals are ninjas, you see) and Dan finds the magic motorcycle, transforming into Ghost Rider for the first time.

The main villain of the piece is Deathwatch, a businessman/supervillain in the mode of the Kingpin or perhaps the John Byrne version of Lex Luthor. When not in his business suit in a skyscraper office, he wears a dumb mask. He seems to have the power to psychically see what those he touches sees, putting his fingers into their heads in the manner that Cassandra Nova does in Deadpool & Wolverine, and he enjoys doing so in order to vicariously watch their kills (Hence the name).

In addition to an army of ninjas, he also employs a villain named Blackout, who seems to be a vampire (although at one point his fangs are referred to as "mechanical") with a rather cinematic superpower: He's accompanied by some sort of blackout field that snuffs out any lights in his proximity, both electrical or, in one case, an actual flame from a match (Ghost Rider's head and tires seem immune, though). Thus, when he closes in on his victims, his presence is often presaged by the lights going out.

The plot of the first story arc involves a lot of running around as various factions seek to gain control of those cannisters, which apparently hold a plague capable of wiping out all life in the city. G.R. eventually kills it and melts the cannisters with hellfire, but Deathwatch and Blackout escape to threaten the hero and city in the future.

•The book is pretty heavily tied into the Marvel Universe from the get-go. Not only does Fisk himself appear in the first arc, seeking to get his hands on the cannisters so that they can't be used to wipe out the city, but the fourth issue features Ghost Rider versus his first Marvel supervillain, Mr. Hyde (although he will spend most of the issue in his powerless, but ridiculously dressed, Dr. Calvin Zabo form). He manhandles a waitress at a biker bar, and when she punches him, he strangles her and then spends the rest of the issue evading the bar's bouncer and other patrons. G.R. is able to Penance Stare Hyde back into Zabo.

And then, by the fifth and sixth issues, it's time for a Punisher team-up, what with this being 1990 and all. (Note the above cover for Ghost Rider #5, drawn by some kid named Jim Lee.)

In this story, New York City is suffering a rash of active shootings by carloads of teens with military hardware, and both Frank Castle and Dan Ketch/Ghost Rider are on the case. When the two meet up on the roof of the warehouse where the weapons are being distributed, the pair each assume the other is responsible (Although I'm a little surprised at Frank, seeing a guy with a flaming skull for a head drive his flaming motorcycle up the side of a wall and thinking to himself, "This guy sure looks like your typical arms dealer!")

The misunderstanding is, of course, part of the storied Marvel team-up ritual, and so the two briefly fight, Mackie making it clear that the unkillable, super-strong Ghost Rider could crush Frank as soon as he got his hands on him, although Frank talks, er, thinks, a big game.

"Four direct hits and he's still coming," Castle says, after pumping bullets into G.R. "Gun's gone. I've been in tougher spots." 

Later, when Ghost Rider throws him across the roof, Punisher thinks, "He's not human...I've been up against not human before."

Eventually Ghost Rider runs him over on his magic motorcycle, and the pair fall through a skylight and land at the feet of the story's supervillain: Flag-Smasher!

Okay, so I've maybe only seen him show up in a Marvel comic once or twice, but I love this guy. I love his dumb costume (particularly the wrestling championship-like belt with the globe on it), I love his dumb name, and I love his mission of...smashing flags...? No, of destroying all governments everywhere! The dude doesn't just want to topple the United States government, which is a big enough doing for a single guy with no discernable powers or charisma, but he wants to destroy all government!

His dumb plan here is to pass out machine guns to kids, inspire them to become active shooters and then sic them on Wall Street as a distraction, while he and his goons (who dress in goggles, face masks and berets and look like they could be Cobra action figures) attack the banking system or something.

Our dark heroes obviously foil Flag-Smasher's plan once they team up in the second part of the story and, at the end, Punisher points a gun at Flag-Smasher while the villain is still reeling from the effects of the Penance Stare.

"This is the only thing that's going to put an end to his violence," Punisher says, but Ghost Rider breaks his gun in his super-strong fist with a "KRAK" and then has words with The Punisher: "My cause is vengeance--not death. What cause do you serve?"

Then the police show up, and so Frank climbs onto the back of G.R.'s motorcycle and they speed off, across the surface of the water in New York Harbor.

This particular issue, incidentally, reveals that Dan has a job: He's apparently a bike messenger.

•Ghost Rider #7 is the one in which Texeria fills in for Saltares, apparently inking his own work (He's simply credited as "artist"). This one features The Scarecrow, a character I've long been curious about, based on how much I like DC's Scarecrow character, although I think the only time I've ever actually seen him in a comic book might have been in the few panels in which the two publishers' Scarecrows team-up to kidnap Lois Lane in DC Versus Marvel. 

His design, seen above, isn't necessarily a great one for a character with that name, and his modus operandi isn't nearly as interesting as that of his DC Comics counterpart. 

This Scarecrow, Ebeneezer Laughton is a contortionist, which doesn't really come up in this issue except for a scene in which he apparently disappears into a sewer grate. He's also a homicidal maniac who disembowels his victims. Oh, and crows seem to visit him at the asylum he's in, leaving trinkets for him on the sill of the window of his padded room, trinkets like a mask and a razor blade.

He runs around murdering people and ranting to Captain America to come and stop him but has to settle for Ghost Rider. When our hero has him by the collar, Scarecrow kicks away from him, impaling himself on his own pitchfork, which just so happens to have fallen upright against a crate during their fight.

In this issue, Dan's sister Barb, who has been in a coma throughout the series, is murdered by Blackout, who remains at large.

•In Ghost Rider #8, we see the Rider naked when he and Dan talk to one another in a dream. It's not just his head that is a flaming skull; his whole body is apparently that of a burning skeleton.

•A team of sexy lady mercenaries called H.E.A.R.T. Corps (Humans Engaging All Racial Terrorism) are hired by a community group to capture Ghost Rider. 

While one of them wears a top with a neckline that plunges to her belly, their costuming is otherwise pretty tame, particularly for the decade. 

Actually, this volume of Ghost Rider lacks the prominent cheesecake of the 1970s book, in which Rocky Simpson, Linda Littletree and Karen Page were often rather scantily clad, Rocky being dressed in revealing sacrificial garb in two consecutive stories.

The few female characters in these issues, like Dan's girlfriend Stacy, are always dressed in jeans, long-sleeved shirts and jackets 

The most provocative image in this handful of issues is probably a panel in #5, where in Texeria seems to have gotten away with putting little ink crescents on Stacy's breasts to suggest her nipples through her top. 

•Dan is, by the way, a terrible boyfriend. 

Stacy is nothing but supportive about his sister being attacked, being in a coma and ultimately being murdered, understandingly giving Dan plenty of space when he asks for it, but still trying to date him and spend time with him.

Dan, meanwhile, constantly lies to her and even ditches her in the middle of dates to go do Ghost Rider stuff.

She's attempting to join the city police force, like her father, who is actively trying to catch Ghost Rider, and one assumes that she and Dan's alter ego will eventually come into conflict. 

Even compared to other guys whose desire to keep their secret identities make them seem like real jerks, like Peter Parker, Dan comes off as a particularly bad boyfriend, though.

•Ghost Rider #9 guest-stars what the Internet tells me is the original iteration of X-Factor, who are apparently based in a spaceship in Manhattan (?), and are raising a baby (?!). 

Curious about what they were doing with a kid, I asked Bluesky if that was supposed to be Cable, as my limited knowledge of X-Men lore (i.e. what I saw on the original cartoon) seemed to suggest that Scott and Jean's kids all came from nightmarish alternate futures, and I was told this was indeed baby Cable, in a one-sentence summary that seemed to perfectly encapsulate the sort of lives lived by X-Men characters from the 1990s. 

H.E.A.R.T., X-Factor and Ghost Rider all get involved with a plot involving missing human children and some Morlocks hiding out under the cemetery; despite what is suggested by the cover of the issues (above), G.R. doesn't come into conflict with the X-people (And Archangel Warren Worthington isn't actually even in the issue, although he, like Iceman Bobby Drake, should recognize the character, given that they were both on west coast super-team The Champions with the earlier, Johnny Blaze version).

•Next comes the Marvel Comics Presents story. Despite being written by Mackie and drawn by Texeria, it's no damn good, reading quite clunkily, probably because it comes in eight-page installments, naturally leading to rather frequent narrative stops and starts.

Wolverine in in Madripoor, where his narration tells us he goes by "Patch" (although he's not wearing an eyepatch here...?). He's attacked by some red-clad ninjas. 

Meanwhile, in NYC, Dan's friend's sensei is also attacked by similar ninjas. 

It is all part of an elaborate plot by one of Deathwatch's lieutenants to get Wolverine, Ghost Rider and a third character, a presumably new one named Brass, to kill one another. 

There's a lot of fighting, and ninjas and gunsels end up in literal piles. 

The Wolverine vs. Ghost Rider fight is kind of fun, as, at one point, Wolverine says, "--Eat this!" and stabs Ghost Rider in the face with his claws, which creates a gigantic explosion ("WHOOM") that sends them both flying in opposite directions and temporarily knocks them both out.

This is also the story in which Ghost Rider seems to demonstrate his just plain blowing up power, referenced above.

My favorite panel, however, is probably this one, which is actually the last panel in one of the installments, and thus meant to be a cliffhanger. Ghost Rider is told Dan's injured friend has been kidnapped, and Ghost Rider just silently makes this face, like some kind of Pez dispenser:

While Texeria's art was quite good in the issue of Ghost Rider he drew, it's fairly weak here, the pages positively packed with panels, many of them long, thin horizontal rectangles and most lacking anything at all like a background. They feel rather unfinished, a bit like layouts that somehow got inked and colored before the rest of the pencils were done. 

I'm not sure if this is the fault of Texeria or his inker here, a Harry Candelario, or perhaps just a matter of drawing a whole lot of pages in relatively little time (I guess the book was a bi-weekly one?). 

The covers for these issues of Marvel Comics Presents come from plenty of familiar names, including Jim Valentino, Paul Gulacy, John Byrne and one Rob Liefeld. (And look, I don't know if anyone has ever mentioned it before or not, but this Liefeld fellow? I personally don't think his art is all that good. This is for Marvel in 1991, too; isn't that when and where he first blew up?)

•The MCP story is followed by an issue of Marc Spector: Moon Knight, which is also written by Mackie, and features art from Mark Bagley and Tom Palmer, credited as "Breakdown artist" and "Finisher", respectively. 

The art is really quite great, and I really enjoyed the opportunity to see Bagley's art at this particular point, about a decade or so before I started regularly seeing it in the pages of Ultimate Spider-Man. It's fairly different, which may be because he was still refining his style and it may be because of Palmer's work here, but one can still see some of the later Bagley in it. 

In this issue, Ghost Rider joins Moon Knight in breaking up a terrorist attacks at first the Statue of Liberty and then Grand Central Terminal. 

Moon Knight fights the terrorists with what look like moon-a-rangs and a pair of nunchucks. So this is a comic book featuring both a flaming skeleton who rides a motorcycle and a guy with nunchucks. I guess it's easy to see why Marvel comics were popular with boys in the early 1990s.

•The remainder of the collection consists of three more issues of Ghost Rider and one of Doctor Strange. Mackie writes those Ghost Rider issues, one of which is penciled by fill-in artist Larry Stroman but still inked by Texeria, while the Doctor Strange issue is by writers Roy and Dann Thomas and the art team of Chris Marrinan and Mark McKenna. 

In the story of these comics, NYC is visited by a new serial killer going by the name "Zodiak," the "k" differentiating him from the real-life Zodiac killer and Marvel's Zodiac villain group from the 1970s, one of whom, Aquarius, ended up being empowered by one of Satan's minions to become "the one-man Zodiac" and then tangle with Johnny Blaze in the original Ghost Rider comics. 

I can't be sure, but I think this one might be slightly less dumb than the previous Marvel Zodiac/s. Like I said, he's a serial killer, but one who has a bunch of high-tech equipment, up to and including robot duplicates good enough to fool Ghost Rider. In actuality, Zodiak works as an assassin for a group of otherworldly demons...? He also uses Zodiac-themed weaponry, like a Scorpio sting and a pair of Taurus horns and a Leo lion claw and so on.

It is in this stretch of issues that Dan and Ghost Rider are visited by Nightmare, who temporarily separates them while they are in his realm and addresses G.R. as Zarathos (though he seems to be mistaken), and Doctor Strange likewise comes to the conclusion that Ghost Rider isn't Zarathos, nor a demon of any sort.

In addition to Zodiak, the pair also fight his demonic employers, who feed off of the human blood their agent spills for them.

•And that's it, I guess, unless Marvel decides the next issues in a future Epic Collection, or one of my local library systems invest in those big, $150 Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch omnibuses (Because while I liked these comics well enough, and am curious about how Mackie ultimately reconciles the two Ghost Rider mythologies and if it's actually as dumb as the Internet suggests, I'm not, like, $300 interested...)

But don't worry Ghost Rider fans, I've still got at least one more Ghost Rider-related post coming up in the near future...!

Review: Ghost Rider/Wolverine/Punisher: Hearts of Darkness

Hey, I remember this one! It was an extra-long prestige format comic published in 1991. My grandfather and my siblings were shopping downtown, back when my hometown's downtown still had stores in it, including a comics shop, and my little brother, then considering maybe getting into comics, asked my grandfather to buy it for him. My grandfather, for whom comic books used to cost a dime, was taken aback by the $4.95 price tag (which was actually steep even for 1991), but ultimately relented.

I wonder what he would make of this new trade paperback edition, which costs $15.99; hell, having read the 1991 one-shot, I couldn't imagine how Marvel could get away with that price tag. Turns out they did so by including a sequel I didn't know existed until I started reading this new edition, the 1994 Dark Design (plus a five-page Marvel Age interview with Hearts pencil artist John Romita Jr).

The premise of Hearts of Darkness was that the three characters whose names came before the sub-title--Ghost Rider, Wolverine and Punisher--represented a new* breed of hero with levels of darkness in their hearts that pushed them so close to evil that the demon prince Blackheart thought he could tempt the three of them to assist him in assassinating his father, Mephisto who was, of course, one of Marvel's various Satan analogues.

It was probably just a happy coincidence that, in the early 1990s, these were also three of Marvel's most popular characters. Writer Howard Mackie certainly knew what he was doing in terms of proposing a comic book.

It's an extremely simple, straightforward story. Blackheart invites Danny Ketch, Frank Castle and Logan to the town of Christ's Crown--apparently named because of a hill surrounded with thick thickets of thorn bushes nearby--via letters promising them information they might want, signing the missives B.H.

All three show up on the same day at the same boarding house, run by a woman whose little girl Lucy is extremely trusting and takes to each of the dark, scowling men immediately. Her mother portentously notes her daughter strange trusting nature, and how it's almost like there isn't a bad bone in her body.

That night, Blackheart reveals himself to the three anti-heroes simultaneously, and, when they all tell him to get bent--they may occasionally kill their foes, or, in Frank's case, constantly kill their foes, but that doesn't mean they are going to sign up to work with the a devil (There's a lot of hair-splitting and semi-silly speechifying about how they all walk the razor's edge without falling over the cliff, and other such metaphor mixing).

To try to convince them, Blackheart snatches up Lucy, the only pure soul in Christ's Crown, and takes over the minds of the rest of the city, all of whom have enough sin in them that they can control them. He also steals Danny's bike.

Together, the three popular badasses are able to claw, shoot and hot-chain their way through hordes of little frog-like demons, journey to hell, turn Blackheart into gory chewing gum and save Lucy.

The chief pleasure of the book, then as now, was John Romita Jr.'s artwork, inked by a perfectly compatible Klaus Janson. I really loved his Blackheart design. He looks a bit like a giant, humanoid porcupine, with a head, shoulders and back covered in a mane of bristling spines. He has a tail, bit red eyes and no mouth; additionally, Romita and Janson give him what look like thorns all over his skin. It's a sharp, uncomfortable, jittery, anxious design. It's a hell of a devil, really (I wish that's what the version in the first Ghost Rider movie looked like; it might have gone a ways towards improving that film).

The version of Mephisto who appears here was pretty unfamiliar to me, looking like a gigantic, bloated humanoid with large breasts (and long, string-like nipples), and a vaguely avian head that looks like a primitive ceremonial mask of a bird. There's something of a primitive fertility goddess statue about him. He never gets up off his haunches, but is shown big enough to grab the mooshed-up Blackheart in his hand and throw him into his mouth.

JRJR draws the three title characters exceptionally well, of course. I particularly liked seeing how small and stocky his Wolverine looked; perhaps it was the influence of the films, or simply the slackening of Big Two style guides over the decades, but Wolverine tends to be as tall whoever is drawing him these days wants him to be, so it was kinda refreshing to see a little Wolverine standing next to a giant Frank Castle.

Dark Design is...not very good. Mackie writes it, but Ron Garney pencils and Al Milgrom inks. I like both artists, and Garney in particular has evolved in style into something I quite like now, but back in 1994 he was very much working in a 1990s Jime Lee-like style. Unlike Hearts, this sequel doesn't age well at all, and seems to be, visually at least, inextricably linked to the time in which it was published.

Blackheart has returned to Christ's Crown, and is now sort of insane. He has somehow transformed and twisted the town into a goth sci-fi big city, and enslaved portions of the population, who are called The Corrupt. They wear dumb spandex costumes, have visible black veins, and wield weird laser guns.

Lucy, now a tween or teen, is protected by a small and dwindling band of rebels. I'm not sure why Blackheart didn't just take over their minds too, but it may have something to do with her burgeoning psychic powers, with which she summons Ghost Rider, Wolvie and Punisher back to town. After killing their way through The Corrupt, they take on Blackheart again, this time interrupting his wedding to Lucy (Ew).

He gets what he needs from her, though: Her innocent blood on the tip of his knife, with which he seemingly kills his father.

As I said, Garney's style here is pretty much just default early '90s superhero art. His Blackheart lacks all the pointy parts of JRJR's, looks smaller and wears a coat; he reminded me of an extremely off-model Nightcrawler throughout. He draws the weird bird version of Mephisto, but with a few alterations, like some sort of make-up or mask on his face, and huger, blacker nipples.

Wolverine has traded his brown and yellow costume in for his blue and gold one at this point, but Ghost Rider and Punisher have barely changed (the latter traded in his white boots for black ones, but that's the most drastic wardrobe change he made during the years between these comics). The coloring, by Paul Mounts, is much more garish and nauseous in the second story, but that likely has a lot to do with the changing technology of comic book coloring of the day. There were many more new options suddenly available, and colorists went for them.

I'm not sure what the originals cost these days, should you find them in back-issue bins, but I'd be shocked if they had increased in value so much that you couldn't find them there for cheaper than the cost of this collection. On the other hand, new collections are easier to buy. If you really want to. Like I said, this is a nice showcase of JRJR's art from a previous stage in his career, and serves as a nice time capsule of a certain time in Marvel comics history, but it's not exactly literature.



*Created between 1972 and 1974, these characters weren't exactly brand-new in 1991, although they were definitely among the second generation of Marvel characters. This Ghost Rider was introduced just around the time this comic was originally published though.