I would really like a Ghost Rider book that isn't dour.

But he's always fighting Hell stuff so I guess it won't happen.

This one hit my radar courtesy of Ya Boi Zack on YouTube. It looked cool and he, a picky reader, gave it a glowing recommendation.

Benjamin Percy got to write a new GHOST RIDER #1 for Marvel. I’m not the only one who really doesn’t understand how this crap works with the numbering and the editions and the whatever—I don’t think that means it’s a reboot or anything. It feels like it’s just a new arc. I’ve read some other GR comics and the consistent elements are that 1) Johnny Blaze has a Spirit of Vengeance inside him and it’s called Ghost Rider, 2) there are other SoVs and other GRs, 3) Johnny Blaze rides motorcycles, and 4) Johnny Blaze made a deal with the devil.

This book doesn’t seem to change any of that (I wasn’t looking for it to do so.) The general swing of it is that Johnny was in a bad motorcycle accident a while ago and he nearly died. His wife and kids (?!) are worried about him, and as counseling for the post-wreck trauma he has to go to a therapist once a week because he’s seeing things. He’s also got a big scar on the side of his head.

What you slowly start to realize is that Johnny is trapped in some kind of mind prison. The wife and kids aren’t real, his town and his house aren’t real, and his life is a façade. He doesn’t know how he got trapped there but he knows someone is trying to keep the Rider away. Johnny breaks the illusion and the Rider comes out, he grabs a motorcycle, and starts doing his thing again.

Right around this part of the book there was a very cool concept introduced in Johnny’s monologues, about how people rely too heavily on digital devices for navigation and they don’t really know their towns or their surroundings. That makes it possible for evil things to come out into the open a lot more easily. I love little details like that, things that make the reader question the world around them and their own behavior in it, just as a little aside or something.

Anyway, there are more towns in America that have been taken over or infested by demons and hellspawn and the like, and Johnny keeps finding them so the Rider can put them away. There is also an FBI agent after him with a Goth chick who knows magic and is helping the government track Johnny down. While they’re after Johnny, Johnny is on his way to Escalante, UT, where apparently once a year all the super badass Marvel characters who ride motorcycles and want to solve problems in their lives end up doing some kind of death-rally race across the desert. Winner gets to have a sit-down with the devil and get a wish granted.

Johnny wants to fix the scar on his head and get rid of whatever has been plaguing him since the accident. As the book progresses, the scar becomes more and more grotesque, and the artist draws creepy little eyes peeking out of it, or the stitches become teeth, etc. It’s a cool effect and the artists are incredibly talented, it’s also just a very off-putting type of content to see on the regular.

Now, I get that this is sort of the point of Ghost Rider as a character—he deals with gross, disgusting, evil, repulsive things in the world. Various iterations of him show him going around and judging people, sending the secretly evil ones to Hell with the Penance Stare.

That said, I wouldn’t mind terribly if we got something more of an heroic arc from Johnny Blaze, where he’s able to get the Rider under control or at least have a more stable co-existence with it. A couple of the (limited) comics I have read danced around this, but the more consistent tone seems to be that Johnny is just a miserable prisoner of this hell spirit that can pop up at any time.

Characters who exist just to be miserable are kind of terrible to read about. I expect that there are some Ghost Rider stories that don’t just wallow in the grunge, and I’d like to read them, so if you know of one, by all means tell me.