If you occasionally feel that subtlety isn’t everything and yearn for a vicarious dose of simple wickedness-whomping, this might well be the book for you, and if it is, there’s a Volume 2. Despite being markedly short on plot and utterly devoid of humour, this does deliver the maximum amount of uncomplicated thrills, spills and chills for action-starved fight fans. Psionic monsters, urban horrors and the Punisher feature in nine further tales of demonic excess producing a prodigious body count. Even deadlier is a mystic “Penance Stare” which subjects the guilty to unimaginable psychic pain and guilt. He’s inexplicably transformed into a spectral horror, burning with fury and indignation – a Spirit of Vengeance hungry to assuage the pain of innocent blood spilled with inhuman vitality, toting an infinitely adaptable bike chain. The ninjas, having caught the girl who stole the briefcase, are closing in on the Ketch kids when Danny, his hands soaked in his sister’s blood, touches the glowing bike symbol. Closer inspection reveals them to be an arcane design on the gas-cap of an abandoned motorbike. In an adjacent junkyard Danny is helplessly watching Barb bleed out when his attention is caught by a glowing pair of eyes. The ninjas and their macabre leader Deathwatch are the victors of the fire-fight and are soon hunting for their hard-won prize and the witnesses. Discovered, the siblings flee but Barb is hit by an arrow, whilst the case itself is snatched by a juvenile gang who plague the wooded necropolis. Unfortunately they stumble into a bloody criminal confrontation between ninjas and gangsters over a mysterious briefcase. So how did Danny Ketch become Ghost Rider? ‘Life’s Blood’ sees young Danny and his photographer sister Barbara looking for Houdini’s tomb in the vast Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn on the eve of Halloween. Theirs was a looser than usual artistic arrangement, not so easily breaking down into penciller and inker roles, and they quickly secured the new Ghost Rider status as one of the hottest hits of the period. In 1990 it was the turn of a tragic boy named Danny Ketch to assume the role of hosting the demon Zarathos.įrom that dubious period of fashionably “Grim ‘n’ Gritty” super-heroics comes this slight, but engagingly fast-paced horror-hero re-imagining courtesy of writer Howard Mackie, and artists Javier Saltares and Mark Texeira. He is the third Marvel character to don the identity of Ghost Rider, after Johnny Blaze (the first supernatural Ghost Rider and brother to Danny) and the Western hero known as the Phantom Rider, who used the name in 1967. We can only hope it’s as much a delight for the kid in the comic shop today, discovering that skull for the first time.During a downturn in sales of superhero comics in the early 1970s Marvel shifted focus from straight costumed crusaders to supernatural and horror characters, among them a certain flaming-skulled vigilante dubbed the Ghost Rider. Ghost Rider (Daniel 'Danny' Ketch) is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. It’s a delight for any kid who spun a spinner rack in the ’90s hoping to find that very specific glowing skull. It’s likely a delight for Mackie, and (one hopes) Picciotto. This second issue is a delight for me, personally. That is, it panders to anyone who might try to attempt to place this story in the continuity of 1992.
This means that Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch – and Nocenti’s Storm, and Hama’s Patch, etc, etc – is a niche experience, one that can’t help feel a little pandering for older grumps longing for comics to be like they were back when I was a kid, walking uphill both ways in the snow. Blackout and Scarecrow, and all the trappings of that old continuity, won’t shine with ‘good-old-days’ charm to the uninitiated.
#DANNY KETCH GHOST RIDER SERIES#
These stories are nostalgia bombs, self-celebratory visits to the long ago, which means that new readers looking to understand the Dan Ketch they’re reading over in the contemporary series aren’t going to be so easily wowed. This sort of greatest-hits storytelling has a troubling double edge, however.
At least we know the Rider is targeting *actual* villains.
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