Ghost Rider (1990) # 4

"You Can Run, But You Can't Hyde!"

Cover Date: August 1990

On Sale Date: June 1990

Writer: Howard Mackie
Artist: Javier Saltares
Inker: Mark Texeira
Letterer: Michael Heisler
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Editor: Bobbie Chase
Editor In Chief: Tom DeFalco

Cover Artist: Javier Saltares

On a deserted side-street in Brooklyn, three white men attack an African-American couple and their child with baseball bats. The men blame the blacks for the disappearances of several neighborhood children, despite the fact that it's more than just white kids who are disappearing. Before the three punks can harm the couple, the sound of a motorcycle engine stops them in their tracks. The Ghost Rider busts through some crates, wraps his chain around one of the men's necks, and drags the main into the night, disappearing at the end of the street. Seconds later, the demon returns for the second man, dragging him off as well. The third man, who goes by the moniker S.B., jumps a fence and heads into a factory yard, hoping to lose his spectral pursuer. He finds, however, that the Ghost Rider is waiting for him in the yard, and he gives the young man his penance stare.

Later that night, in a bar on Manhattan's lower east side, Dr. Calvin Zabo hits on a waitress. The waitress rejects his advances, and when he doesn't take the hint, she lands a punch to his jaw. Enraged, Zabo states that he is not to be treated in such a way, as he is Mr. Hyde, a ruthless super-villain. He raises his hand to strike her, but is stopped by Fraser, a large biker that frequents the bar. When Zabo threatens the biker, Fraser promptly laughs in his face and tosses him out the bar. Zabo picks himself up, thinking that if the head injury he'd recently received in battle with the Hulk wasn't keeping him from transforming into Hyde, he would make them all regret being born. Instead, he re-enters the bar and hits Fraser over the head with a bottle. When the bikers try to grab him, Zabo jumps through the window and runs away.

Meanwhile, in Cypress Hills Cemetery, the Ghost Rider reverts to the form of his human host, Dan Ketch. After a moment of contemplation, Dan decides that no one deserves what the Ghost Rider does to his victims, and decides to get rid of the mystical bike. Elsewhere, Zabo, still on the run from Fraser and his gang, attempts once again to transform into Hyde, but finds the pain too great to continue. Seeing a parking garage across the street, he slips through a gate and hides inside. A few moments later, Dan arrives at the same parking garage, where his friend Jack D'Auria is the night attendant. He asks Jack if he'd be able to store his bike in the garage for a while, and his friend takes him to the basement level of the garage. The two lock the motorcycle inside a storage cage and lock it up, where Jack assures it will be safe. They return to the gate, where they find Fraser and his gang, who want to go in to look for Zabo. Jack, a black belt in karate, attempts to fight the bikers off, but is overpowered by the massive Fraser. The bikers lock Jack and Dan in the pay booth and continue in their search for Zabo. A few minutes later, the bikers are on the third level of the garage, where Zabo is hiding behind a car. He strains again to trigger the transformation, feeling Hyde wanting to emerge.

Back at the booth, four teenagers pull up in a car and honk their horn. When Jack doesn't appear, the teens decide to go park the car themselves, not hearing Dan's yells for them to stop and unlock the door. The teenagers come across the bikers, who surround the car. At that moment, Zabo finally forces the transformation into Mr. Hyde, while the motorcycle in the basement undergoes a different transformation. Dan looks outside the booth's window, and is surprised to see the bike sitting outside the door. He strains his arm through the booth's window, and upon touch the gas cap transforms into the Ghost Rider.

On the third floor, Mr. Hyde prepares to kill Fraser by crushing him with a car. The biker attempts to escape by taking the wheel of the teenagers' car, putting their lives in danger as well. The Ghost Rider intervenes, wrapping his chain around Hyde and dragging him away from the others. Hyde breaks free and gets into a fist fight with the demon, but quickly realizes that even his strength is useless. The Rider unleashes his penance stare on the villain, which somehow begins to trigger Hyde's change back into Zabo. The killer attempts to escape, but the Ghost Rider rams him with his bike, crashing both of them through the wall of the garage to the street below. The police are waiting outside, and both Hyde and the Rider flee, vowing to meet again. Later on, while the police are interrogating Jack, Dan rides up and tells him that he managed to get away while his friend was unconscious. Jack offers to lock the bike back up, but Dan has decided to keep it for now.

Elsewhere, a young mother pushes her baby in a stroller on a dark, deserted street. Suddenly, two men approach from behind and knock her down. As she screams for help, the two men run off with her baby.

"What, me worry?"

THE ROADMAP

Mr. Hyde would encounter the Ghost Rider on two more occasions, Ghost Rider (1990) # 36 and Ghost Rider (1990) # 55.  Years later, he would be the first villain to encounter the Robbie Reyes Ghost Rider in All-New Ghost Rider (2014) # 5.

Mr. Hyde incurred his head injury in battle with the Hulk in Incredible Hulk # 368.

Dan's friend, Jack D'Auria, will later reveal that he was conscious when Dan transformed into the Ghost Rider. Jack reappeared as the mysterious Shriker in Ghost Rider (1990) # 52 and revealed his identity to Dan in Ghost Rider (1990) # 60.

The subplot involving the kidnapped children started in Ghost Rider (1990) # 3 with the disappearance of Paulie Stratton. Several other young people, from teenagers to babies, will be taken over the next several issues, until finally coming to a resolution in Ghost Rider (1990) # 9.

CHAIN REACTION

Following the finish of the book's opening story-arc, Ghost Rider faces his first established super-villain and Dan Ketch starts to develop something of a personality.

Up until now, Danny had been treated as nothing more than a vessel for the Ghost Rider, a human host lacking much characterization. But with his sister in a coma and himself possessed by a demonic force of vengeance, Dan finally makes a choice about the direction of his life. He can't do anything for his sister, so he tries to take control of the other aspect of his life by getting rid of the mystical motorcycle he believes is the source of the Ghost Rider's power (of course, the Ghost Rider is actually bonded to Dan himself and not the bike, but he doesn't know that yet). Naturally, since this is an ongoing series, Dan learns by the end of the issue that he can't get rid of his curse that easily, especially now that he's realized he can use the power to help people instead of just sitting on the sidelines like he'd done all his life. It's the beginning of a nice character-arc for Dan, one that was desperately needed, and it progress nicely as the book moves on.

Howard Mackie also gives us a very interesting comparison between Ghost Rider and the book's guest-villain, Mr. Hyde. Both Dan Ketch and Calvin Zabo have monsters living inside them, but it's there that the similarities die. Whereas Dan is desperate to get rid of the Ghost Rider, Zabo instead embraces his monstrous side and relishes the power Hyde gives him to kill and destroy. This comparison between the two is brought home nicely during the transformation scenes, with Dan and Zabo undergoing their changes simultaneously in different parts of the garage. At that point, both men are begging for the change to overtake them, though for completely different motivations. Mr. Hyde is an interesting villain whose brutality had been explored in books like Avengers and the Hulk, and his personality as Zabo is given a nice push here. It's a shame that Hyde doesn't really get as good a treatment in his subsequent appearances in this series.

The book's artwork, once again by Saltares and Texeira, is absolutely magnificent. I'm not sure why, but the art literally leaps off the page at you as you read with incredibly vivid colors and a feeling of darkness that hovers on the periphery of each panel. Their work in the first three issues was great but this one goes far beyond their previous artistic ventures. The image of the Ghost Rider dragging people off into the darkness with his chain is an amazing visual that really adds to the mystery and horror of the character. It's a shame that we lost this "urban legend" motif to the character after the first few years, because it was very effective.

All in all, Mackie, Saltares, Texeira, and Wright turn in a fantastic issue that goes a long way to proving why this deserved to be an ongoing series. Definitely recommended.

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