Ghost Rider (1990) # 5

"Getting Paid!"

Cover Date: September 1990

On Sale Date: July 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: Jim Lee

In Forest Park, Queens, the Ghost Rider punishes six young men for their brutal rape and attempted murder of a young girl. He holds the last two men in his hands, and gives them both his penance stare. He is then interrupted by the police, who try to apprehend him. He jumps over their car and makes it back to his bike, promptly racing out of the park. On his way out, he crosses paths with television reporter Linda Wei and her cameraman. As they watch the vigilante leave the scene, Wei comments that the Ghost Rider will be her hottest story ever. The next day, in Washington Square Park, a car load of punks with high tech weaponry open fire on the innocent bystanders. Frank Castle, the Punisher, intervenes, killing all but one of the young men. Noting that their weapons are too advanced to get on the street, the Punisher threatens the remaining punk into giving him information.

A day later, Dan Ketch and Stacy Dolan watch the news, where Linda Wei reports on both the Ghost Rider and the Punisher's actions over the past several days. She makes the comments that perhaps the two vigilantes are actually the same person, and that both are dangers to the society and must be stopped. Dan quickly dismisses the reporter's statements, laughing off her theory. Meanwhile, sitting in front of a warehouse that the punk he questioned led him to, the Punisher watches the newscast as well. Later that evening, Dan sits on the steps of his house while a young black kid runs by. Dan calls out to the kid, who he knows from coaching little league, and asks where he's going in such a hurry. The kid tells Dan that there's a warehouse where people are giving away guns for free, and the kid wants one so he won't disappear like some of the other kids in the neighborhood have over the past weeks. Danny yells at the kid and tells him to go home, then opens his garage and gets his bike.

At the warehouse, the Punisher watches from a nearby rooftop. Kids are floating into the building in large numbers, and he notices sentries guarding the surrounding buildings. He spies another kid coming to the warehouse on a motorcycle...Dan, who stops and tries to bluff his way into the building by asking if he's in the right place to get some free hardware. The door guards respond by shoving a knife in his face, saying that if he's gotta ask then he doesn't belong. The Punisher, glad to see that he was wrong about at least one of the kids, aims his rifle. The guards then let Dan go, realizing that they don't need to draw attention to their meeting. They let Dan go, telling him if he brings the cops then he's dead meat.

A little while later, at sunset, Danny sits alone on the bike, thinking that the Ghost Rider has finally abandoned him. To his surprise, the gas cap then begins to glow. Back at the warehouse, the Punisher watches the doors as the last of the kids enter the building. He then sees the Ghost Rider, who looks straight at the Punisher as if he can see him. The demon biker rides straight up the wall of the building, and confronts the Punisher. The two both believe that the other is responsible for putting the guns in the hands of children, so the Punisher opens fire with his handgun. To his astonishment, the Ghost Rider keeps walking toward him, despite taking four hits to the chest. The demon smacks the gun away, forcing Castle to resort to a fistfight. The Ghost Rider smacks Castle around, quickly showing the man that he's way out of his league. Meanwhile, inside the warehouse, a caped man whose identity is shadowed by the bright light behind him addresses the crowd. He tells them the US government has been oppressing and holding them down for long enough. Today, they will be given both weapons and a plan, which will give them the opportunity to strike back corporate America, plunging the world into anarchy. Back on the rooftop, the Punisher manages to get hold of an assault rifle, which he uses to open fire on the now bike-mounted Ghost Rider. The biker rams the vigilante with the bike, sending them both off the roof and through the warehouse's skylight. The two quickly realize that they were wrong about each other, as the criminal anarchist known as Flag-Smasher orders his men to surround and kill them.

Well, the skull motif does lend her a little credibility.

THE ROADMAP

This issue featured the first appearance of reporter Linda Wei, whose television campaign against the Ghost Rider would be a subplot for the first two years of the book. Her true affiliation as an agent of Deathwatch is revealed in Ghost Rider (1990) # 13 and Ghost Rider (1990) # 21. She eventually meets her death at the hands of Blackout in Ghost Rider (1990) # 54.

The Flag-Smasher first appeared in the pages of Captain America, and made a few subsequent appearances in Marc Spector: Moon Knight.

CHAIN REACTION

After skirting around the fringes in the first four issues, Ghost Rider fully enters the larger Marvel Universe by way of its first guest-star, the Punisher.

In the 1990s, Marvel had several characters that were by far the company's biggest stars (and cash cows). Spider-Man, Wolverine, the Punisher, and later Ghost Rider himself were all top sellers, and as such were given frequent guest-appearances in other titles in order to pump up sales for books with falling sales numbers. Out of those three, the Punisher was the character chosen to appear in Ghost Rider, an appropriate choice given the gritty nature and tone that the series had worked hard to develop. Having a brightly-colored spandex hero show up in the Ghost Rider's “world” would have done a lot to smash the ambiance that Mackie, Saltares, and Texeira had set in place; even Wolverine, for all his ferociousness, would have stood out like a sore thumb. So in walks the Punisher, by far the "grittiest" of Marvel's "grim n' gritty" characters in the 90s, to pump up sales on a book that was selling more and more copies with each new issue.

What does stand out for a mile, however, is the choice of villains for this story. The Flag-Smasher was a character introduced in Captain America and by this point had made appearances fighting both the Punisher and Moon Knight. He had a good background for a villain, motivated to overthrow the governments of the world not so he could rule but to usher in an age of anarchy. But despite the solid premise of the character, he was still a guy in white spandex and a black and red cape. More so, Flag-Smasher was just unnecessary to the story; he would've been appropriate had the guest-star been Captain America , but the Punisher calls for something more grounded.

But we'll talk more about Flag-Smasher in the next issue's review; for now, let's talk about the brief fight between Ghost Rider and Punisher. I love the Punisher, I really do. But there's simply no way he could take out Ghost Rider in a one-on-one fight, and Mackie knows this. For once, Ghost Rider tries to be the voice of reason when he approaches Castle, even though both believe the other to be the villain supplying children with guns. It's a decidedly one-sided fight, but it was also necessary to go through the motions. There's an unwritten rule that no two Marvel heroes can meet for the first time without fighting each other first in what's usually a case of mistaken identity. It was editorially mandated that the two heroes fight, so a fight is what we get. Mercifully, it ends before a victor can be determined (can't make the Punisher fans upset, of course, heh).

One thing the fight has going for it, though, is the absolutely gorgeous artwork by Saltares and Texeira. They go far in showing just how unstoppable the Ghost Rider is when faced against a normal man such as the Punisher. Something else I want to mention while I'm thinking of it is how the two artists make it obvious that Ghost Rider is wearing a leather jacket that actually looks like it's made of leather. Later artists would draw the jacket as tightly conforming to the Rider's "muscles" like it was made of spandex, and it really took away a lot from the character's visual.

Thankfully, the quality of the issue makes the Punisher's guest-appearance seem less like exploitation and more like a special event (which most crossovers fail to provide, unfortunately). Good marks all around, even with a lame duck for a villain.

He's got a point about the guns, Frank.