Ghost Rider: Official Index to the Marvel Universe

Cover Artist: Various

Published: March 2012

Original Price: $19.99

Head Writers/ Coordinators: Daron Jensen, Stuart Vandal, & Jeph York
Writers: Paul Bourcier, Chris Buchner, Russ Chappell, Chris McCarver, Sean McQuaid, Jacob Rougemont, Al Sjoerdsma, Robert J. Sodaro, & Kevin Wasser
Book Design: Spring Hoteling
Editor: Jeff Youngquist
Editor-In-Chief: Axel Alonso

SYNOPSIS

From the back cover: The complete history of the Spirit of Vengeance from his earliest appearances to the present day! This fact-packed volume chronicles every character, team, place and piece of equipment - and provides vital information about all things Ghost Rider!

The Marvel Index series breaks down every issue of a particular character's comic history and provides the following items for each issue: Credits, Feature Character, Supporting Cast, Villains, Other Characters, Locations/Items, Flashbacks, Synopsis, and Notes. It also provides a chronological list of appearances for all characters between issues of their own comics and provides reference points for suggested read orders.

The following comics were covered in this Index collection, reprinted from the individual six issues:

Marvel Spotlight (1972) # 5-11
Ghost Rider (1973) # 1-81
Ghost Rider (1990) # 1-93
Ghost Rider/Wolverine/Punisher: Hearts of Darkness
Ghost Rider/Captain America: Fear
Ghost Rider Annual (1993) # 1-2
Ghost Rider/Wolverine/Punisher: The Dark Design
Ghost Riders: Crossroads # 1
Ghost Rider # -1
Ghost Rider Finale
Ghost Rider (2001) # 1-6
Ghost Rider # 1/2
Ghost Rider (2005) # 1-6
Ghost Rider (2006) # 1-35
Ghost Rider Annual (2008) # 1-2
Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch # 1-5
Ghost Riders: Heaven's On Fire # 1-6
Shadowland: Ghost Rider # 1
Ghost Rider # 0.1
Ghost Rider (2011) # 1-4

The following comics were printed in this collection for the first time, having not appeared in the individual issues:

The Champions (1975) # 1-17
X-Force/Champions Annual '98
Gambit and the Champions: From the Marvel Vault # 1
Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance # 1-23
Blaze: Legacy of Blood # 1-4
Blaze (1994) # 1-12
Ghost Rider: Trail of Tears # 1-6
The Ghost Rider (1967) # 1-7
Night Rider # 1-6
The Original Ghost Rider Rides Again # 1-7
The Original Ghost Rider # 1-20

ANNOTATIONS 

This book is a collection of the Ghost Rider material in Wolverine, Punisher, & Ghost Rider: Official Index to the Marvel Universe # 1-6. The book was published as a tie-in to the Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance film that was released in theaters in February 2012.

From the credits: Special thanks to Salvador Larroca, Mike Hansen, Chris Munn, Andy Nystrom, Sidney Osinga, JLH, George Olshevsky for starting it all and setting the standard so high, the folks at the Marvel Chronology Project for appreciating what we get right and pointing out what we get wrong, Spider-Fan.org, the Marvel Appendix, Jeff Christiansen, and the rest of the Handbook team. (My name was included as thanks for my contribution to the book: assisting the writers with correcting errors in their appearance/continuity sections that appeared in the individual issues and were fixed for this collection.)

REVIEW

I debated on whether I should review this or not, since its not technically a comic book - instead, it's a book about comics. Also, I didn't want people to think I was only writing about the Index because I helped out on it and got thanked in the credits, I am in no way that narcissistic I swear. But in the end, I decided that the guys who put this together deserved some additional credit for all of the hard work they put into this book (and all the other Indexes).

Like the Marvel Handbooks, the writers for the Indexes are given a pretty daunting and, at times I'm sure, thankless task. They take comic characters that have been around for years - 40 in fact for Ghost Rider - and attempt to put all of the different stories and titles together into a linear timeline of sorts. I've attempted writing a "Ghost Rider Chronology List" a few different times, and each time I eventually gave up because its a lot of work. Now imagine doing that while also making sure everything fits with the continuity of every other Marvel comic and character. That, wow, I can't even fathom how much time and patience that must take even with a whole team of dedicated writers/researchers. I was happy to assist Stuart Vandal with corrections when he contacted me, but I totally understood how and why those mistakes were made.

Mistakes or not, this book is awesome and I love reading through it. However, this is not something for the casual reader who just likes comics as disposable stories. No, this is for the fans who are hardcore scholars of all the minutia built up around their favorite characters. That is, of course, the category I fall under (as if you hadn't guessed that by now), and seeing books like this - and the Handbooks and the Visual Guides, etc... - really gets the geek in me going. Given the nature of the book the text reads very dry; its fact-based, like reading an encyclopedia.

There are few things about the book that I'm not so keen on, namely the book size and the price. The size is really bizarre, it's not the size of a normal trade paperback, instead its been shrunk. But the individual issues that this book collects were at normal comic book size, so I'm not sure the reason for the change. Its definitely a style choice, since all of the Index collections have been printed in this small scale. The price will hit you right in the wallet, too: 20 bucks for a book this size is almost criminal! I assume that Marvel didn't expect to sell very many of these given its low crossover appeal to casual readers, so they jacked up the price to offset the low sales. However, if you do throw down the $20 and pick this up, you'll have hours of material to read through.

Its a handy resource for any fan to pull out for a reference guide, and its become absolutely integral for the operation of Vengeance Unbound. So, if you're a hardcore Flamehead like myself and have the available income, I would highly recommend this book.

EDIT: Since I first posted this review, I've had time to go read back through the entire book in depth and found something that changes my opinions on the quality. When the Index was being released in serial form, a lot of chronology mistakes were made and I was asked to help do corrections for the upcoming collected edition. Stuart Vandal, the writer that contacted me, was extremely professional and grateful for the help (and I made sure to express my own gratitude for allowing me to assist with the corrections and how much I enjoyed the work he and his writing team had done). He and I concurred on the many mistakes I corrected, many of which were just oversights. However, I've gone back through and looked up the items I corrected, and in MANY cases no changes were made from the text in the original single issues. So there are numerous instances in this book where the character appearance chronology is hugely incorrect, despite the changes Stuart and I worked on. I am 100% sure this was not the fault of Stuart Vandal or the writing team, those guys put in lots of time and work on these Indexes and they are committed to them having the correct information. No, I believe this must have been done by the editorial or production staff, who either disregarded the numerous errors or simply made a mistake when it came to selecting the text for the collection. Nonetheless, a lot of the information in this book is inaccurate, so let that factor into your buying decision. Again, this is not a reflection on the work of the writers, those guys are awesome.

Grade: N/A