Cover Date: July 1992; On Sale Date: May 1992
Writer: Gary Friedrich; Artist: Mike Ploog; Letterer: Jon Costa; Editor: Stan Lee; Reprint Editor: Evan Skolnik; Cover Artist: Mark Texeira
Johnny Blaze, the Ghost Rider, rides through the streets of New York City and accidentally witnesses two men killing another. Wanting no part of what's happened, he rides on, but is then chased by the killers. Upon trapping him in an ally, the men are shocked to see Blaze's flaming skull. The Ghost Rider points his finger, causing flame to erupt on the ground. The men make a run for it, and Blaze rides back to Madison Square Garden, where he transforms back into his human form. He thinks back to try and remember what happened, hoping to find some answers in the past.
Johnny's father, Barton Blaze, died in a motorcycle accident when his son was very young. Johnny was then adopted by Crash Simpson, another stunt rider that ran his own cycle show with his wife Mona and daughter Roxanne. Johnny grew into adolescence, and had followed his step-father's footsteps by taking up cycle riding. When he was fifteen, his motorcycle caught fire during a practice session. Though he attempted to save his family, Mona Simpson is killed in the bike's explosion. Before she dies, she makes Johnny promise her that he'll never ride in the show due to the danger, which he agrees to. Five years later, Johnny is discovered riding in secret by Roxanne, who tells him that she is in love with him. Later on, Crash tells the two that he has cancer, and that the show's performance at Madison Square Garden will be his last, if he lives to even see that.
Determined to keep his step-father from dying, Johnny researches some occult books, finally using them to summon Satan. In exchange for Johnny's soul, the Devil will spare Crash Simpson from the cancer that's killing him. Three weeks later, Crash tells Johnny that he plans to try and break the world's cycle jump record at the Garden. Johnny knows he'll be fine, due to the deal he made with Satan. When Crash attempts to jump it, he doesn't make it, and dies in the resulting accident. Furious at what happened, Blaze suits up, mounts a bike, and does the same stunt...and makes it, breaking the world record. That night, Satan returns to claim Johnny's soul, claiming that he only said he'd spare Crash from the disease and nothing else. As Satan prepares to take Johnny to Hell, Roxanne enters and banishes the demon with the pure essence of her soul. She tells Johnny that she read his books behind his back, and learned how to send the Devil away. The next night, however, Johnny begins to burn with fever, until his head suddenly transforms into a flaming skull. Every night since, he has undergone the transformation into...the Ghost Rider!
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| Our hero, everyone! |
THE ROADMAP
This issue is a reprint of Marvel Spotlight on Ghost Rider (1972) # 5.
CHAIN REACTION
This is a reprint series, so a review of the actual comic is a bit redundant given that I've already reviewed the original issue that was reprinted here. Some of the following issue posts for this series will be review-free, but I wanted to take this space to talk about a very interesting phenomenon that you don't see anymore in comics publishing: the monthly reprint series.
Today, access to older comics is extremely easy, with a large part of comics history available either in collected editions or online at Comixology. 20 years ago, though, if you wanted to catch up on older issues of a series you had no choice to but to hit up back-issue bins in comic shops, flea markets, or via mail-order services. In the late 1980s, Marvel had a big success with their Classic X-Men series, which reprinted the Chris Claremont run from Giant-Size X-Men # 1 on up, packaged with new back-up stories that tied into the issues being reprinted. For a lot of fans, myself included, it was the best way to read those older (and expensive) comics. Even when Classic X-Men dropped the new material and became reprint-only, the series still lasted for years as a decent seller.
Fast forward to the early 1990s, when Ghost Rider had just been relaunched as a huge success. The second year of the series saw the return of Johnny Blaze to comics pages, and as a tie-in Marvel released a 7-issue series called The Original Ghost Rider Rides Again, which reprinted the last 14 issues of the first Ghost Rider series to catch new readers up on who Johnny was and what his status quo had become prior to his 1991 return. The series was a big hit, because new Ghost Rider fans had never been given the opportunity to read them before. So the following year, Marvel decided to give Ghost Rider an ongoing reprint series that started from his first appearance in the same vein as Classic X-Men. The reprint series lasted 20 issues before falling as one of the first victims of the mid-90s across-the-board decline in comic sales. Can you imagine something like that happening today? The only new material involved in this series was an occasional Phantom Rider back-up story, which wasn't much of a draw. Marvel tried to revive the reprint series back in the mid-2000s with the Avengers Classic series, which only lasted less than a year despite the inclusion of new material from well-known creators.
For me, personally, this series was the first opportunity I had to read the early Ghost Rider comics of the 1970s, and if you're in the market for having those issues I'd recommend picking these up as a significantly cheaper alternative to the originals.
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| Satan: the solution to all of life's problems! |
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