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Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Roland Boschi
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Colorist: Dan Brown
Editor: Aubrey Sitterson
Executive Editor: Axel Alonso
Editor In Chief: Joe Quesada
Cover Artist: Marko Djurdjevic
Johnny Blaze thinks back to the first time he saw a dead body, when the Quentin Carnival folk discovered the body of a vagrant that had died from exposure. When Barton Blaze and Crash Simpson pick up the body to bury it, a black book marked with a red pentagram falls from his coat for Johnny to find, marking the start of his history with the occult.
In the present, the Ghost Rider rides down the haunted Highway 18, cutting a swath of destruction through the horde of ghost cannibals that haunt the roadway. Hanging on the back of Blaze's motorcycle is the boy Lucas, who Blaze is attempting to keep alive for information on Zadkiel. On a frontage road overlooking the highway, the nurses of New Beulah that serve Zadkiel watch the Ghost Rider's rampage and decide to follow into town to retrieve Lucas. Blaze continues his ride, but is knocked off his bike by a ghost with a shovel. While the Ghost Rider crashes into a nearby barn, Lucas is thrown onto the road, where the ghosts start to drag him away. Blaze approaches with a wheat scythe in hand and warns the ghosts to let the boy go. When they refuse, Johnny gets on his bike and starts cutting his way through them while a horseman spirit carries Lucas away.
Nearby, the Head Nurse receives a phone call from another agent of Zadkiel who she addresses as her lord's lieutenant. This mysterious man then asks how Blaze looks, to which the nurse replies that he's “hell on damn wheels” and asks if all the Ghost Riders were like this. The lieutenant answers “no, they're definitely not” before hanging up and walking back to his motorcycle.
Blaze pursues the ghostly horseman and Lucas, with a horde of cannibal ghosts between them. Instead of riding through them, the Ghost Rider arcs his cycle onto the mountainside on the road's left side, bypassing the ghosts and horseman before blocking the road on the other side. Blaze lets loose a massive blast of hellfire that incinerates the cannibals but leaves Lucas unharmed. Meanwhile, inside the town limits, Deputy Kowalski is loaded into the trunk of his police cruiser by the cannibal Wojciehowicz, who has cut off the deputy's hand and plans on making a meal of him when they reach his house. The nurses arrive in town just as a bus begins to pull away, carrying the girl Naomi who had worked as a nurse in the hospital without being aware of her coworkers true motives. Blaze & Lucas, the nurses, Wojciehowicz, and Naomi are all heading toward a crossroads in the center of town.
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| Shovel to the face! |
THE ROADMAP
Blaze discovered that the Ghost Rider curse was given to him by the angel Zadkiel in Ghost Rider (2006) # 18. He has been searching for a way to get to Heaven since Ghost Rider (2006) # 20.
The identity of Zadkiel's lieutenant is revealed in Ghost Rider (2006) # 23.
CHAIN REACTION
“Hell-Bent & Heaven-Bound” continues with an issue-long running battle between the Ghost Rider and a horde of cannibal ghosts on a haunted highway - man, I love being able to write sentences like that when describing this series.
It's difficult to pull off an issue that's nothing more than a single fight sequence and still give the reader the feeling that they've gotten their money's worth. Luckily, Aaron gives us enough variation during the battle that it never becomes boring - and truthfully, having Ghost Rider fight his way down an endless road of ghosts could very easily have become repetitive and dull in a lesser writer's hands - and still manages to fit in some subplots along the way. If anything, though, I think that maybe he tried to fit too much into this opening arc, as the Kowalski subplot gets but one page to advance it after the set-up last issue and Nurse Naomi returns in one panel after disappearing in the first chapter. Don't get me wrong, the arc still reads amazingly well, and Aaron certainly came out of the gate swinging for the fences. I'd much rather read a story with too much plot than not enough, which was a problem with this series before he took over as writer.
There is one thing that Aaron is obviously a master at, and that's taking the time to give us at least one moment per issue where you look at the page and mumble “bad ass!” under your breath. Here, it's the image of Ghost Rider cutting through the evil ghosts with a giant reaper's scythe, which looks cool as shit drawn by Boschi.
When it comes to Roland Boschi's artwork, I'm amazed at how well he's drawing this story, making the running battle across the highway both intensely frightening and full of energy and excitement. There's little doubt that this is an action series, but at the same time the artist doesn't shy away from making it a true horror title at the same time. That's a hard line to toe without going too far in either direction, and Boschi does a perfect balancing act. And I absolutely love the way he draws the Ghost Rider's motorcycle as this monstrous piece of machinery that looks nothing like bikes in the real world - because honestly, why WOULD the Ghost Rider's motorcycle look just like a regular bike?
This issue's last page teases the arc's conclusion perfectly, with all of the various plots and characters quite literally on a collision course for what promises to be one fiery resolution.
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| Mysterious! |
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