Cover Date: April 1993; Publication Date: February 1993
In the small town of Sleepy Hollow, a monster hunts and kills a young couple during a snow storm. As it happens, a catatonic elderly woman named Clarisse Van Ripper watches silently from the window of her nursing home. Later, at the crime scene, police give some details of the murders to the passing John Blaze, who the sheriff recognizes from the Quentin Carnival. Blaze goes to where he left Ghost Rider, but finds that the Rider has saved a young woman that had been raped. Ghost Rider gives the rapists the Penance Stare and he and Blaze then flee from the arriving police officers.
Not far away, the monster attacks a group of small children, who are rescued by Ghost Rider. The creature thinks to itself that the Rider must have been sent by "the Other" who gave it its power, and attempts to defend itself. A fight breaks out between Ghost Rider and the monster, which is interrupted by John Blaze and his hellfire shotgun. The monster flees to the nursing home and heads directly to the room where Clarisse lays in bed. Blaze kills the monster with his hellfire and then finds a page of the Darkhold sitting next to Clarisse's bed. Blaze puts two and two together, that the monster was Clarisse, while the old woman thinks to herself about her life. She had been a childcare worker who abused children, and when one fought back it caused her to fall down a flight of stares, paralyzing her into a catatonic state for the rest of her life. When the Darkhold Dwarf approached her with the deal that would allow her to walk again, the spell implanted her mind into the body of the monster, giving her the means to take her revenge on the town's children. Realizing that Clarisse was the true monster responsible for the murders, Ghost Rider gives her the Penance Stare, which breaks her from her catatonia just enough for her to scream.
THE ROADMAP
This issue of Midnight Sons Unlimited also contained stories featuring Morbius, the Darkhold Redeemers, and the Nightstalkers.
Ghost Rider and Blaze last appeared in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 6 and appear next in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 7.
Johnny Farmer, the rapist that was given the Penance Stare at the beginning of this story, will return as the Darkhold-powered creature called the Harvestor in Midnight Sons Unlimited (1993) # 2.
CHAIN REACTION
Midnight Sons Unlimited debuts as Marvel's first high-priced, quarterly anthology title with stories spotlighting each of the line's characters.
The Unlimited books were an interesting experiment that Marvel conducted in the early 1990s. The publishing department had essentially driven every title into "families" or groupings that didn't allow stand-alone concepts to remain as such for very long. Ghost Rider was the poster child for this movement, which saw a unique title shoehorned into a family of books that did nothing but dilute what had made the Ghost Rider series so successful at the start. At this point, the Midnight Sons had only been in publication for about six months, so it's interesting that it was the first line to receive an Unlimited spin-off, with the more popular franchises (like Spider-Man and the X-Men) coming later. Even the format of the anthologies were curious: 64 page issues with thick, glossy paper stock released every four months, with a massively increased price tag to go along with it. Considering that the average price for a comic at this time was $1.50 to $1.95, paying $3.95 was a major jump.
This first issue does a really good job of telling introductory stories for each of the Midnight Sons titles by the writers of the ongoing books (except Morbius, with the curious absence of Len Kaminski). The Nightstalkers story is a great look at that book's concept, and the Darkhold story by Chris Cooper and Joe Quesada is fantastic (and terrifying). Naturally, though, the book was going to lead with Ghost Rider in terms of page count and profile, given that character's dominance over the Sons line. The Spirits of Vengeance story here is a great one-shot tale by Howard Mackie and Klaus Janson, which serves to not only tie the characters into the greater mythology of the Midnight Sons "universe" but also give a look at the dynamic shared by Ghost Rider and Blaze in their regular series.
The use of the Darkhold as the through-line between each of the Sons titles was brilliant, as it allowed for the continuity ties while also giving a variety of threats for the characters to face. It was much more effective as a story-telling engine than the stuff that came later with Lilith and "Siege of Darkness", and the lead-up in all the books to the "Midnight Massacre" crossover was done very well. Plus, it allows for some really great horror elements to come in, such as with this story and the chilling Clarisse Van Ripper. The idea of an elderly woman in a wheel chair secretly being a child-murdering monster, with her evil nature given a literal manifestation as a demonic creature, is a great story idea and it's one that Mackie uses very well.
Klaus Janson is an artist I've always been less than fond of, both as an inker and artist by himself. I'm just not much of a fan of his scratchy style, which always makes the characters look stiff and awkward during action sequences. Still, the man is a legend in the industry, so seeing him draw Ghost Rider makes for an interesting take on the character. Even better, his style is actually a really good fit for this story and Ghost Rider as a whole, who always works better the further away from "traditional superhero" he can get. Most impressive in this story, though, is the colors by Gregory Wright, who I assume is using the better paper quality to really do some neat tricks with the colors. The red panels, which are what the monster sees from its first-person perspective, have a haze to them that looks like they're filtered through a lens covered in rust or dried blood. And the snow fall throughout the story looks amazing!
Midnight Sons Unlimited quickly fell into a rut, populated with filler stories by less than A-list creators, but the series certainly got off to a strong start.
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