Cover Date: July 1993; Publication Date: May 1993
In a terminal ward of a hospital, Johnny Farmer lies brain dead, kept alive by breathing machines. But deep in his brain is a spark of consciousness, the result of Farmer experiencing the Penance Stare of the Ghost Rider following his rape of a young woman. The Stare caused his body to shut down, but the machines now beep with brain activity - the one thought of revenge on the Ghost Rider. Suddenly, Farmer is approached by the Darkhold Dwarf, who offers him a page of the Book of Sins to gain his fondest wish. Farmer reads the cursed words of the Darkhold as the Dwarf fades away...
Weeks later, on a New York street, Dan Ketch undergoes the transformation into the Ghost Rider - who senses that this section of the city is housing a darker evil of unnatural origin. The Rider comes across a woman running for her life, and she tells him that a monster ripped her boyfriend's heart out. A flying mailbox collides with the Ghost Rider's bike, and the girl escapes while the "monster" approaches. Farmer has become the Harvestor, who is trapped in a decaying body that needs fresh organs placed within it to live. The page of the Darkhold gave him the ability to instantly graft fresh transplants onto his body, and any wound the Rider causes him will directly result in his needing a new organ "donor". Ghost Rider attacks with his chain, but finds the Harvestor to possess incredible strength - he catches the chain and throws the Rider into a wall that collapses down atop him. Harvestor leaves, thinking the Ghost Rider dead, but the Spirit of Vengeance emerges from the rubble moments later. He leaps atop his bike and chases the Harvestor down, tackling him to the ground but finding the villain impossible to hold due to the viscid texture of his body. Harvestor leads the Ghost Rider into a seemingly-abandoned building, and the two's fight sends them through the floor into the basement level. There the Rider finds dozens of people hanging naked from the ceiling - still alive and intended as fresh organ supplies. As the hero and villain grapple, Ghost Rider again gives the Harvestor his Penance Stare, which drives the monster back into the hanging crowd of victims. The people grab and grasp at the Harvestor's body, eventually tearing him apart. Satisfied that the monster is destroyed, the Ghost Rider begins the task of helping the innocent victims down.
THE ROADMAP
This issue of Midnight Sons Unlimited also contained stories featuring Morbius, the Darkhold Redeemers, and Blade.
Ghost Rider last appeared in Terror, Inc. (1992) # 11 and appears next in Marvel Comics Presents (1988) # 131.
Johnny Farmer, the Harvestor, was given the Ghost Rider's Penance Stare in Midnight Sons Unlimited (1993) # 1.
CHAIN REACTION
Well, it's a 9-page anthology story that is only there for the supposed selling-point of Bart Sears artwork. How good did anyone really expect it to be?
Mort Todd was a writer that was doing a lot of work for Midnight Sons Unlimited around this time (including the feature-length Morbius story in this issue), and it's easy to say that he's not the most subtle or nuanced writer in the world. It's obvious from the onset that he's not too experienced with the Ghost Rider, making the character incredibly verbose with dialogue so purple that it would make Chris Claremont blush. Everything about the story, from the action to the dialogue, is over-done and pushed to silly extremes.
And it's not as if the story idea is all that bad. The Harvestor, despite having a horrible cliched name, has a neat concept behind him with the grafting of organs to his decaying body. What doesn't work about the character is that his concept calls for something more visceral than an all-ages comic can bring. In other words, the concept is neutered and therefore rendered with a high cheese-factor.
But the selling-point of this isn't the story or the villain, it's the artist. Bart Sears had become a fairly popular artist by this point, doing work on books like X-O Manowar and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter for Valiant Comics, and Marvel promoted his work on this filler story as the crux of this issue. I've personally never been a fan of Sears' work, considering his grotesque renditions of human anatomy, and his Ghost Rider was done in the same vein. I hated it when artists drew the Rider's jeans and leather jacket as tight-fitting as spandex, and that's exactly what we get here with Sears. I DID like the artist's design for the Harvestor, but it also goes back to the aforementioned neutering of the concept - had this been a mature readers story, I can only imagine how wild Sears could have got with the villains design. Something else that hurts the visuals of the story is a switch in colorists halfway through (seriously, a fill-in colorist on a 9-page story!). While Kalisz's colors are vibrant and beautiful to look at, Becton's are flat and static. I expect superior color from a series with such a high-price tag, and this story only holds up that expectation for the first half.
Yes, it's an anthology story that obviously wasn't meant to be anything ground breaking. Does that fact excuse it for being nigh-unreadable? Of course not.
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