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| Cover Artist: Dale Eaglesham |
Original Price: $1.25
Title: "What If...Barbara Ketch Became Ghost Rider?"
Writer: Ron Marz
Artist: Dale Eaglesham
Inker: Brian Garvey
Letterer: Janice Chiang
Colorist: Tom Vincent
Editor: Craig Anderson
Editor-In-Chief: Tom DeFalco
SYNOPSIS
In a junkyard near Cypress Hills Cemetery, Daniel Ketch hides with his wounded sister Barbara from men that are looking to kill them. Dan sees a motorcycle glowing amongst the wrecked cars, but he is discovered by the assassins before he can touch it. Daniel is shot and left for dead, while the gravely injured Barbara reaches out for the motorcycle. The assassins return to their master, Deathwatch, just before the female Ghost Rider arrives carrying the dying Danny. She makes short work of the ninjas, but when she attempts to kill Deathwatch she is struck with intense pain, allowing the villain to escape. The police arrive, but are unable to capture Ghost Rider, who escapes and transforms back into Barbara.
Later, Barbara attends her brother's funeral, wishing that she could have done something to save him. That night, she had a dream where she is confronted by the Spirit of Vengeance. The Spirit tells her that she attempted to use his power to take a life, which goes against his purpose. To the Spirit's surprise, Barbara turns the tables and imposes her will over him, taking his power for herself. She wakes up and goes outside, transforming into the Ghost Rider. She rides into the city, finds a gang of attempted rapists, and murders them. She later seeks revenge on Deathwatch for his role in Danny's death, murdering him and his partner Blackout. Over the next few weeks, Barbara kills the villains she encounters, such as Zodiak, Hag, Troll, Scarecrow, and Mr. Hyde. With each murder, Barbara becomes more and more insane, further dominating the Spirit of Vengeance inside her.
She and Spider-Man are fighting the demonic Hobgoblin, and when she attempts to kill the villain Spider-Man intervenes, only to be knocked unconscious. As he passes out, he sees the Ghost Rider whipping Hobgoblin to death with her chain. When he awakens and sees Hobgoblin's body, Spider-Man seeks help in stopping the murderous Ghost Rider. He visits the home of Dr. Strange, where he meets John Blaze, former host of the Ghost Rider that has come to kill the demon. Together, the three men formulate a plan of attack.
At a construction site, Deathwatch and Blackout stand waiting for Ghost Rider to arrive, calling out her name until she comes. Though she does not understand how the two villains are alive once again, she immediately attempts to kill them. It is obvious that the villains are not who they say they are, using a shotgun and webbing to attack, and it is revealed that they are actually Spider-Man and Blaze hidden beneath a spell. Dr. Strange arrives and traps the Ghost Rider in a mystic circle, then exorcises the Spirit of Vengeance from Barbara's body. Blaze accidentally breaks the circle when he sees Barbara, allowing the Spirit to be set free to find its next host. Barbara dies, realizing what she had become in her desire for vengeance, and the mystical motorcycle soon finds a new host.
ANNOTATIONS
This story deviates from events in Ghost Rider (1990) # 1.
Barbara Ketch was to be the host for the Ghost Rider in the established Marvel Universe, until she was killed and the curse passed to her brother, as revealed in Ghost Rider (1990) # 43.
The villains that Barbara kills were all faced by the Ghost Rider in the first two years of the series: Deathwatch and Blackout in Ghost Rider (1990) # 3, Mr. Hyde in Ghost Rider (1990) # 4, Scarecrow in Ghost Rider (1990) # 7, Zodiak in Ghost Rider (1990) # 10, Hobgoblin in Spider-Man (1990) # 7, and Hag & Troll in Ghost Rider (1990) # 24.
REVIEW
The 1990s Ghost Rider gets his first spotlight in the What If...? anthology, which features a particularly bleak fate for poor Barbara Ketch.
If the second volume of What If...? is remembered for anything, it's for how god damn depressing it was. Every issue ended with the death of the title character (at least, sometimes the entire Marvel Universe died because Spider-Man forgot to brush his teeth), and this one was no exception. A lot of these stories hinged on shock and a body count to tell the story, but thankfully Ghost Rider's debut at least manages to tell a sad, poignant story along with the carnage.
One thing the Ketch Ghost Rider was known for was that he wouldn't take a villain's life despite looking like a typical grim vigilante. It differentiated Ghost Rider from his modern contemporaries like Wolverine and the Punisher, so having an alternate reality story based around the character becoming a murderer is a decent enough idea. The real hook of the story, though, is switching the host from Danny to his dead sister, Barbara, and that's where things get interesting. Dear departed Barb never had much of a personality in the original series, given that she only had about 10 pages of screen time before becoming a vegetable and eventual murder victim. She pre-dated the whole "Women in Refrigerators" trope, but that's essentially what she was, a woman killed to spur the hero to action. All of that gets inverted in this story, and it proves that in this case at least the woman is by far the deadlier of the species.
It actually does hinge on the one aspect of Barb's established personality from her brief appearance, that she was the risk-taker and protector of her little brother. Danny was a bit of a milquetoast in the early days, so it makes sense that he wouldn't have had the willpower to overcome the demon possessing him. Having Barb prove herself stronger than any demon, spurring it on to a murderous rampage, is a very interesting idea that Ron Marz takes to its logical conclusion. Along the way we get this reality's version of the events from the Ghost Rider's first year, culminating with the return of Johnny Blaze and involvement of both Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. Despite the break in continuity, the events flow naturally alongside what had already been established, making this one of the least divergent What If...? issues I've read.
The artwork in this issue was by Dale Eaglesham at the start of his career, pre-dating even his early work on the Punisher titles. He's gone on to become a well-known artist for his work on Justice Society of America and Fantastic Four, but his work here is nearly unrecognizable to what he's doing today. Even in his early days, though, Eaglesham does a fantastic job with the artwork here. He makes Ghost Rider look feminine, which is really difficult (just look at how Matthew Clark struggled with the female Ghost Rider introduced in 2011), while also making her look terrifying. I also love the way he draws her movements and the use of her chain, which whips and strikes like a snake.
This is a surprisingly good comic, easily the best of Ghost Rider's handful of What If...? appearances.
Grade: A-
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