Cover Date: February 1994; Publication Date: December 1993
Following his death at the hands of Zarathos, the lifeless skull of the Ghost Rider has been placed on a pedestal in a Cypress Hills Cemetery mausoleum. A half mile away, the Caretaker stands in the rain in front of the Ketch home. He knocks on the door, which is answered by Francis Ketch. She immediately realizes that something has happened to her son, and all Caretaker can say is “I'm sorry” before leaving her to her tears. Elsewhere, inside the Dolan household, police captain Gerry Dolan tries to talk to his daughter Stacy, who has shut herself inside her room. Stacy sits in the dark, crying and repeating Dan's name over and over.
At the cemetery, Michael Badilino arrives at the mausoleum, taking note of the stone prison of Zarathos atop the crypt's door. He enters to find Ghost Rider's skull and jacket missing, and he assumes they've been stolen. He transforms into Vengeance and begins searching for the thief. Its not long until he sees a large creature fleeing from the cemetery grounds with a large bag in its hands. Back at the Ketch house, the Caretaker sits outside in the rain, wallowing in his guilt over Dan's death. At the Dolan house, Stacy cries over Dan, asking why he never told her about his life as Ghost Rider, and as she clutches his photograph she swears that she will never let him go.
Vengeance chases down the monster and attacks, discovering that its bag contains a multitude of human skulls. The creature says he was tasked to find one skull in specific, and that perhaps Vengeance's is the one he's looking for. The two have a brief battle, which Vengeance quickly wins. He turns away to search through the pile of skulls, but the Caretaker appears, telling him that Ghost Rider's isn't there. Badilino attacks the Caretaker, taking out all his rage and grief on him, until he notices the monster he fought escaping into the storm. Caretaker tells him that its time for them to bury their dead, that he knows where Ghost Rider's remains are being held. The two men soon arrive in front of the Dolan house, and when Stacy sees them she makes her way outside. It was her who took the skull and jacket, unable to bear the thought of Dan being left out on display. She then tells the Caretaker that she forgives him for what happened.
Later, Ghost Rider is laid to rest with a funeral attended by Stacy, Francis, and the Caretaker. Vengeance watches from astride his cycle, vowing that a new Ghost Rider will ride the night. Vengeance begins anew.
THE ROADMAP
Vengeance last appeared in Midnight Sons Unlimited (1993) # 4 and he appears next in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 19.
Ghost Rider died at the hands of Zarathos in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 18. Stacy learned that Ghost Rider and Dan were one in that same issue.
Ghost Rider and Dan Ketch will return to life in Ghost Rider (1990) # 50.
Along with taking over as the new Ghost Rider in this series, Vengeance also takes Ghost Rider's lead story position in Marvel Comics Presents (1988) # 147.
The creature who stole the skulls returns in Ghost Rider (1990) # 48, where we learn that his name is Rak.
CHAIN REACTION
Ghost Rider is dead and Vengeance takes over as the “new” Ghost Rider at the start of a new status quo that no one believed would stick. Naturally, it was just four issues later that Ghost Rider made his return, leaving the Vengeance period as nothing more than a curious footnote in GR history.
When Vengeance made his debut a year earlier, it was considered a pretty big deal. It has been a while since Ghost Rider had debuted a big, new villain, and establishing Vengeance as the “Anti-Ghost Rider” was an interesting (if clichéd) hook. It's the same principal that Marvel used on Venom, who became a hugely successful character. Aided by a great character design by Adam Kubert, Vengeance seemed set to become a fantastic villain for the Ghost Rider books.
We also have Venom to blame for what eventually happened to Vengeance's character. The Spider-Man writers had turned Venom into an “anti-hero”, a decidedly more-violent version of Spider-Man who protected “innocents” and killed the “guilty”. When Vengeance's popularity soared after his debut, I can just imagine the dollar signs going off in the marketing department's eyes when they realized they had another “anti-hero” opportunity in the making. So Vengeance became a hero, a decidedly more-violent version of Ghost Rider, and everything interesting about the character vanished in a puff of smoke.
Michael Badilino, pre-Vengeance, was little more than a Punisher stand-in, and turning him into Vengeance and making him a hero meant he was nothing more than a Ghost Rider stand-in. When the readers were handed the extremely lackluster “death” of Ghost Rider during the “Siege of Darkness”, they were understandably upset; but even more so when the creators started touting Vengeance as “the NEW Ghost Rider!”. I give Mackie credit for truly trying to sell Dan's death as a permanent thing, giving over a whole issue to his funeral. But you can also tell that Mackie's heart just wasn't in this story, and if I had to make a guess I'd say that Ghost Rider's “death” and replacement was forced on him.
Ron Garney continues as the book's regular artist, and the guy certainly draws a good Vengeance in this issue. One thing I noticed immediately is that some panels, particularly the ones involving Caretaker, seem to have a heavy Frank Miller/Sin City influence to them. This became a popular style for a short time, and its interesting to see Garney experimenting with it a bit.
That's actually a fair thing to call this entire period in Ghost Rider, an experiment - one that was doomed to failure at the beginning, to boot. The book's not bad during this time, in fact I'd say its better than it was during the Midnight Sons/Bret Blevins days in the year before. It just can't help but suffer from all the bad things that were out of the creators' control.
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