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| Cover Artist: Pop Mhan |
Original Price: $1.50
Title: "The Duck and the Amok"
Writer: Ivan Velez Jr.
Artist: Pop Mhan
Inker: Josh Lowe
Letterer: Richard Starkings
Colorist: Brian Buccellato
Editor: James Felder
Editor In Chief: Bob Harras
SYNOPSIS
Danny Ketch and his mother are being chased out of their house by a flock of crows, hundreds of them, that are out for blood. Dan leads his mom into the garage and runs away; once out of sight, realizing that the crows must be controlled by the believed-to-be-deceased Scarecrow, he transforms into the Ghost Rider. Using his hellfire, the Rider chases the crows away and allows Danny to regain control of his body. Back in front of their house, Mrs. Ketch hears the voice of her dead daughter Barbara, who is standing in the lawn.
In the East Village section of New York, the apartment of Jennifer Kale has become a portal to another dimension. An attempt to send Howard the Duck back to his home world has gone awry, and now the prehistoric Moonboy and Devil Dinosaur have been brought to our world. Their entry through the portal destroys the apartment, and sends Jennifer, Howard, and John Blaze out into the street below. While Jennifer and Blaze attempt to evade the giant dinosaur, Howard finds himself snatched up into the monster's mouth as a snack. Blaze fires a few blasts of hellfire, and Devil Dinosaur spits Howard back onto the ground. Blaze attempts to shoot Devil again, but instead the three find themselves being chased by an angry dinosaur. Moonboy, meanwhile, is found by a drunken homeless man who gives the caveboy some alcohol.
Back at the Ketch home, Danny tries to figure out how the Scarecrow could be responsible for the crow attack - the last time he saw the villain, he had been trapped in Hell by Blackheart. Dan's mother, terrified by what she's seen, asks her son to stay with her until things calm down, and he promises to do so.
In the city, Blaze, Jennifer, and Howard are still being chased by Devil Dinosaur despite their attempts to stop his rampage. Blaze stabs Devil in the neck with a hellfire knife, but that only makes the tyrannosaurus even more angry. Moonboy, meanwhile, has become drunk and enraged as well. He reunites with Devil Dinosaur and the two continue to destroy the city. This is eventually captured by the local news, and Danny sees the footage of his brother being chased by a red dinosaur on television. Even though he should stay with his mother, Dan decides that he has to help Blaze. Back in the city, the police squad Code: Blue arrive to stop Devil Dinosaur. Their plan is to shoot the beast until its dead, even though Howard and Jennifer both say its not their fault that they're there and they don't deserve to die. Moonboy gets hit by the first shot, wounding him, but the arrival of Ghost Rider keeps the cops from firing again. Ghost Rider captures Moonboy and hands him over to the police, then he wraps his chain around Devil Dinosaur's neck and chokes it until it is unconscious. The police start the clean-up process, and Blaze gives Ghost Rider a harsh reception, going so far as to spit on him. Ghost Rider leaves with Blaze convinced that the demon is starting to go bad like Zarathos. Jennifer, injured due to a falling wall, is taken away in an ambulance, and Howard is left to walk away, still trapped in a world he never made. Meanwhile, Brother Voodoo and the vampire Lilith prepare themselves...the undead walk.
At the Ketch house, Danny's mother wakes up to find her son gone. She looks up and sees her dead daughter Barbara standing in the doorway, seemingly returned to life.
ANNOTATIONS
Ghost Rider appears next in Marvel Fanfare (1997) # 3. Following his defeat of Devil Dinosaur, Ghost Rider travels to Central Park where he encounters Spider-Man and the Wendigo, after which he returns to check on Danny's mother in Ghost Rider (1990) # 83.
Ghost Rider learned his true identity of Noble Kale in Ghost Rider (1990) # 77.
Both Barbara Ketch and the Scarecrow were last seen trapped in Hell at the end of Ghost Riders: Crossroads # 1.
It was revealed that Dan Ketch, John Blaze, and Jennifer Kale are the Ghost Rider's descendants in Ghost Rider (1990) # 78.
Mrs. Ketch had a dream of a black crow landing on Barbara's headstone in Ghost Rider (1990) # 77. The whereabouts of the missing bodies, including Barbara's, is revealed in Ghost Rider (1990) # 83.
Mrs. Ketch had her memories of Dan being Ghost Rider erased by Jennifer Kale in Ghost Rider (1990) # 79.
REVIEW
I don't believe there's a single issue of Ghost Rider that's received so much fan hatred as this one. Devil Dinosaur, Howard the Duck, and new artist Pop Mhan all combine to produce one mess of a comic.
For a lot of readers, this issue of Ghost Rider was the breaking point, the culmination of a series of events that had made a lot of fans pretty upset. Ghost Rider was now running around in a red and yellow tracksuit and long-time artist Salvador Larroca had departed in the issue before this. Pop Mhan came aboard with an art style completely different from any that had been seen on the series before - a style that many said was inappropriate for the character - and his first issue was essentially a comedy story. Now, I don't have quite as low an opinion of Mhan's work as the majority of fans. In fact, before this he had drawn an issue of Marvel Fanfare that guest-starred Ghost Rider and it was very nicely done. Based on that issue, I could see why the editor thought he would make a good artist for the regular Ghost Rider series. But because his first issue on the series was a comedic one, he adjusted his style to a much more cartoonish, dare I say goofy one than we'd seen in that Fanfare story. I understand perfectly why fans hated his work so much, as its highly exaggerated and stylized, and some of it honestly is just downright ugly. I actually don't mind his Ghost Rider, I thought he was especially good at drawing the flames with such amazing kinetic energy; but look at his rendition of John Blaze, who looks like a Cro-Magnon caveman in this issue. The main problem is that the artwork on a book like Ghost Rider needs to be appropriate for horror, and Mhan's work on this issue was unsuitable.
Even had this comic been drawn by someone like Larroca, however, it still would have been awful. I don't mind Howard the Duck's presence, I love that character, but Devil Dinosaur and Moonboy are just another glaring example of Velez's insistence on resurrecting forgotten characters from the 1970s. I don't even mind that Velez tried to do a comedy issue, a change of pace for one story isn't a bad idea. No, the problem is that he tries to do suspenseful horror on one page with the crows and Barbara Ketch's corpse and then he tries to do goofy comedic relief on the next with a drunk Moonboy and Blaze getting his shotgun bit in half.
A lot of readers jumped ship on this title after this issue, and Marvel's attempt to boost sales by bringing in tons of changes (New artist! New costume! New origin! New logo! Guest-stars, guest-stars, guest-stars!) absolutely blew up in their faces. Pop Mhan goes on to do some interesting work on this series and Velez was normally a solid writer; but all the negative elements combined to make this issue one of the lowest points in Ghost Rider history.
Grade: F
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