Cover Date: May 1994; Publication Date: March 1994
At a camp site fifty miles north of New York City, John Blaze and the remnants of the Quentin Carnival watch on as the very drunk Miranda Woods unleashes bursts of mystical energy that threaten all of their lives. John tries to talk Miranda down, warning her that she could kill herself, but she doesn't care. She wants her son, Timmy, back, and Blaze tells her that he knows how hard it is to lose a child. They haven't given up looking for him, and eventually they'll find him. John finally talks her down, and she collapses in tears, asking for the pain to stop. Roxanne takes Miranda into their trailer, while John looks in on their kids, who have only recently been found. Later, Clara enters and tells John that she thinks she may have picked up a psychic reading on Timmy when they arrived in New York to retrieve Kody.
The next day, John goes to the Child Inc. building in Manhattan, the place that Clara pointed him to. He's confused about how the company could point him to Timmy, since they're an organization that helps unfortunate children across the world. Blaze meets with Ms. Pearl, one of the representatives of Child Inc., and is told that there is really nothing the company can do to help him. Suddenly, the building is attacked by Cardiac, a dangerous vigilante, who declares that the funds raised by the company are not reaching the children they've promised to help. Unexpectedly, several commandos with high-tech weapons attack Cardiac, but the vigilante easily subdues them. Blaze then gets involved, and the two hit each other with their weapons. John is stunned, but Cardiac is forced to make a retreat -- though he vows to return. When John awakens, the security team tells him that he has ten seconds to vacate the premises before they open fire. Blaze agrees to leave, but wonders to himself why a charity organization is using soldiers and has subbasements that he overheard one of the guards mention.
A short while later, John meets Michael Badilino - Vengeance - at a police firing range and asks him to help him investigate Child Inc. Badilino begrudgingly agrees to help, and the two start a stake-out outside the charity's building. They see an explosion on the roof of the building, and after Badilino transforms into the Vengeance the two men ride up to find out what's happening. They find Cardiac, who is battling against the security force once again. Vengeance steps in to try and stop Cardiac, but is blasted away by the vigilante's power staff. Cardiac then blows a hole through the roof and descends into the building, leaving Blaze and Vengeance to follow him.
When they make their way to the building's subbasements, Blaze and Vengeance find themselves fighting giant robotic guards. Cardiac assists them, apologizing them for mistaking the two for Child Inc. employees. The three make short work of the robots, and Cardiac tells them that Child Inc. has been selling the very children they have claimed to protect, making money at the expense of children in slavery. Finding a prison in the lowest level of the building, the heroes free the children and Blaze finally finds Timmy, who simply asks "what took you so long?". After all of the children are evacuated, Cardiac destroys the building. Vengeance tells John that he'll make sure the rescued kids are taken care of by the police, while John says he has something personal to do. Later, Miranda and Timmy are reunited, and all the mother can say is "thank you" over and over.
THE ROADMAP
Miranda Woods' son, Timmy, disappeared in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 10.
Blaze and his friends arrived in New York to bring Kody home in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 21.
Blaze and Vengeance appear next in Ghost Rider (1990) # 50.
Cardiac first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man (1963) # 344.
CHAIN REACTION
Spirits of Vengeance is winding down, and Howard Mackie is scrambling frantically to try and tie-up all of the various subplots he's introduced before the series ends and the Blaze series starts. We had the resolution of Kody's history and the Carnival's destruction in the past few issues, so this time it's Miranda's turn. We're also given a chapter of the mini-arc that leads to the Ghost Rider's return in # 50 of the core title.
When Mackie introduced the supernatural backgrounds of the various Carnival members during the first year of Spirits, readers were left with lots of questions about how all of these monsters and freaks became the way they were. Miranda Woods was one of these characters, suddenly gaining the power to emit dangerous blasts of mystical energy after her son, Timmy, disappeared during Centurious' attack on the Quentin Carnival. I can safely say that the resolution to the plot in this issue was pretty weak. Unlike Kody, Miranda's history and powers are given no explanation whatsoever, while Timmy's situation comes from left field. It's a similar to the situation we'll see in the Blaze series with John's children, who disappear during a fight with one villain and then appear in the hands of another without explanation. Timmy disappeared during the fight against the Sygian Demons, so how does he make his way into the Child Inc. prisons? A lot of glaring plotholes are left wide open with zero effort to explain them, and you can easily tell that Mackie was clutching at straws to resolve this storyline - one that I can only assume he thought he'd have a bit more time to develop before the title's cancellation.
We're also treated to two guest-stars in this issue: Vengeance, who is brought in for the big anniversary crossover in Ghost Rider, and Cardiac, a C-level Spider-Man character who honestly just seems stuck in to provide Blaze a reason to investigate Child Inc. Vengeance's presence is welcome, giving a little more weight to the Ghost Rider/Blaze duo that was supposed to be the book's premise, while Cardiac is really just a plot device.
Henry Martinez, the book's regular artist, takes a half-day with this issue, leaving the rest of the story to be illustrated by Robert Walker. Walker's goofy, disproportioned characters and lack of detail hurts the story immensely; but we're at least given Martinez's crisper, more exciting art through the first half of the issue.
At this point, the cancellation of Spirits is almost a mercy killing, especially given the fact that it had become a Blaze solo book after the "Siege of Darkness" story.
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