Cover Date: February 1994; Publication Date: December 1993
John Blaze is having a nightmare, in which he watches his younger brother, Dan Ketch, devoured and killed by the demon Zarathos. Blaze's dream-self encounters twisted versions of the Caretaker and Dr. Strange, who he blames for Dan's death as much as he blames Zarathos. The two mystics rip and tear at Blaze's metal casing, until all that's left is a burning pyre of hellfire. John wakes up screaming in an abandoned warehouse, where he'd stopped to rest. Not wanting to return home to the Quentin Carnival, he tears down the New York streets on his mystical motorcycle, eventually ending up at Brooklyn's Cypress Hills Cemetery. Blaze runs across Vengeance, who tells him that he's not going to be around to save John's ass like Dan Ketch had been. The two come across an engraving on Dan's tomb, the mark of the midnight dagger. Vengeance leaves John to sulk, saying it's time to get back in the game.
In another part of the cemetery, a young couple make out between the tombstones. The female, Callie, tells her boyfriend that she's not ready to have sex, despite his constant attempts. Suddenly, a strange man picks the boy up by his shirt and digs fangs into his neck. The stranger is Varnae, recently resurrected lord of the vampires. Transforming into a human bat, Varnae takes flight until he comes across Blaze, recognizing him as one of Strange's comrades. The vampire attacks John, managing to dig his fangs into his neck. Instead of blood, however, Varnae gets a mouthful of hellfire. Realizing that he is unable to drain his opponent, Varnae then asks John to join him as a vampire, to end his lonely existence. John refuses, shoving Varnae's face into the mystical symbol of the dagger. The symbol causes Varnae a great deal of pain, forcing him to fly away into the night sky. The Caretaker then appears behind Blaze, who tells John that despite both of them losing their "families", he and Varnae are very different. Whereas Varnae chooses to turn his fear of being alone into blind anger, John will continue to endure until he learns that being alone is nothing to be afraid of.
THE ROADMAP
Blaze last appeared in Midnight Sons Unlimited (1993) # 4 and he appears next in Blaze: Legacy of Blood (1993) # 1. Vengeance last appeared in Ghost Rider (1990) # 46 and he makes his next appearance in Marvel Comics Presents (1988) # 147.
Varnae appears next in Nightstalkers (1992) # 18.
Dan Ketch died at the hands of Zarathos in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 18, part 16 of the "Siege of Darkness" storyline. Vengeance assumed the mantle of the new Ghost Rider in Ghost Rider (1990) # 46.
CHAIN REACTION
This is the first issue of Spirits following "Siege of Darkness", and the series is left with a possibly bad situation: namely, how can a series with Ghost Rider and Blaze both in the title survive when one of the two characters are now deceased? The answer to this question, at least initially, is left up to guest-writer David Quinn while Howard Mackie spends his time setting up Vengeance as the new Ghost Rider and finishing up the Blaze: Legacy of Blood mini-series.
Quinn is left with a difficult mandate for his fill-in issue. He's charged with writing a solo Blaze story, but it can't involve anything too major since Blaze himself also has a mini-series of his own running concurrently. He also has the tricky post "Siege of Darkness" status quo to dance around, with the Ghost Rider no longer part of the cast. So, logically, it makes sense for Quinn to use this fill-in to tie the story into his Doctor Strange series - which he does, in an odd way - but he instead spends his time setting up a future story for another writer: namely Frank Lovece and Nightstalkers.
David Quinn had a bad habit when it came to Dr. Strange. No matter what characters or titles he was dealing with, he always made Strange this god-like being in the eyes of the other Midnight Sons, most of them blaming the Doctor for their personal misery where there had been no evidence to substantiate this before Quinn's tenure as the writer on Strange. This piece of storytelling befuddlement is used here, but not quite as heavily or as badly as in other stories from the writer. Instead, this role is handed over to the Caretaker, who is at least a reasonable figure for Blaze to show anger and animosity toward given the Blood's role in the lives of him and his family.
I DID really like the emphasis on family in this story, with Blaze as the black sheep of the Midnight Sons and Varnae as the last survivor of his race (though this would change very soon in the pages of Nightstalkers and Blade). Without the Ghost Rider or even Vengeance around, John truly is the weak link of the three Spirits of Vengeance, and it's nice to see him able to fend for himself without his skeletal brothers around to pull his fat out of the fire. Quinn manages to convey this well without being too heavy-handed about it; which is more than can be said about Varnae's dialogue, which is filled with so much purple prose that one would almost think Chris Claremont was the writer.
Overall, this issue of Spirits is a perfectly decent fill-in issue by a writer whose just getting his feet wet in the Midnight Sons universe.
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