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| Cover Artist: Pop Mhan |
Original Price: $1.95
Title: "Loss of Blood"
Writer: Ivan Velez Jr.
Artist: Pop Mhan
Inkers: Jason Martin & Karl Story
Letterer: Richard Starkings
Colorist: Brian Buccellato
Editors: James Felder & Tom Brevoort
Editor In Chief: Bob Harras
SYNOPSIS
Danny, his body having been possessed by the Scarecrow, finds himself in the mystical void, where he is attacked by the Ghost Rider. When the spirit realizes that the intruder is Danny, he lets him go. Back in the real world, Scarecrow/Danny stands over the unconscious John Blaze, laughing his head off.
In the automobile junkyard that the Scarecrow had previously inhabited, Brother Voodoo and Lilith recover from their fight with the army of crows. Lilith, the animal blood too much for her to take, attacks Drumm in a frenzy. Utilizing the spell he's placed over the vampire, Jericho manages to help her regain her senses. Meanwhile, Mrs. Ketch has dreams of the night Dan and Barbara were placed in her care. In the dream, little Danny's head is replaced by that of the Ghost Rider. She awakens, and upon noticing that Stacy is still asleep, goes on the hunt for some alcohol. Realizing that the Dolan's have none in their house, she decides to return to her house and get a bottle.
Back in the void, Danny and Ghost Rider attempt to figure out a way to stop the Scarecrow. Danny suggests that, since the Ghost Rider can only inhabit the bodies of his family, that he should try to enter Blaze's. In the Ketch house, the Scarecrow has hung John upside down from the ceiling. The Ghost Rider attempts to use the body, but because Blaze is saturated with hellfire, he is unable to do so. Mrs. Ketch walks into her house, just as Scarecrow/Danny lights the match to burn the house down. Danny drops the match, lighting the gasoline on the floor, and leaves. Blaze wakes up as the flames begin to rise, and manages to get both himself and Mrs. Ketch out alive. Blaze jumps Danny, but is attacked by a swarm of crows. As he fights them off, he is attacked yet again, this time by Lilith. The vampire believes that it is he who has brought the evil, and prepares to kill him.
In the void, Danny and the Ghost Rider are approached by the spirit of Barbara Ketch, who tells them that Noble must use her dead body to enter the real world.
ANNOTATIONS
Although Mrs. Ketch was told that Daniel and Barbara's parents were killed in a car accident, the truth behind their mother, Naomi Kale, is revealed in Ghost Rider (1990) # -1. The man that delivered the children to the Ketch's door was the Caretaker.
The fact that Blaze's body is contaminated by pure hellfire was revealed in Ghost Rider (1990) # 42. However, despite Noble being unable to possess John's body, Zarathos is still very able, as shown in Ghost Riders: Crossroads.
REVIEW
Putting it in as kind a way as possible, this story is one that's not fondly remembered by most Ghost Rider fans. While the biggest reason for the strong reader backlash (read: loathing) to this arc falls on the opinions on artist Pop Mhan, there's also the continuation of the much-discussed Noble Kale origin and a wildly mischaracterized Scarecrow to factor in as well.
But in my personal opinion, this arc gets a raw deal most of the time...it's actually better than most fans would lead you to believe.
This arc is actually the closest to genuine horror that the series came to during Ivan Velez's run, and make no mistake - there's some pretty darn grisly and creepy moments to be found. From the discovery of an extracted heart delivered to Mrs. Ketch in the previous issue to the reanimation of Barbara's corpse as a host for the demonic Scarecrow, this story had a LOT of bits that I really love. This middle chapter had a few of those moments as well, with the Scarecrow performing some nicely memorable bits of torture while inhabiting Danny's body.
But it's with the Scarecrow himself that this arc stumbles. Don't get me wrong, the idea of the Scarecrow coming back in Barbara's corpse as a body-jumping demon is a great one, and I applaud Velez for his ingenuity there. But, as with many many characters during Ivan's run, the Scarecrow also suffers from some horrible characterization that differs wildly from what the villain had been established in several prior stories. It's so jarring that it really pulled me out of the story, because Velez's Scarecrow is almost a completely different character - from his speech patterns to thought processes. The original Scarecrow, while certainly being evil, had a truly sad pathos to his insanity; he was the way he was because of years of systematic childhood abuse, turning him into an almost child-like murderer that had long passed the threshold of sanity. Velez's version of the character, however, is nothing more than a poor pastiche of villains like the Joker - evil for evil's sake, "crazy" rather than disturbed.
But let's face it, the real reason this arc is so massively reviled is due to the artwork of Pop Mhan. While I spoke more about Mhan when I reviewed his first issue on the series, I can't talk about this issue without bringing up the severe backlash against his brief tenure on Ghost Rider. And while I'm certainly of the opinion that Mhan was greatly mismatched when placed on the series (and that his first issue was one of the worst examples of artwork the series had seen), his work in this and the previous issue is NOT as bad as others like to imply. It's heavily stylized, of course, and it doesn't help that he's saddled with the horrible "Speed Racer" costume design for Noble Kale - in other words, he's an artist that you either love or hate. And the majority of Ghost Rider fans, unfortunately, fall into the latter category. I just think it was way too jarring a transition for the book following the lengthy run of Salvador Larroca.
So while this comic had a lot going against it, it also had some bright points. Unlike a lot of latter-day Ghost Rider stories, this one was genuinely scary in places. If you can get over the popular opinion of Mhan's art, I recommend it as an above average story.
Grade: C+
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