Cover Date: July 1995; On Sale Date: May 1995
Writer: Len Kaminski; Artist: Ashley Wood; Letterer: Richard Starkings w/ John Gaushell; Colorist: Christie Scheel w/ Heroic Age; Editor: Joey Cavalieri; Editor in Chief: Bobbie Chase; Cover Artist: Ashley Wood
Two street gangs have gone to war in the streets of Transverse City, with the Toxic Zombies being overwhelmed by the Anarquistadores. Both gangs are addicted to a drug called White Heat, which mutates the user into near-superhuman forms. Ghost Rider, now acting as the Federal Marshal of Transverse City, interrupts the gang war but is buried under rubble after a building is hit with a rocket.
Meanwhile, an assassin named Heartbreaker executes a man in his home by punching through his chest and escapes unseen from the bodyguards. In Cyberspace, Anesthesia Jones organizes the Undernet into a resistance movement against President Doom and promises to take care of the Ghost Rider herself. She logs off and calls Kylie Gagarin, telling the girl that they need to talk.
Ghost Rider digs himself out of the rubble and goes to SHIELD headquarters, where he butts heads with the commander over their approach to the gang war, which is to essentially let the gangs kill each other. Zero storms out and logs himself into Cyberspace to look for answers and finds an encrypted message that has been left for him. When he opens it, a mysterious person yells at him for selling out and kicks him out of the 'net. To his surprise, Zero finds that he's been locked out of Cyberspace and cannot log back in, which should be impossible. Elsewhere, reporter Willis Adams is attempting to write the Ghost Rider propaganda piece ordered by Doom but decides to resign instead.
Ghost Rider visits Sandoz, the doctor who had previously helped him, and threatens to shut him down if he doesn't tell him about White Heat. From the description given to him by Sandoz, Zero realizes that the person creating it must be Max Synergy. At the club where Synergy conducts business, Heartbreaker arrives to kill him. She's stopped by Ghost Rider who points his gun at the back of her head and tells her not to move.
THE ROADMAP
The "One Nation Under Doom" storyline was a loose crossover event between all of the 2099 titles of the time, focused on Doom's takeover of the United States as its new president.
Ghost Rider met Max Synergy in Ghost Rider 2099 (1994) # 6. The drug White Heat was first mentioned in Ghost Rider 2099 (1994) # 10.
CHAIN REACTION
Ghost Rider 2099 gets a fresh start of sorts with a new status quo, a new villain, and new regular artist Ashley Wood.
In today's comic climate, this issue would be a relaunch of the series with a brand-new # 1 issue. It marks a real departure from what's come before and sets the series out for the second years’ worth of stories, which were teased in the previous two-parter but are really brought to the forefront here. The "One Nation Under Doom" storyline hit this series like a sledgehammer, and while Len Kaminski gave himself a wrap-up to the first year by literally destroying the lead character and building him back from scratch over the span of two issues it still feels like things have been derailed onto this weird "federal marshal" tangent.
I'm not as big a fan of the series once it hits this point, mainly because I was enjoying the book so much in its first year. I'm not sure if this is where Kaminski would have taken the character had he been left to his own devices, but the Doom storyline changes the anarchist bent of the series. While it does bring up some interesting points on fascism and just how easily one set of ideals can be switched for another counter to one's original beliefs, though this time Zero's have been altered by a third party against his will, it's just not as fun to read as it once was. While the first years’ worth of issues was heavy on the action, this period exchanges that for a lot of political maneuvering by the Undernet and Zero's own crisis of identity, and while that certainly makes for some good character development it doesn't make things more exciting to read. It also forces the character into a role opposite the one we had been used to seeing him inhabit, and again that makes for some great character moments, it also takes away some of the fundamental appeal. Ghost Rider essentially becomes Judge Dredd, and now instead of being the rebellion against a fascist system, he IS the system. Zero was never the most likable character to empathize with, but at least he had his ideals; now, I don't like him at all. Again, that's the point of all this federal marshal stuff, but I didn't like it when it happened and looking back at the series as a whole, I still don't like it. It's too drastic a departure from what made the series work in the first place.
Still, the plots are interesting enough in this issue, and the procedural nature fits in with the Judge Dredd tone. Ghost Rider stops a gang fight, goes to his station, and butts heads with the local captain, and goes on the search for an answer. It's all very by the numbers police material, Law and Order 2099. Kaminski introduces a new villain, Heartbreaker, and she's a good change of pace from the robots and monsters that Zero has faced in previous stories. We don't learn much about her in this issue, and she's one of the biggest loose threads of the series since by the title's end a year later we STILL don't know much about her despite her having a large presence going forward from here.
The other huge change in this issue is the artwork by newcomer Ashley Wood, making his American comics debut. Wood is a very polarizing artist; he excels at tone and ambiance but has serious problems with storytelling and readability. I remember there being an overwhelming positive response to his arrival on this series, which desperately needed a visual identity of its own after the artist chaos of the first year. Wood is about as far as you can get from someone like Chris Bachalo, but for such a wild status quo shift something drastically different was necessary. Wood's arrival, more than anything else, marked the true shift in the book's direction, and in this first issue he does a pretty great job making the characters his own. He can't help that he's saddled with the terrible outfit and design that Ghost Rider has now as a marshal, complete with the unnecessary pistol and goggles, but he makes it work as best as he can. The book is drowning in ink, making it seem nightmarish and really selling just how scary a place Transverse City can be, though it does make things difficult to follow at times. I really enjoyed Wood's work here, there's some definite influence from Jae Lee that I love, and for at least the first couple of issues he will maintain a pretty high quality.
So, while I'm not loving the series like I did, it's still worth a read. Kaminski keeps a lot of plates spinning, and a lot of the subplots introduced here don't pay off until the final issue.
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