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| Cover Artist: Karl Kerschl |
Original Price: N/A
Title: "Armored Vengeance"
Writer: Chris Cooper
Artist: David Boller
Inker: Derek Fisher
Letterer: Janice Chiang
Colorist: Jim Hoston
Editor: Glenn Herdling
SYNOPSIS
Outcast has taken a subway car hostage, gloating about how he destroyed John Blaze and now there is no one able to save his captives. Blaze, now in a new armored form, blasts his way onto the train on his motorcycle and confronts Outcast, telling him that the armor saved his life. He blasts Outcast with hellfire, blowing them both off the train and into the tunnel, where Outcast uses a water hose to douse Blaze's flames. Hellfire, however, can't be doused by water, and Blaze shoots Outcast in the head with his shotgun. Meanwhile, in another dimension, Zarathos boasts that he continues to gain knowledge on his enemies strengths and weaknesses.
ANNOTATIONS
This mini-comic was the ninth in a series packaged with Toy Biz's line of Ghost Rider action figures. This issue came with the Armored John Blaze figure.
There's really no place to fit this series into established continuity. It obviously takes place after "Siege of Darkness" and Ghost Rider (1990) # 50, but the relationships between Ghost Rider, Blaze, and Vengeance certainly don't fit the characters at the time.
If this follows the standard Marvel continuity (which is questionable, at best), then Zarathos was banished to another dimension at the conclusion of the "Siege of Darkness" crossover in Midnight Sons Unlimited (1993) # 4.
In regular continuity, Blaze was injured by Centurious and received his cyborg enhancements in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 15.
REVIEW
One of the worst character decisions of the 1990s gets its own action figure!
I still don't understand the thinking behind the cyborg/armored redesign of John Blaze, which took a really great character and made him into a carbon copy of Cable. Still, I imagine that Toy Biz was enamored with idea, because it gave them another action figure derivative for their second wave of Ghost Rider action figures. As a design by itself, the cyborg look isn't terrible, so it makes a decent looking toy. For Johnny Blaze, though, it was and always will be an absolute shit idea.
Regardless, the spotlight for this mini-comic was of course on Blaze and his new armored form, though it really doesn't get much of a focus. The armor was used at the conclusion to the last issue to save his life, and this issue allows him to get his revenge...but the armor wasn't really necessary, and you could tell Chris Cooper was having difficulty justifying the attention that the redesigned toy was supposed to have. You could tell that Cooper was struggling on a LOT of this, because the dialogue is very clichéd and hackneyed, with such gems as "Noooooooo, I DESTROYED you!" when Blaze makes his entrance. Outcast's big idea is to use a water hose against John, which is a bit anticlimactic. It does, however, give us an ending where Blaze shoots Outcast in the fucking head with his shotgun, which is something I suppose.
The artwork for this issue isn't by Karl Kerschl, who I was hoping would draw the entire series of mini-comics for the second wave, but instead by David Boller. I'm not real familiar with Boller's work, I think he might have been an artist on New Warriors or Night Thrasher back in the early 1990s? He does a perfectly fine job on the art here, though just like most other artists he really has a difficult time making Blaze's android design work on the page.
These mini-comics started with something of a plot, as bare bones as it might have been, but for the second wave of figures they've just become paint-by-number fight comics. They're worth picking up for the collector, but for the casual reader they're not worth tracking down.
I still don't understand the thinking behind the cyborg/armored redesign of John Blaze, which took a really great character and made him into a carbon copy of Cable. Still, I imagine that Toy Biz was enamored with idea, because it gave them another action figure derivative for their second wave of Ghost Rider action figures. As a design by itself, the cyborg look isn't terrible, so it makes a decent looking toy. For Johnny Blaze, though, it was and always will be an absolute shit idea.
Regardless, the spotlight for this mini-comic was of course on Blaze and his new armored form, though it really doesn't get much of a focus. The armor was used at the conclusion to the last issue to save his life, and this issue allows him to get his revenge...but the armor wasn't really necessary, and you could tell Chris Cooper was having difficulty justifying the attention that the redesigned toy was supposed to have. You could tell that Cooper was struggling on a LOT of this, because the dialogue is very clichéd and hackneyed, with such gems as "Noooooooo, I DESTROYED you!" when Blaze makes his entrance. Outcast's big idea is to use a water hose against John, which is a bit anticlimactic. It does, however, give us an ending where Blaze shoots Outcast in the fucking head with his shotgun, which is something I suppose.
The artwork for this issue isn't by Karl Kerschl, who I was hoping would draw the entire series of mini-comics for the second wave, but instead by David Boller. I'm not real familiar with Boller's work, I think he might have been an artist on New Warriors or Night Thrasher back in the early 1990s? He does a perfectly fine job on the art here, though just like most other artists he really has a difficult time making Blaze's android design work on the page.
These mini-comics started with something of a plot, as bare bones as it might have been, but for the second wave of figures they've just become paint-by-number fight comics. They're worth picking up for the collector, but for the casual reader they're not worth tracking down.
Grade: C-
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