Ghost Riding Into the Sunset: The History of Ghost Rider's "Cancellation Curse"

Ghost Rider has had an abysmal track record when it comes to cancellations.  So, I decided to take a look back on the various "final issues" of the series and how Marvel managed, more often than not, to royally screw things up.

PART 1: THE ORIGINAL GHOST RIDER AND WESTERN GUNFIGHTERS

From The Ghost Rider (1967) # 7

Naturally, we're going to start way back in 1967 with the original Ghost Rider series, which starred Carter Slade as the white-garbed "He Who Rides the Night Winds".  I'm not sure what the sales figures were like for this series, but it can't have been good for it to have been cancelled after just seven issues.  The title was bi-monthly, which meant it wasn't considered a top earner for the company like the numerous monthly books (think Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man).  When you look at the other western titles of the time, like Rawhide Kid and Kid Colt, Ghost Rider must have been seen as a colossal failure.  The western genre was on the way out in favor of superheroes, just like all of the other genres that didn't involve superpowers, but for Ghost Rider to not even see double digits was surely troubling.  Maybe it was literary karma paying Stan Lee back for swiping the Rex Fury Ghost Rider and passing it off as Marvel's own creation?

Whatever the reason, The Ghost Rider ended with issue # 7 in November of 1967.  The series ended essentially mid-cliffhanger, with poor Natalie Brooks on death's door as the Ghost Rider rides off with her to reach medical assistance.  Issue # 8, which had already been plotted and half-drawn, was pulled from the schedule despite the work that had been completed on it AND that it had already been solicited.  Wow, THAT is something that will reoccur way too many times for Ghost Rider, a final issue not actually making it to print until many years later.

Fast forward to August, 1970, and the launch of the Western Gunfighters anthology series.  The lead feature was given to the Ghost Rider, and surprisingly the same creative team from the 1967 series returned to essentially pick up where they left off.  Gary Friedrich and Dick Ayers wrapped up the cliffhanger that closed out the final issue (Natalie made it to the surgery on time, but was still in recovery) and went ahead with business as usual for the first two issues of the anthology.  The third issue finally printed a truncated version of what should have been The Ghost Rider # 8.  "The Man Called Hurricane" had seen the first 5 pages completed by Ayers and inker Vince Colletta from 1967, and Ayers stepped in to finish the story (pencils and inks) for the Gunfighters series.

It took three years for the "final issue" of The Ghost Rider to see completion and publication.  If you think that's a ridiculous amount of time to have to wait to read a nearly-finished issue of Ghost Rider, 1998 is calling to laugh at you.

The Ghost Rider remained the lead feature in Western Gunfighters up through (appropriately enough) issue # 7.  That comic was released in January 1972 and featured the death of Carter Slade and the Ghost Rider mantle being taken up by his brother, Lincoln Slade.  The name didn't stay out of circulation for very long, though, because August of that same year saw the debut of Johnny Blaze in the pages of Marvel Spotlight. 

That ride to Denver only took three years!

PART 2: MARVEL SPOTLIGHT AND THE CHAMPIONS

Marvel Spotlight # 11's final page

When the Ghost Rider serial ended in an early 1972 issue of Gunfighters, Marvel already had plans to appropriate the name for a new character debuting later that year.  Johnny Blaze first appeared as the modern day Ghost Rider in the pages of Marvel Spotlight, which was one of several "try out" anthology titles that Marvel was publishing at the time.  Previous issues had seen the debuts of Red Wolf and Werewolf by Night, the latter of which enjoyed a three issue run in Spotlight before graduating to his own ongoing series.  When Ghost Rider started running as the Spotlight feature, it wasn't yet known if the character would be a hit nor if he would be awarded his own series.

Thankfully, Johnny Blaze WAS a huge success and did indeed graduate to his own comic series.  His final appearance in Marvel Spotlight was in issue # 11, released August 1973, but I don't believe writer Gary Friedrich was aware of the transition when he was writing the issues.  Perhaps it was just how things were done at the time, but Ghost Rider # 1 doesn't read like the launch of a new series.  Instead, it very much reads like it was planned to be Marvel Spotlight # 12.  Maybe Friedrich had written the stories out so far in advance that the launch of the new series was chosen arbitrarily?  It's funny, though, that the letters page for Spotlight # 11 did hype up not only the launch of the Ghost Rider series but also the concept that would be replacing it in Spotlight.  According to the information in that column, Spotlight # 12 was supposed to launch "The Mark of Satan", and here's the copy text:

"In the very next issue of MARVEL SPOTLIGHT, we'll debut perhaps the weirdest "spin-off" strip of all: THE MARK OF SATAN!  That's right, gang, the flaming father-figure of the netherworld in his own strip.  And in the fire-forged first tale, Ghost Rider himself appears as guest-star!  Groovy Gary Friedrich, who created our cycle spook, will be at the scripting helm - so don't miss it!"

Of course, the series that launched with Spotlight # 12 was "Son of Satan" and did not in fact star the literal Devil as the book's protagonist.   Ghost Rider did guest-star, but the "crossover" story was a bit disjointed and it makes me wonder how much of the comic had to be amended at the last minute before it went to press.  Also, just as a weird aside, I wonder why Daimon Hellstrom doesn't get more attention from Ghost Rider creators, considering he was a direct spin-off from the Johnny Blaze series and shared numerous connections with the Ghost Rider mythos.  Other than Jason Aaron during "Heaven's On Fire", Hellstrom has been totally divorced from the book that birthed him, and that's always struck me as odd.

Any road up, Ghost Rider continued into its own magazine with a very by-the-numbers first issue that had nothing remarkable to note it as a special event.  The series continued on for a full decade before it met its own decidedly strange date with cancellation, and that will be the topic of the next in this series of articles.  Before we get to there, though, there's another item of note to discuss, and that's the Champions of Los Angeles and their bizarre publication history.

Tony Isabella, who had been the regular writer on Ghost Rider at the time, had pitched a new series starring two former X-Men, Iceman and the Angel, as a sort-of buddy cop concept (not dissimilar, I suppose, to the later Power-Man & Iron Fist series).  Marvel editorial got involved and put forth some strange stipulations that forced Isabella to create the Champions, which added Hercules, Black Widow, and Ghost Rider to the series alongside his duo of X-Men.  The series had an extremely rocky start, with Isabella ditching Marvel in favor of DC Comics and the book going through a murderer's row of creators.  Eventually the series settled on a pretty great creative team, with Bill Mantlo writing and a young John Byrne on art, but despite Marvel desperately trying to get the series to take off it was quickly demoted from monthly to bi-monthly publication and inevitably slotted for cancellation.  The final page of The Champions # 17 outlined what was to become of the team, as you can see below.

Lies, nothing but filthy lies!

The blurb at the issue's end indicated that the series would be concluded in a future issue of Avengers. That would have been a logical place to wrap up the team's story, sure, since Hercules and Black Widow were both alumni of Earth's Mightiest Heroes (though it could be argued that wrapping it up in Uncanny X-Men would have been just as appropriate, I suppose).  It also wasn't an uncommon practice among Marvel comics of the time; books would be cancelled unexpectedly and it would fall to other titles to wrap up any outstanding cliffhangers or subplots, sometimes by the cancelled series' creators and sometimes by others.  The Champions title itself practiced this by picking up threads from the recently canned Black Goliath series a year prior to this, so again, not uncommon.  What WAS surprising is that when the series finally did see its wrap-up, it wasn't in an issue of Avengers after all, instead appearing in a totally unrelated series.  

Over a year after the final issue of The Champions saw print, the team's dissolution was finally revealed in The Spectacular Spider-Man # 18, from April of 1978.  Revealed in flashback, the story being told by Angel to the visiting Peter Parker, the team broke up immediately after the last page of Champions # 18.  Ghost Rider stormed off first and the rest of the team just sort of drifted away right after, leaving only the Angel to clean up the team's mess of a headquarters.  The connection between Champions and Spectacular Spider-Man was down to the writer, Bill Mantlo, using the only forum he had to address the team's whereabouts after the book's final issue.  I believe Mantlo did have a run on Avengers, and I'm sure the Champions had been planned for a wrap-up there, but the writer apparently didn't last on Avengers long enough to make it happen.  So, there it was in Spider-Man, seemingly at random.  It was a particularly ignoble end to a team of heroes that failed rather spectacularly (no pun intended), and it would be several decades before Ghost Rider would find himself in a team ensemble series again.

Johnny Blaze doesn't play well with others.

PART 3: THE END OF THE GHOST RIDER...?

The amount of times that a Ghost Rider series has actually been able to have a relatively satisfying ending that gave closure to the characters can be counted on exactly three fingers.  Right now we're looking squarely at 1983 and Ghost Rider # 81, which was the final issue of the series that had launched a decade earlier.  Johnny Blaze had remained the Ghost Rider, and barring a one-issue anniversary team-up with Carter Slade that involved time travel and flying serpents, he was the ONLY flaming-skulled biker to date.  The series had come close to cancellation territory a little over a year earlier, when departing writer Michael Fleisher limped through the close of his run.  His time on the book, which started out so very strong, had run out of steam months before he left, and you could see editorial scrambling behind the scenes to renew interest in the title.

As always, the Devil laughs last.

Their answer to the sagging sales of the book was to inject it with pure unadulterated awesome, namely writer Roger Stern, artist Bob Budiansky, and finisher Dave Simons.  Their run on the series started with issue # 68 and sales immediately began to improve; they didn't suddenly jump to the top of the sales chart or anything, but there was a marked increase in issues sold.  Stern left after only a handful of issues for reasons, and he was replaced by another dose of awesome: Marc DeMatteis, who came into the book with the intention of finally giving a name and origin to the demon within Johnny Blaze.  What's interesting is that the improved sales for the series still weren't enough to save it from cancellation, but it was enough that the creators were able to do a build-up for an honest-to-god conclusion to Johnny Blaze's story.  In short succession came the introduction of three prominent villains (Centurious, Steel Wind, and Freakmaster), the demon's true name and relationship to Mephisto (Zarathos, in issue # 76), the origin story (in issue # 77), and the return of Roxanne Simpson, which began in DeMatteis' first issue as a slow burn for a cliffhanger reveal in # 80. 

Ghost Rider # 81 gave us the final piece of the origin puzzle, revealing Centurious to be the real arch-enemy that the series had always lacked once Satan/Mephisto was downplayed.  It also gave the readers a heart-wrenching reunion between Johnny and Roxanne while finally severing the bond between Johnny and the Ghost Rider.  It was a perfect conclusion to the series that built on all of the heartache and pathos of the early days under Gary Friedrich and the nomadic depression that came with Michael Fleisher.  It still amazes me that Marvel had the forethought to let DeMatteis and Budiansky conclude the series with any ounce of finality, considering their usual commitment to cancelled titles were to end them with as little wrap-up as possible with the characters usually farmed out to Marvel Two-in-One to see their plots resolved. 

Johnny Blaze would only be seen once more in the 1980s, in a 1985 issue of The New Defenders with Roxanne along for the ride.  Zarathos would surprisingly get trotted out in an issue of Amazing Spider-Man a year after, part of the "Secret Wars II" mega-event.  Then all was quiet from these long-standing parts of the Marvel Universe until Howard Mackie relaunched the concept in 1990.  Still, had Marvel decided to never go back to the Ghost Rider well, issue # 81 would still stand as a near-perfect end to the story of Johnny Blaze.

DeMatteis has the final word on Johnny Blaze.

PART 4: THE LAST TEMPTATION

Oh Ghostie, you have NO IDEA...

So, we've finally made our way to the 1990s, which saw the character reach the heights of his popularity at the start of the decade and an abysmal drop toward cancellation at the end.  It's undeniable that when Ghost Rider launched in 1990 it was one of the biggest hits of the decade, propelling the series and character into the upper-echelons of Marvel's stable.  Ghost Rider was suddenly being spun out into a whole family of titles and crossing over with the likes of Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man and Jim Lee's X-Men.  Howard Mackie and his artist collaborators (most notably Javier Saltares and Mark Texeira) were able to tap into something truly special with Danny Ketch, and it translated into Ghost Rider being one of the most popular characters around.  Naturally, that didn't last forever, and the crash was pretty severe.

In the mid-1990s the comics industry nearly collapsed under its own weight, with the speculator boom of the early part of the decade drying up and leaving Marvel Comics nearly bankrupt.  While some of Marvel's core characters, like X-Men and Spider-Man, were able to weather the turbulent times, other properties weren't so lucky.  Characters like the Punisher and Ghost Rider, who only a few years before had been major money makers, weren't selling like they used to, and it inevitably doomed their titles.  Howard Mackie left the series in 1996 and the writing chores fell into the hands of Ivan Velez, who kept the series going while introducing his own ideas and direction for the character.  Even more important, I think, was the change in the book's editor at the time.  Bobbie Chase had been the book's editor since the first issue, and during the editorial shake-ups at Marvel around this time (chaos would be the appropriate term, I think) the book was placed under the stewardship of James Felder.  From some accounts I've read, it was Felder that ultimately drove Mackie away from the series, though not maliciously.  They just didn't agree on where the series should go, so Mackie stepped away from his creation.  Velez kept the series afloat with some perfectly fine storytelling, supported by continuing artist Salvador Larroca.  It was during this time, however, that some really questionable decisions were made to try and drum up interest in the book.

Oh, the humanity!

Suddenly, Ghost Rider had a new costume and a new motorcycle and a new logo and even a new origin story!  Instead of the dark, menacing artwork that had made the series so popular, the artistic chores were given to the faux-manga stylings of Pop Mhan.  Ghost Rider was clothed in a red and yellow jumpsuit with gigantic zippers and tiny yellow chains, generating one of the most garish eyesores in comic costume history.  Long time readers were being driven out of town with pitchforks by this point, and it was clear that the creators and editor didn't know what to do to save the title while sales were tanking lower and lower each month.

Editor Tom Brevoort took over with issue # 85 and immediately went about trying to right the ship before it capsized.  Within a few months, everything about the series had changed yet again, but this time it was in an attempt to recapture what had made the series so popular at its beginning.  The black leather and spiked outfit returned along with the artistic team of Javier Saltares and Mark Texeira, which saved the book artistically.  The one holdout from the Felder administration was writer Ivan Velez, who Brevoort retained to take the book in a new direction.  That led to "The Last Temptation", an ambitious storyline that would wrap up Velez's outstanding plot threads, definitively tell Ghost Rider's origin, and catapult the series into a new and interesting status quo.  The storyline did all of those things and did them rather well, in my opinion, it was just a case of "too little, too late".

Hail to the King, baby!

All of that preamble has finally set the stage for the point of this freaking article, namely the final issue of the 1990s Ghost Rider series and the circumstances surrounding its publication.  Remember back in Part 1 of this article series, where I talked about how the final issue of the 1967 Carter Slade series went unpublished and the series ended on a cliffhanger?  And then how that lost final issue was finally published years later?  Well 1998 saw a repeat of those events, and it mired the character in a clusterfuck of continuity that almost doomed him from ever making a return.  In fact, when the character DID finally return years later, it was Johnny Blaze and not Danny Ketch, who was deemed a "toxic character" at Marvel.

So what happened?  Due to Marvel's dire financial state, they weren't allowed to publish any comics that might not make back the money it cost to make them.  Ghost Rider, due to the pathetic sales figures it had even after Brevoort's attempt at resuscitation, was slotted for cancellation with issue # 94.  It wasn't a big surprise, the book had been headed toward cancellation for months, and  it at least allowed Ivan Velez to finish up "The Last Temptation" and pen a true "final issue" that would give Ghost Rider a new status quo for other writers to run with in the future.  So "The Last Temptation" ended in issue # 93 with a big shock: Ghost Rider killed Blackheart and became the ruler of Hell, while Danny Ketch was left dying in Cypress Hills Cemetery!   The next issue blurb at the end of # 93 sums up what was coming in the book's final issue:

But then, over the Christmas holiday break, something tragic happened.  While Tom Brevoort was off for the holidays, someone in the financial department flagged Ghost Rider # 94 as a potential loss of revenue and spiked it, even though the issue was written and drawn, with inks halfway finished.  By the time Brevoort returned to the office after New Years, the decision was final and there was nothing he could do to get the comic published.  Ghost Rider was left with a cliffhanger as the series finale, but it wasn't the last we'd see of the character that year.  There was a guest-appearance in the (sadly doomed) Werewolf by Night series, which made use of Ghost Rider as Hell's ruler and was set between the events of issues 93 and 94.  So as it stood, Ghost Rider was left as the King of Hell and Danny Ketch was seemingly dead.  Then came Ralph Macchio, Howard Mackie, and Spider-Man...

Retcons, sweet mercy the retcons!

With the series dead in the water and the character lost in cliffhanger cancellation limbo, editor Macchio approached Mackie in his capacity as the writer of the ongoing Peter Parker: Spider-Man series and requested he use Ghost Rider as a guest-star.  Specifically, he wanted Mackie to bring back HIS version of Ghost Rider, the one he had created without all of the baggage and backstory that Velez had added to him in the past several years.  Mackie agreed, though he's stated many times that it was not out of any disrespect toward Velez or his work on the character, he'd in fact not even read his successor's Ghost Rider run.  Still, suddenly Ghost Rider was back on Earth saying that everything about his origin as Noble Kale as his time in Hell was lies and manipulations.  He met up with a very-much-alive Danny Ketch, the two merged once again, and Ghost Rider rode away with his circa 1995 status quo back in effect.

Unfortunately, this last-ditch attempt to salvage the character didn't work, and the Danny Ketch Ghost Rider wasn't seen again until 2008, a decade later.  Except...remember how I said Ghost Rider # 94 was fully written and drawn before the plug was pulled on it?  Ghost Rider fans remembered, and over the years they practically beat Marvel over the head with their demands for that issue to be published.  Velez's script for # 94, titled "Acabado", was leaked online and published in its entirety, and following that Javier Saltares posted several of his finished art pages for the issue.  Finally, in the 2006 run-up to the Ghost Rider movie release, Marvel was searching for as much Ghost Rider material as they could find to push out.  In a move no one saw coming, Ghost Rider # 94 was finally published under the title "Ghost Rider Finale", and closure was finally given to the 1990s incarnation of the character.  Of course, it didn't jive at all with what had been done by Macchio and Mackie in that issue of Spider-Man, but it ultimately doesn't matter.  When Ketch finally did reappear in continuity, it was all a moot point.  Still, just having that final issue in our hands validated a lot of the dedication we fans have for the character, and it was a small victory that felt really fucking great.

The last ride of Noble Kale, from "Finale"

PART 5: PANDEMIC BLUES

The years and several Ghost Rider titles came and went in the 2000s and 2010s, most notably the 35-issue series that began in 2006 and ended nicely with the "Heaven's On Fire" mini-series. 2011 wasn't as kind, with that year's Ghost Rider series getting the axe only 10 issues in, but at least it had an appropriate final issue that wrapped up the run. All-New Ghost Rider introduced Robbie Reyes and ran for 12 issues before it saw its relaunch after the Secret Wars event.

Which, naturally, only lasted for 5 issues despite being solicited for 6. This made yet another example of Ghost Rider comics being pulled from publication really late in the game, but at least the five issues that were released told a single story. It was disappointing that it was Felipe Smith's swan song with the character, because there was so much promise in that cover to the unpublished sixth issue.

What could have been!

Things were really looking up in 2019 for Ghost Rider. Marvel was giving a large amount of attention to the character, spotlighting him in crossover tie-ins and storylines spinning out of the top-selling Avengers series. Fans were buzzing and October 2019 saw the release of a new Ghost Rider # 1 by writer Ed Brisson and artists Aaron Kuder and Juan Frigeri.  It was pretty unanimously celebrated by Ghost Rider fans for its respect for past continuity, call backs to classic characters (Danny Ketch! Stacy Dolan! Lilith!), and intriguing storyline. Things were so promising, that multiple one-shots were planned to be released alongside the new monthly series. 

Life was freaking sweet for the Spirit of Vengeance and his followers.  Then a global pandemic came to pass, the comic book industry was put on hold for several months while it scrambled to survive, and Marvel Comics was forced to cut back its publication line dramatically. Naturally, the relatively young Ghost Rider series was one of the first casualties, resulting in its untimely end with issue # 7. No less than four comics planned for release in the summer of 2019 were pulled from publication, including issues 8 and 9 of the ongoing series, a tie-in one-shot to the "Empyre" event, and an Annual co-written by Howard Mackie.

It was a crushing disappointment to see such an excellent and exciting series become a casualty of COVID-19, but at least we didn't have to wait 10 years to see an end of the writer's story. In April 2021 for those reading this in the far future, Marvel released Brisson and Frigeri's King in Black: Ghost Rider one-shot that tied up all of the outstanding plot threads (or, well, most of them anyway). Hell, that Annual by Mackie eventually got released as the one-shot Ghost Rider: Return of Vengeance a few months earlier.  So, while we can certainly mourn what we missed out on, we can at least be grateful that the creators got to resolve things as much as they did. Here's to the next Ghost Rider series, its inevitable cancellation, and a final issue that will probably never get printed!

You tell 'em, Danny Boy.