Cover Date: November 1993; Publication Date: September 1993
Ghost Rider and John Blaze arrive at Cypress Hills Cemetery to finally confront Centurious and get answers about the Medallion of Power, accompanied by Seer and members of the Quentin Carnival. They find Caretaker and Vengeance waiting for them, and after a brief (and one-sided) fight against Caretaker they agree to go with the old man to get the answers they seek. When Seer attempts to intervene, Caretaker convinces her to take the carnival members to the Blood's Nightclub while he does what he needs to do. Meanwhile, beneath the cemetery, Centurious undergoes a ritual that bonds him to the chain he stole from Ghost Rider. He's then told by Lilith that Mrs. Ketch has escaped them into the tunnels.
Back on the surface, Caretaker gets tired of Ghost Rider and Vengeance attacking one another and transforms them back into Danny Ketch and Michael Badilino. He then leads them and Blaze down into a catacomb beneath a tomb, where smoke swirls around them. This shows them the history of the Spirits of Vengeance and their ancient war against Zarathos, ending in a battle that destroyed them all and trapped their essences within the Medallion of Power. The Blood, realizing that the Medallion could never be destroyed, instead shattered it and hid the shards within the bloodlines of two different families. The Caretaker has been their immortal guardian ever since. When Badilino points out that he became Vengeance due to his deal with Mephisto, Caretaker corrects him by saying Mephisto has always been a liar and a manipulator. Ketch, Blaze, and Badilino all have pieces of the Medallion inside them that give them the powers of the Spirits of Vengeance, all Mephisto did was activate that power within Badilino. Caretaker tells them that the Medallion must never become whole again, and he's there to teach them how to tap into its power.
In the caverns they run into the fleeing Francis Ketch, who upon seeing what has happened to Blaze slaps Caretaker in the face and demands he tell them the whole truth. They are interrupted by Centurious, Lilith, and the Lilin who have come to claim the Medallion pieces. Using the power of the chain Centurious calls the mystical motorcycles into the cavern, then fires a bolt of hellfire at Danny. The blast instead hits Mrs. Ketch, who jumps in the path of the beam to save her son. This causes Danny to transform into Ghost Rider, starting a battle between him and Centurious while the others hold off the Lilin. The battle ends with Centurious defeated and unmasked, but before he can give them any answers a painful blast of energy erupts from the immortal villain's chest. Zarathos, in this true demonic form, emerges from within Centurious, having been hiding inside him since their escape from the Soul Crystal. Before anyone can react, a large explosion destroys the cavern and explodes through the surface of the cemetery.
THE ROADMAP
"Road to Vengeance: The Missing Link" concludes in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 16.
Due to revelations about the Ghost Rider's origin years later and the Caretaker's job to obfuscate the true history of the Spirits of Vengeance, as shown in Ghost Rider (2006) # 27 and Ghost Rider (2006) # 33, the story told by the Caretaker during "Road to Vengeance" is likely altered from the actual events or even perhaps outright lies.
Following his defeat at the hands of the Spirits of Vengeance, Zarathos' inert body was left buried for centuries before being discovered by the Cult of Zarathos, as told in flashback in Ghost Rider (1973) # 77. A significant part of his essence, however, was locked inside the Medallion of Power, as seen in Before the Fantastic Four: The Storms # 3.
Michael Badilino made his deal with Mephisto to become Vengeance in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 9. This issue claims that Mephisto did not give Badilino his power, instead he tapped into the Medallion of Power within Badilino to ignite his own natural abilities.
Centurious and Zarathos were both trapped inside the Soul Crystal in Ghost Rider (1973) # 81. Centurious escaped from the Soul Crystal some time prior to Ghost Rider (1990) # 18, but the circumstances behind his freedom were never revealed.
This issue also included a 16-page insert advertising the upcoming "Siege of Darkness" crossover, profiling each Midnight Sons title with narration by the ghost of Barbara Ketch.
CHAIN REACTION
"Road to Vengeance" delivers three things long promised by the years of build-up in this title, and two of those things are decidedly underwhelming with the third one up in the air for the next chapter's conclusion.
This crossover had a lot to handle as its mandate, to finally give a decisive origin to the new Ghost Rider and provide a satisfying conclusion to the return of Centurious. I'll tackle the latter first, since it's the least divisive part of the storyline. I can't imagine anyone that had read the original Centurious issues from the end of the 1970s series found this interpretation of the character interesting. He had an excellent amount of lead-in in both Ghost Rider and Spirits of Vengeance for about two years, with him coming along as the person behind smaller threats like Steel Wind and Death Ninja and the Firm. There was a tremendous amount of excitement going into "Road to Vengeance", finally we were going to see Centurious make his return! He had a great redesign by Adam Kubert and a true personal grudge against the protagonists. I didn't think there was any way the story couldn't deliver with something really epic and powerful.
Then "Road to Vengeance" came along and ruined everything, the end.
Seriously, though, Centurious is neutered in this issue, downgrading from the prime villainous threat to someone who's defeated in the span of about three pages. With so much mystery and threat built up around the character, who was satisfied by this? I can't imagine that this was the story Howard Mackie had in mind when he decided to bring this character back, especially given the villain's importance to the Ghost Rider mythology. He suffers from a worse fate than the other villains thrown haphazardly into this crossover, such as Blackout, Deathwatch, and Lilith, because he never got that great moment that those characters had received in earlier stories. Centurious arrived with trumpets and left with a gasping fart sound as he gave demon birth to Zarathos at the end of this issue.
The most brain-smashingly terrible moment in the comic is the "origin" sequence for the Spirits of Vengeance and the Medallion of Power. I don't think there's a single macguffin in comic history that makes me roll my eyes harder than that damn Medallion, an 11th hour invention that took the place of all the established mythology that Mackie had been laying down not even four months prior to this issue. This, more than anything, has editorial fingerprints all over it, just like this crossover as a whole seemed to be driven by marketing instead of storytellers. Mackie's Ghost Rider had at its core this fascinating mystery of who this Rider was, what the nature of the Spirit of Vengeance was, and how it differed from the only other Ghost Rider we'd known before, Zarathos. He'd been careful to lay down all the hints and directions toward the Soul Crystal and, as Mephisto had predicted not long before, the coming war for human souls. Then this Medallion of Power nonsense started and things stopped making any sense at all. It's just swapping out one mystical artifact for another, but at least the Soul Crystal had legitimate history with Ghost Rider, Centurious, Mephisto, and Zarathos. There's some interesting stuff in the history lesson, such as the revelation that there were Spirits of Vengeance in ancient times, giving the character a wide-ranging lineage that would get explored in more depth many years later. Still, though, how can a physical Medallion be embedded in a family's bloodline and passed down? I mean, it's literally INSIDE THEIR BODIES apparently, though also coexisting as Ghost Rider's gascap? It gives me the brain pain if I think about it for too long.
The artwork takes a huge nosedive in this issue, too, though that's not the fault of artist Ron Garney. He turns in another serviceable job and does some nice silhouette work during the origin flashback sequence. His action scenes are clear, and he almost makes Cyborg Blaze work (though not quite, because it's terrible). The problem comes with new colorist John Kalisz, who replaces long-time colorist Gregory Wright with this issue. Suddenly everything has this haze over it, like the colors are washed out, out of focus, and way WAY too bright. The most egregious part, though, is the new way that Ghost Rider and Vengeance's skulls are being colored, without inks and highlighted in reds and purples. It takes away almost all the definition from the skulls and makes them stand out in a way that's garish and hard on the eyes. It looks to me like this is a very early attempt at computer coloring, and in those early days almost all of the experimentation came out ugly and misapplied.
"Road to Vengeance" still has one more issue to go, will it give this storyarc a decent resolution and do justice to Zarathos, a character fans have been demanding to see for nearly four years? No, it won't, but at least the review should be interesting to write!
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