On Sale Date: August 1992
Writer: Howard Mackie
Artist: Lee Weeks
Inker: Al Williamson
Letterer: Michael Heisler
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Editor: Bobbie Chase
Editor In Chief: Tom DeFalco
Cover Artist: Lee Weeks
The next day, Danny Ketch reads a newspaper headline about Ghost Rider causing the innocent man's heart attack and reacts in anger to his girlfriend, Stacy Dolan. Stacy, the daughter of Captain Dolan and a police officer herself, tells Dan that Ghost Rider is a vigilante and that Dan has changed since Blackout attacked them all. She leaves to go to work, while Danny spends his time thinking about his life as the Ghost Rider's host. At the police station, Captain Dolan is told to drop his search for Ghost Rider to focus on finding the Scarecrow, while at the mystery operating room one of the doctors attacked by Scarecrow has managed to cling to life long enough to be found by her employers. They take her for interrogation about what has happened to the Scarecrow, telling her that they will allow her to die once she tells them what they need to know.
That night in Brooklyn, the Scarecrow is searching for another victim, desperate to lure Captain America into a confrontation. He unleashes his flock of crows on a young couple, then murders them with his pitchfork. A police cruiser interrupts him, one manned by Stacy Dolan and her partner. Scarecrow then reveals the new ability granted to him by the doctors, the ability to generate intense fear in his victims. He easily kills the male officer, but when he goes to kill Stacy he pauses, believing his deluded mind that she is his mother come back to life. He knocks her unconscious and flees, sure that Captain America will not be able to ignore his actions this time.
Danny is out riding his bike when police cruisers fly past him with their sirens on. He notices the glowing medallion on his motorcycle, and when he touches it he is transformed into the Ghost Rider. At the most recent crime scene, Captain Dolan is investigating the kidnapping of his daughter when Captain America arrives to assist. He explains to Dolan and the other detectives that Laughton was a victim of childhood abuse by his mother, who he loved unquestionably and thus transferred all memories of the abuse to his father, and now has fixated on Captain America instead. They all see Ghost Rider watching them from a nearby rooftop, and Captain America goes to confront him. The Captain tells him that judges a man by his deeds and not his looks, and that he knows Ghost Rider is not a criminal or villain. Ghost Rider explains that the police would rather apprehend him then let him seek vengeance, and asks Captain America to help him find Stacy. The Captain agrees and gets on the back of the Rider's motorcycle, then they ride away across the rooftops.
Stacy wakes up in the Scarecrow's hideout, tied to a cross while he torments her, still believing that she is his mother. Meanwhile, the employers of the doctors are told that the Scarecrow was given pheromone powers that trigger uncontrollable panic attacks in his victims. Captain America and Ghost Rider follow the flock of crows in the sky to the brownstone once owned by Scarecrow's mother, which is where the villain is hiding. While Ghost Rider rides up to the roof, Captain America approaches the front door and is immediately attacked by Scarecrow, who is also exhibiting superhuman strength. While Captain America fights through the fear pheromones triggering his panic Scarecrow is grabbed by Ghost Rider's chain and yanked to the roof. Instead of confronting the Rider, Scarecrow escapes through a chimney using his contortionist abilities. In front of the house Gerry Dolan arrives and goes into the home with Captain America to find Stacy, but is nearly killed by Scarecrow's pitchfork on the stairs. As they make their way through the house, they find rooms upon rooms of butchered victims, eventually finding Scarecrow in his mother's room in front of Stacy. Ghost Rider comes close to killing the Scarecrow, but finds himself unable to do so. When Dolan enters and sees Stacy he believes her to be dead, then tries to shoot Scarecrow. Stacy comes to, spits out the straw in her mouth, and tells them that she's okay. They free her from the cross just before Scarecrow attacks again, and using her father's gun she fires at the Scarecrow and tells him he's under arrest. When Ghost Rider attempts to catch him his chain, Scarecrow flings himself out of the fourth story window and impales himself on the iron fence surrounding the house. Not long after, when the police are there cleaning up the bodies, Captain America asks Dolan about how he let Ghost Rider leave and if he's changed his mind about him. Dolan can only answer "I'm just not sure". Danny Ketch, meanwhile, is sitting by his sister's graveside, upset that everyone still fears Ghost Rider. Later, Scarecrow awakens, still impaled on the fence. He's approached by Stern, leader of the Firm, who tells Laughton that the doctors he hired to experiment on him were a success and that there is much fear for him to let free.
With that backstory out of the way, and with the understanding that "Hearts of Darkness" was a smash hit the year before, it's not surprising that Marvel did another team-up story for Ghost Rider. However, I don't know if I could come up with a character less suited to appear in a Ghost Rider story than Captain freaking America. I mean, Marvel Comics Presents had been doing this type of story for a while by this point, and most of them were terrible attempts at forcing offbeat and inappropriate team-up partners into Ghost Rider stories. Don't worry, though, because the topnotch creative team of Howard Mackie and Lee Weeks turned out a mostly excellent story that doesn't get stupid until the final page.
Mackie had used the Scarecrow during the first year of Ghost Rider and ended that issue with a mysterious cliffhanger, where the Scarecrow's seemingly dead body was taken away by unknown people. In an act of cliffhanger payoff procrastination on par with Chris Claremont's X-Men, Mackie waited two more years to resolve it in this special. "Fear" was the story every Ghost Rider fan had been eagerly awaiting, and for the most part it doesn't disappoint. The Scarecrow had been given a tragic backstory and some much-needed depth during J.M. DeMatteis' run on Captain America many years before, and Mackie picks all of that back up and expands on things nicely. There's some of the stereotypical portrayals of "insanity" floating around, but at least it attempts to deal head-on with the idea of child abuse and how it can damage someone's psyche. The Scarecrow was always one of the more terrifying Ghost Rider villains, and Mackie's use of the character in this special continues that. Impaling people with pitchforks and stuffing them with straw is a pretty gruesome way to get attention, and it falls nicely in line with the more mature motifs in the ongoing Ghost Rider comic.
The decision to pair him up with Captain America, though, sounds ludicrous as an idea but actually works pretty well in application. Cap doesn't come off quite as jarring as you think he would and provides a necessary counterpoint and legitimacy to Ghost Rider's dealings with the police. The character that changes the most throughout the story is actually Gerry Dolan, who hadn't had much in the way of characterization before this, instead coming off as Danny Ketch's J. Jonah Jameson equivalent. Dolan gets a pretty satisfying arc in future stories, and that all starts here.
The artwork by Lee Weeks is the real star of this show, though, having just come off a run on Daredevil during the "Fall of the Kingpin" event. Weeks, especially when paired with Al Williamson on inks, is a master at crafting mood and grittiness while simultaneously keeping things aligned with the superhero material that's worked in. He's the biggest reason why Captain America works in this comic, because another artist might have struggled with the tonal shift he could bring to the story, effectively grinding the tension to a halt. Weeks amps up the terror in the Scarecrow sequences, particularly in the scene where he kidnaps Stacy, highlighted by the red color of the police lights. Really moody, really effective artwork.
As I mentioned, the last page is the only real drawback, because it hinges on the Scarecrow hanging impaled on a fence for god knows how long and Stern just being allowed to walk up and talk to him despite all of the police that should have been surrounding the area. It's a copy of the powerful ending to Ghost Rider # 7, and it makes the whole story weaker as a result. Had it ended with the page before, with Danny in the cemetery lamenting about the fear everyone feels toward Ghost Rider, we would have been left with a much more satisfactory and thematically appropriate final page. Instead, we get a stupid cliffhanger for a follow-up story, and that's disappointing. Still, though, it doesn't mean this special wasn't top notch up until that point, because it totally was!
"Fear" wasn't the last of the bookshelf special editions, with "The Dark Design" bowing its head a couple of years later, and it's not quite the best either, "Hearts of Darkness" takes that award. This is a solid Ghost Rider team-up story that delivers a satisfying payoff to a years long mystery while providing some terrifying elements and images.
In a mysterious operating room, a team of surgeons work on the sedated Ebenezer Laughton, also known as the Scarecrow. As they finish the medical experiments they've performed on him, the Scarecrow wakes up, slips free of his restraints, and murders the doctors with a scalpel. A week later, a hostage situation in a supermarket is being met with police response led by Captain Gerald Dolan, who wants SWAT to apprehend the hostage taker before "he" arrives. Suddenly, Dolan's fears are confirmed as Ghost Rider arrives on the scene, riding into the supermarket to disarm the criminal and threaten him with his Penance Stare. When he attempts to give reassurance to an elderly man in the market, it causes the man to have a heart attack. The SWAT team attempt to apprehend Ghost Rider, but he easily escapes them, leaving a furious Captain Dolan behind.
The next day, Danny Ketch reads a newspaper headline about Ghost Rider causing the innocent man's heart attack and reacts in anger to his girlfriend, Stacy Dolan. Stacy, the daughter of Captain Dolan and a police officer herself, tells Dan that Ghost Rider is a vigilante and that Dan has changed since Blackout attacked them all. She leaves to go to work, while Danny spends his time thinking about his life as the Ghost Rider's host. At the police station, Captain Dolan is told to drop his search for Ghost Rider to focus on finding the Scarecrow, while at the mystery operating room one of the doctors attacked by Scarecrow has managed to cling to life long enough to be found by her employers. They take her for interrogation about what has happened to the Scarecrow, telling her that they will allow her to die once she tells them what they need to know.
That night in Brooklyn, the Scarecrow is searching for another victim, desperate to lure Captain America into a confrontation. He unleashes his flock of crows on a young couple, then murders them with his pitchfork. A police cruiser interrupts him, one manned by Stacy Dolan and her partner. Scarecrow then reveals the new ability granted to him by the doctors, the ability to generate intense fear in his victims. He easily kills the male officer, but when he goes to kill Stacy he pauses, believing his deluded mind that she is his mother come back to life. He knocks her unconscious and flees, sure that Captain America will not be able to ignore his actions this time.
Danny is out riding his bike when police cruisers fly past him with their sirens on. He notices the glowing medallion on his motorcycle, and when he touches it he is transformed into the Ghost Rider. At the most recent crime scene, Captain Dolan is investigating the kidnapping of his daughter when Captain America arrives to assist. He explains to Dolan and the other detectives that Laughton was a victim of childhood abuse by his mother, who he loved unquestionably and thus transferred all memories of the abuse to his father, and now has fixated on Captain America instead. They all see Ghost Rider watching them from a nearby rooftop, and Captain America goes to confront him. The Captain tells him that judges a man by his deeds and not his looks, and that he knows Ghost Rider is not a criminal or villain. Ghost Rider explains that the police would rather apprehend him then let him seek vengeance, and asks Captain America to help him find Stacy. The Captain agrees and gets on the back of the Rider's motorcycle, then they ride away across the rooftops.
Stacy wakes up in the Scarecrow's hideout, tied to a cross while he torments her, still believing that she is his mother. Meanwhile, the employers of the doctors are told that the Scarecrow was given pheromone powers that trigger uncontrollable panic attacks in his victims. Captain America and Ghost Rider follow the flock of crows in the sky to the brownstone once owned by Scarecrow's mother, which is where the villain is hiding. While Ghost Rider rides up to the roof, Captain America approaches the front door and is immediately attacked by Scarecrow, who is also exhibiting superhuman strength. While Captain America fights through the fear pheromones triggering his panic Scarecrow is grabbed by Ghost Rider's chain and yanked to the roof. Instead of confronting the Rider, Scarecrow escapes through a chimney using his contortionist abilities. In front of the house Gerry Dolan arrives and goes into the home with Captain America to find Stacy, but is nearly killed by Scarecrow's pitchfork on the stairs. As they make their way through the house, they find rooms upon rooms of butchered victims, eventually finding Scarecrow in his mother's room in front of Stacy. Ghost Rider comes close to killing the Scarecrow, but finds himself unable to do so. When Dolan enters and sees Stacy he believes her to be dead, then tries to shoot Scarecrow. Stacy comes to, spits out the straw in her mouth, and tells them that she's okay. They free her from the cross just before Scarecrow attacks again, and using her father's gun she fires at the Scarecrow and tells him he's under arrest. When Ghost Rider attempts to catch him his chain, Scarecrow flings himself out of the fourth story window and impales himself on the iron fence surrounding the house. Not long after, when the police are there cleaning up the bodies, Captain America asks Dolan about how he let Ghost Rider leave and if he's changed his mind about him. Dolan can only answer "I'm just not sure". Danny Ketch, meanwhile, is sitting by his sister's graveside, upset that everyone still fears Ghost Rider. Later, Scarecrow awakens, still impaled on the fence. He's approached by Stern, leader of the Firm, who tells Laughton that the doctors he hired to experiment on him were a success and that there is much fear for him to let free.
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| He looks pretty still to me, Cap. |
THE ROADMAP
Ghost Rider last appeared in Darkhawk (1991) # 22 and appears next in Marvel Comics Presents (1988) # 119.
Scarecrow last appeared in Ghost Rider (1990) # 7, and at the end of that issue he was impaled on his own pitchfork and left for dead before being retrieved by two unknown men. It is revealed in this issue that he was revived and enhanced by the Firm, an organization dedicated to the exploitation of powered individuals that first appeared in Ghost Rider (1990) # 25. Stern, who appears at the end of this issue, first appeared in Ghost Rider (1990) # 25 as an agent of the Firm and recently took control of the entire organization in Ghost Rider (1990) # 32.
Scarecrow appears next as a captive of the Firm in Ghost Rider (1990) # 38, where he also has another encounter with Stacy Dolan.
Captain Gerry Dolan has been after Ghost Rider since he first appeared in Ghost Rider (1990) # 1, and this issue is where his opinion on the Rider truly does begin to change. He will eventually become Ghost Rider's secret informant "Deep Throat" in Ghost Rider (1990) # 66.
CHAIN REACTION
Scarecrow appears next as a captive of the Firm in Ghost Rider (1990) # 38, where he also has another encounter with Stacy Dolan.
Captain Gerry Dolan has been after Ghost Rider since he first appeared in Ghost Rider (1990) # 1, and this issue is where his opinion on the Rider truly does begin to change. He will eventually become Ghost Rider's secret informant "Deep Throat" in Ghost Rider (1990) # 66.
CHAIN REACTION
So, back in the late '80s and early '90s Marvel had essentially two types of comics being released on a monthly basis: some were cheaper and printed on newsprint and others were printed on better quality paper with better colors for a slightly higher price (think $1.25 versus $1.75). The cheaper series, stuff like Amazing Spider-Man and Uncanny X-Men, received a special Annual edition every year that usually tied into a crossover of some sort, like "Atlantis Attacks". The more expensive titles, stuff like Wolverine and Excalibur, received special square-bound bookshelf specials as their equivalent to the Annuals. Ghost Rider was in that higher price bracket, so for the first two years it received bookshelf specials, the first one being "Hearts of Darkness" in 1991 and followed in 1992 by this special, "Fear". The next year would see all of those premium titles receiving true "Annuals" of their own, but it was a neat practice for those more prestige titles at the time.
With that backstory out of the way, and with the understanding that "Hearts of Darkness" was a smash hit the year before, it's not surprising that Marvel did another team-up story for Ghost Rider. However, I don't know if I could come up with a character less suited to appear in a Ghost Rider story than Captain freaking America. I mean, Marvel Comics Presents had been doing this type of story for a while by this point, and most of them were terrible attempts at forcing offbeat and inappropriate team-up partners into Ghost Rider stories. Don't worry, though, because the topnotch creative team of Howard Mackie and Lee Weeks turned out a mostly excellent story that doesn't get stupid until the final page.
Mackie had used the Scarecrow during the first year of Ghost Rider and ended that issue with a mysterious cliffhanger, where the Scarecrow's seemingly dead body was taken away by unknown people. In an act of cliffhanger payoff procrastination on par with Chris Claremont's X-Men, Mackie waited two more years to resolve it in this special. "Fear" was the story every Ghost Rider fan had been eagerly awaiting, and for the most part it doesn't disappoint. The Scarecrow had been given a tragic backstory and some much-needed depth during J.M. DeMatteis' run on Captain America many years before, and Mackie picks all of that back up and expands on things nicely. There's some of the stereotypical portrayals of "insanity" floating around, but at least it attempts to deal head-on with the idea of child abuse and how it can damage someone's psyche. The Scarecrow was always one of the more terrifying Ghost Rider villains, and Mackie's use of the character in this special continues that. Impaling people with pitchforks and stuffing them with straw is a pretty gruesome way to get attention, and it falls nicely in line with the more mature motifs in the ongoing Ghost Rider comic.
The decision to pair him up with Captain America, though, sounds ludicrous as an idea but actually works pretty well in application. Cap doesn't come off quite as jarring as you think he would and provides a necessary counterpoint and legitimacy to Ghost Rider's dealings with the police. The character that changes the most throughout the story is actually Gerry Dolan, who hadn't had much in the way of characterization before this, instead coming off as Danny Ketch's J. Jonah Jameson equivalent. Dolan gets a pretty satisfying arc in future stories, and that all starts here.
The artwork by Lee Weeks is the real star of this show, though, having just come off a run on Daredevil during the "Fall of the Kingpin" event. Weeks, especially when paired with Al Williamson on inks, is a master at crafting mood and grittiness while simultaneously keeping things aligned with the superhero material that's worked in. He's the biggest reason why Captain America works in this comic, because another artist might have struggled with the tonal shift he could bring to the story, effectively grinding the tension to a halt. Weeks amps up the terror in the Scarecrow sequences, particularly in the scene where he kidnaps Stacy, highlighted by the red color of the police lights. Really moody, really effective artwork.
As I mentioned, the last page is the only real drawback, because it hinges on the Scarecrow hanging impaled on a fence for god knows how long and Stern just being allowed to walk up and talk to him despite all of the police that should have been surrounding the area. It's a copy of the powerful ending to Ghost Rider # 7, and it makes the whole story weaker as a result. Had it ended with the page before, with Danny in the cemetery lamenting about the fear everyone feels toward Ghost Rider, we would have been left with a much more satisfactory and thematically appropriate final page. Instead, we get a stupid cliffhanger for a follow-up story, and that's disappointing. Still, though, it doesn't mean this special wasn't top notch up until that point, because it totally was!
"Fear" wasn't the last of the bookshelf special editions, with "The Dark Design" bowing its head a couple of years later, and it's not quite the best either, "Hearts of Darkness" takes that award. This is a solid Ghost Rider team-up story that delivers a satisfying payoff to a years long mystery while providing some terrifying elements and images.
 |
| A crisis of conscience? |
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