Cover Date: June 1992; Publication Date: April 1992
In Brooklyn's Prospect Park, Ghost Rider discovers the mutilated body of a person that appears to have been mauled by a large beast. The next day, Jack Russell reads about the murder in the newspaper and goes off to find the killers, thinking to himself that he's been tracking them across the country. That night, a young couple is being mugged by a large biker, but the mugger flees on his motorcycle when he's interrupted by a group of bikers that have their own plans for the couple.
Later, Jack is in the park searching for the killers while a group of kids play nearby. One of the kids named Billy accidentally sees the bikers killing the couple; they are the Braineaters, a group of werewolves that kill indiscriminately. Billy overhears them discussing how another gang of Braineaters encountered Jack Russell and were wiped out, which this gang's leader Scuzz says happened because they forgot the first rule: anyone who sees them change has to die. Ghost Rider deals with some criminals in the city, then makes his way toward the park. Billy is discovered by the Braineaters, who give chase after him, and Jack arrives just in time to discover the bodies of the couple they killed. Ghost Rider appears on his motorcycle and, upon seeing Jack in his werewolf form, assumes he is the killer he's been searching for and attacks.
THE ROADMAP
This issue of Marvel Comics Presents also contained stories featuring Wolverine/Nightcrawler, Red Wolf, and the Young Gods.
Werewolf by Night encountered another group of Braineaters in Marvel Comics Presents (1988) # 54-59, which ended with all members of the gang dead.
While this is his first encounter with this incarnation of Ghost Rider, Jack Russell did meet Johnny Blaze twice, in Marvel Premiere # 28 and Ghost Rider (1973) # 55.
The biker that attempts to mug the young couple is named Fraser and he previously appeared in Ghost Rider (1990) # 4.
CHAIN REACTION
Another storyarc for Ghost Rider in Marvel Comics Presents means another random superhero team-up, this time with the Werewolf by Night.
Jack Russell had kinda become a staple of Marvel Comics Presents by this point, and it makes sense as to why. He's one of those solid C-list characters that can't quite manage to anchor their own book despite fans still having affection for him. MCP was a haven for those characters, guys like the Man-Thing and Shang-Chi, and the series proved to be a popular place for Werewolf by Night stories. Len Kaminski turned out a wonderful 6-part story with the character about 50 issues before this one, which also served as the basis for Chris Cooper's sequel story that starts here.
So that's a little odd, right? This is a sequel to a story by Kaminski that's written by Cooper AND it's the first Ghost Rider story in MCP that's not written by Howard Mackie. I'm not sure why I think that's so odd, but there it is. Cooper is a writer that will show up often as the MCP Ghost Rider writer going forward, and he's usually more of a miss than a hit. He has my respect for his work on the criminally underrated Darkhold: Pages From the Book of Sins series that debuts not long after this, but his MCP stuff never manages to seem more than just average. The opening chapter of "Return of the Braineaters" isn't hugely imaginative, biker werewolves are killing people while heroes investigate, and its smart enough to not make the Kaminski Braineaters story essential to the plot of this one. It just doesn't do anything to elevate it from all the other MCP Ghost Rider team-ups, especially when the cliffhanger hinges on yet another mistaken identity hero fight.
The artwork's not much to laud, either. John Stanisci isn't a name I'm very familiar with, I believe he may have drawn some other MCP stories later on, and his work here seems very rough with little polish. I do appreciate how his work echoes the style of great artists like Kelley Jones and Bernie Wrightson, definitely making him suitable for a horror story like this one. I also think he does a strong rendition of Ghost Rider, such as in the page where he's dispatching the two criminals. Where he struggles is with the werewolves, who don't seem to adhere to standard rules of anatomy for either men or wolves. I think he's trying to ape the look of movies like the Howling and just falls a little short, making his werewolves look silly instead of scary. When your story hinges around werewolf horror, that's a bit of a problem.
All told, this is the opening chapter to a middling MCP serial. There's just not much here to grab your attention, though things do pick up some in later chapters.
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