Too Many Ghost Riders?

So, yesterday Marvel released a bit of information on a new 2-issue limited series coming in November called Infinity Warps: Ghost Panther.  No details on the creative team yet, but it's spinning out of the upcoming Infinity Wars event and is one of several mini-series that features "mash-ups" of Marvel characters.  Captain America and Doctor Strange are put together to make "Soldier Supreme", for example.  Ghost Panther is, naturally, a combination of Ghost Rider and Black Panther, and the artwork released so far by Humberto Ramos certainly looks awesome.

This is another instance in a trend that I'm not sure is all that great for the character, namely putting the Ghost Rider name and brand with another established character.  Look at the examples we've had in the last year.  Leaving Ghost Panther to the side, the other big success story has of course been Cosmic Ghost Rider.  This future Spirit of Vengeance is a possessed Frank Castle, the Punisher, and he was the break-out character of Donny Cates and Geoff Shaw's recent run on Thanos.  The Cosmic Ghost Rider mini-series actually debuts tomorrow and is expected to be a huge hit for Marvel.  While it's awesome that we're getting a new Ghost Rider series out of this, it also makes Ghost Rider as a concept one that can be traded around to just make a cool visual.  Gone is the actual character of Johnny Blaze (or Danny Ketch, for that matter) to give the character an actual personality of his own.  Now he's just a cool visual that can be bolted on to other characters or concepts, such as the Punisher.

For another recent example, there's the Doctor Strange: Damnation event, which has as its big hook the idea of Doctor Strange and several Avengers (including Black Panther) becoming evil Ghost Riders working for Mephisto.  Before that, last year saw the Venom/Ghost Rider combination, "Host Rider", showing up in the Edge of Venomverse mini-series. The flaming skull is such an iconic, awesome visual identity, but is that all Ghost Rider is to Marvel and the creators?  Has the character reached a point of saturation, where the skull and hellfire can be slapped onto anyone?  Sure, Robbie Reyes is in the Avengers now, but some fans consider even him to be a dilution of a character they love.

Ghost Rider has, in the last decade, gone from a character with two incarnations (three, if you're counting Carter Slade in the 1960s) to a legacy hero that's possessed countless human hosts since the dawn of time.  There's prehistoric Ghost Riders on wholly mammoths and future Ghost Riders as Heralds of Galactus, all of which brings some inspired storytelling and improved recognition for the character.  But is the cost of all that exposure for Ghost Rider the loss of characters like Johnny Blaze and Danny Ketch?  Is Robbie Reyes the last bastion of that dual nature for the Spirit of Vengeance?  Do all we, as fans of the character, have to look forward to is more books like Ghost Panther or Cosmic Ghost Rider?  I guess we'll have to wait and see.