Cover Date: November 1993; Publication Date: September 1993
Ghost Rider, John Blaze, Vengeance, and the Caretaker all lay defeated at the feet of the newly-reborn Zarathos. The Spirits of Vengeance are able to escape into the catacombs beneath Cypress Hills Cemetery with the unconscious Mrs. Ketch, while the amnesiac Zarathos is found by Lilith and her Lilin. Centurious, injured in the battle with Ghost Rider, demands Lilith's help but instead he is attacked and teleported away by the Lilin and Zarathos. Lilith, seeing an opportunity for power, tells Zarathos that she is his mother.
At the Blood's mystical Nightclub, Caretaker and Seer tell the Spirits of Vengeance about how they're connected to one another through the Medallion of Power and Mephisto's interference. While the members of the Quentin Carnival look after Mrs. Ketch, Caretaker teleports them away, but not before Mrs. Ketch demands that Caretaker tell them the whole truth about "her babies". The heroes arrive back at the cemetery and attack, but only when Ghost Rider taps into the power of the Medallion on his motorcycle gascap is he able to blast Zarathos and Lilth back into the catacombs, which he believes has sealed them away "forever". With the battle ended, Blaze demands to know what Mrs. Ketch was talking about, and Caretaker reveals that he and Dan Ketch are actually brothers.
THE ROADMAP
This issue was continued from Ghost Rider (1990) # 43. The story picks up immediately from this issue's conclusion in Nightstalkers (1992) # 14, the first chapter of the "Siege of Darkness" crossover.
Zarathos was trapped inside the Soul Crystal with Centurious in Ghost Rider (1973) # 81. He made only one subsequent appearance in Amazing Spider-Man (1963) # 274 when he was released from the Soul Crystal by Mephisto and then returned to his imprisonment. Centurious reappeared in Ghost Rider (1990) # 18 and it was revealed in Ghost Rider (1990) # 43 that Zarathos had been hiding inside Centurious all this time. How they were able to escape the Soul Crystal and Mephisto was never revealed.
Centurious appears next in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 23. Zarathos, Lilith, and the Lilin continue on as the villains of "Siege of Darkness".
The childhood separation of Blaze and the Ketch siblings gets some elaboration in Ghost Rider (1990) # -1 and Ghost Rider (2006) # 5. Dan had learned that he and his sister were adopted in Ghost Rider (1990) # 33.
CHAIN REACTION
"Road to Vengeance" ends (well, not really) with one of the most unsatisfying comics I've ever read.
This review is going to be a rough one, folks, because I don't know if I have the words to convey how much I dislike this comic and just how fundamentally it screws up so many of the things that the last three years of Ghost Rider comics had been building toward. "Road to Vengeance" had been a chore to suffer through already, what with the cavalcade of villains and the cyborg redesign of John Blaze, but somehow the conclusion tops every bad mistake the preceding chapters had made. Let's break things down a little bit.
Easily the most disappointing part of the comic is the return of Zarathos. What should have been the most epic moment in Ghost Rider history up to that point, the return of the villainous demon that had defined the 1970s series and hadn't been seen in a decade, was instead the most underwhelming moment in a crossover full of underwhelming moments. As a reader at the time, I was expecting Zarathos in his true form, the one seen in the flashback origin sequence from the early 80s with a towering skeletal demon clothed in hellfire that eats souls with a touch. Instead, we get an amnesiac, costumed buffoon in a Dracula cape that can control the elements for some damn reason. Instead of it being the most personally terrifying moment in John Blaze's life, the return of the demon that nearly drug him to Hell and ruined his life for years, it's a fight scene that ends with no emotional resonance whatsoever.
Zarathos at least gets treated better than poor Centurious, though, who gets to crawl around on his belly whimpering like a kicked puppy. This guy was supposed to be the big bad of the crossover, the ultimate villain whose history with Ghost Rider stretched back centuries! Why it was decided that the end to the last few years of building him up as the overarching villain of both Ghost Rider titles would be him begging for help from Lilith is beyond me. It's bad enough that the poor master villain was continually denied the spotlight in favor of Lilith, Blackout, Deathwatch, Skinner, Vengeance, Big Daddy Dawson, Gunmetal Gray, Devil Grip, and every other single fucking villain they could possibly fit in (okay, some of those weren't actually in the story, but you get my meaning, right?). They couldn't even let Centurious keep what little dignity he had left and he really deserved a better conclusion to his role.
There's so much wrong with this comic, I can keep rambling about it for days. It's the conclusion to a crossover that leads into another fucking crossover! When all is said and done, the Ghost Rider and Spirits of Vengeance titles were embroiled in crossovers for six months between "Midnight Massacre", "Road to Vengeance", and "Siege of Darkness". This was supposed to be the ultimate Ghost Rider story that provided all these answers and concluded the story that Mackie had been building toward since the series began, and he couldn't even give it an ending that was satisfying on any level. Zarathos and Lilith get pushed down a hole and we're supposed to take that as an ending? There's all of the problems with the Medallion of Power that I talked about during the review of the previous "Road to Vengeance" chapter, that it's somehow a physical shard of metal that gets passed down through bloodlines, it doesn't make a lick of sense. I guess it's like a magical kidney stone? There's the revelation that John and Dan are long lost brothers, an idea that I hated at the time and only like slightly more in hindsight. It's this over-complication of everything that Mackie was forcing readers to endure, though I'm sure a lot of this was due to massive editorial oversight.
Then there's the artwork by brand-new series artist Henry Martinez, and wow is it ever a mess. You can tell that Martinez was real early in his career, this might have even been his first published gig for all I know, because the character work is real bizarre. The first few pages seems some attempts to correct an art error, with Martinez having drawn Blaze in his non-cyborg outfit (nice try, Henry, I feel you) and the comic seems some really strange design choices. Mrs. Ketch's high-heeled hooker boots, Ghost Rider's squinty-eyed sad skull face, and Lilith's massive cleavage window are just some of the highlights. Martinez will go on to become a really great artist by the time Spirits of Vengeance gets relaunched as the solo Blaze series, but things in this comic are real, real rough.
"Road to Vengeance" is easily one of the lowest points in Ghost Rider history, and this conclusion ranks up as one of the worst Ghost Rider comics of all time. It's disappointing on every single level, it has nothing redeemable about it, and it just plain sucks.
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