On Sale Date: February 1996
Writers: Howard Mackie & James Felder
Artist: Salvador Larroca
Inker: Al Milgrom
Letterer: Richard Starkings and Comicraft
Colorist: Kevin Tinsley
Editor: Bobbie Chase
Editor-in-Chief: Bob Harras
Cover Artist: Salvador Larroca
In Gotham City, Hal Jordan is saved from Uatu the Guardian by Speed Demon, who then in turns kills Jordan as well. Later, at the Quentin Carnival, the carnival members attempt to convince Wally West to leave due to the erratic behavior of his uncle, Blaze Allen. Wally refuses and goes to Blaze's trailer, where he sees the Speed Demon transform back into his uncle. Blaze tells his story, how on his wedding day his bride Iris had her soul taken by the Night Spectre, whose goal is to collect the souls of power that will allow him to rule all creation. To fight the Night Spectre, Blaze allowed his soul to be bonded to a demon named Etrigan, turning him into the Speed Demon. Only one soul of power remains, and Blaze transforms into Speed Demon to track it down.
Meanwhile, the Green Goblin has been revealed as the final soul of power and is being chased by the Night Spectre's minions. Speed Demon arrives but is unable to prevent Night Spectre from claiming the Goblin's soul. Speed Demon follows Night Spectre through a portal into his realm. Back at the carnival, Wally is visited by Merlin, who claims that Night Spectre sought Blaze's soul but was refused, sealing Iris' fate. Merlin turned Blaze into the Speed Demon and now he has a deal for Wally.
In Night Spectre's realm, Etrigan and Blaze have been separated, allowing the villain to try and destroy them both. He's stopped by another Speed Demon who crashes through the portal on a motorcycle and reveals himself to be Wally West. With Night Spectre gone, his spirit transferred into a human host, Blaze and Etrigan destroy the souls of Iris Allen and Jay Garrick, giving them peace at last. The two Speed Demons then return to the Quentin Carnival, but Blaze is left wondering which demon Wally is bonded with.
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| All rhymes, all the time! |
THE ROADMAP
"Amalgam Comics" was a collaborative effort between Marvel and DC that mashed their characters together, producing a series of one-shots. These single issues were treated as if they were random issues of ongoing titles that had been around for years. Speed Demon is an amalgamation of Ghost Rider (Marvel), the Flash (DC), and Etrigan the Demon (DC). Similarly, all of the other characters in this story are combinations of characters from each publisher, such as Nightmare and the Spectre merged as the Night Spectre.
CHAIN REACTION
CHAIN REACTION
I was actually surprised by how many fans dig Speed Demon, there's obviously something about this comic that people love. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find what that something is, because Speed Demon is an impenetrable mess of a comic.
Granted, the concept behind Speed Demon is tremendously solid. Amalgam was a funny experiment that produced some interesting ideas, and slamming together Ghost Rider and the Flash is a fairly awesome premise for a mash-up. The problem with this comic is that Mackie and Felder (and perhaps I'm wrong, but I wager it was far more of the latter than the former) don't leave it as that simple idea. Had it just been Blaze Allen possessed by a speedster demon with a flaming skull fighting the Rogues while traveling around with a carnival, that could have been something worth reading about. Instead, they make the rather curious choice to throw in a third character concept, Etrigan the Demon, that just muddies things up way too much. Etrigan and Ghost Rider are too similar to one another to really make for an interesting combo, as this comic makes abundantly clear at every opportunity, so why it gets played up at the expense of the far more interesting Flash concept is beyond my understand. Outside of the name "Allen" and the presence of Wally West nothing about this series signifies the Flash to me. It's like the writers were saddled with the Flash/Ghost Rider merger and were unable to come up with a single idea for it.
Beyond the concept problem, this is a comic that just has way too many things going on and it makes it incoherent at best and essentially unreadable at worst. I get that by its nature it's supposed to throw readers into the deep end of the pool and act as if it's a chapter in an ongoing series, but by involving all of the stuff with Night Spectre and the souls of power and the Green Goblin and Hal Jordan and Red Arrow and a "Kid Demon" it doesn't just throw readers into the pool it fucking drowns them in unnecessary exposition and character appearances. There had to have been a way to streamline this thing down into something that told an exciting, straight-forward story. In fact, had they just taken out everything involving the peripheral characters and made it a race against Night Spectre for Iris Allen's soul it would have read a lot better.
The incoherence isn't helped by Larroca and Milgrom's artwork, which is frankly quite surprising. Larocca had been the regular artist on Ghost Rider for a few years by this point and had also been an artist on the Flash, so in theory he was the perfect man for the job here. Unfortunately, and maybe it's due to the inks or the garishly bright yet still flat colors, but this is just a mess to look at. Important plot moments happen off-panel, characters blend into backgrounds, and everything is so busy that it's almost straining to the eyes trying to follow what's happening. The character design for Speed Demon is quite good, I admit, but everything else is just lazy and gets lazier as the comic progresses. Kid Devil, the mash-up of Wally West and Danny Ketch, is just regular fucking Ghost Rider with a red outfit on, motorcycle and all!
I would almost like to see a do-over for this comic, even if it's by Mackie and Larroca again, because there is so much squandered potential here. If it wasn't trying so hard to cram 50 issues of backstory into a one-shot, perhaps it would have turned out better. As it stands, though, this comic was a failure, even if it was an interesting one.
Granted, the concept behind Speed Demon is tremendously solid. Amalgam was a funny experiment that produced some interesting ideas, and slamming together Ghost Rider and the Flash is a fairly awesome premise for a mash-up. The problem with this comic is that Mackie and Felder (and perhaps I'm wrong, but I wager it was far more of the latter than the former) don't leave it as that simple idea. Had it just been Blaze Allen possessed by a speedster demon with a flaming skull fighting the Rogues while traveling around with a carnival, that could have been something worth reading about. Instead, they make the rather curious choice to throw in a third character concept, Etrigan the Demon, that just muddies things up way too much. Etrigan and Ghost Rider are too similar to one another to really make for an interesting combo, as this comic makes abundantly clear at every opportunity, so why it gets played up at the expense of the far more interesting Flash concept is beyond my understand. Outside of the name "Allen" and the presence of Wally West nothing about this series signifies the Flash to me. It's like the writers were saddled with the Flash/Ghost Rider merger and were unable to come up with a single idea for it.
Beyond the concept problem, this is a comic that just has way too many things going on and it makes it incoherent at best and essentially unreadable at worst. I get that by its nature it's supposed to throw readers into the deep end of the pool and act as if it's a chapter in an ongoing series, but by involving all of the stuff with Night Spectre and the souls of power and the Green Goblin and Hal Jordan and Red Arrow and a "Kid Demon" it doesn't just throw readers into the pool it fucking drowns them in unnecessary exposition and character appearances. There had to have been a way to streamline this thing down into something that told an exciting, straight-forward story. In fact, had they just taken out everything involving the peripheral characters and made it a race against Night Spectre for Iris Allen's soul it would have read a lot better.
The incoherence isn't helped by Larroca and Milgrom's artwork, which is frankly quite surprising. Larocca had been the regular artist on Ghost Rider for a few years by this point and had also been an artist on the Flash, so in theory he was the perfect man for the job here. Unfortunately, and maybe it's due to the inks or the garishly bright yet still flat colors, but this is just a mess to look at. Important plot moments happen off-panel, characters blend into backgrounds, and everything is so busy that it's almost straining to the eyes trying to follow what's happening. The character design for Speed Demon is quite good, I admit, but everything else is just lazy and gets lazier as the comic progresses. Kid Devil, the mash-up of Wally West and Danny Ketch, is just regular fucking Ghost Rider with a red outfit on, motorcycle and all!
I would almost like to see a do-over for this comic, even if it's by Mackie and Larroca again, because there is so much squandered potential here. If it wasn't trying so hard to cram 50 issues of backstory into a one-shot, perhaps it would have turned out better. As it stands, though, this comic was a failure, even if it was an interesting one.
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| This comic is as dense as lead. |
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