Cover Date: July 1995; On Sale Date: May 1995
Writer: Larry Hama; Artist: Gary Erskine; Letterer: Bill Oakley/NJQ; Colorist: John Kalisz; Editor: Marie Javins; Editor in Chief: Bobbie Chase; Cover Artist: Gary Erskine
John Blaze, Clara, and the Punisher arrive at the cemetery base of the Undead M.C., finding the vampires wrestling with a chained coffin. Thinking it to the be a source of their power, Blaze blows open the coffin with his hellfire shotgun, releasing the entity Uri-El, who immediately attacks. Blaze uses his shotgun against Uri-El, nearly destroying him, and the vampires rejoice. Blaze realizes that Uri-El was actually keeping the vampires in check and now that he's been defeated there is no one that can stand in their way.
The Wendigo arrives with Blaze's children, Craig and Emma, who use the magic nailfile against Charnel, the vampire leader. Carnel disarms Blaze and Punisher, allowing the vampires to nearly overwhelm them. Blaze reaches out and grabs Uri-El's flaming sword and uses it to kill the vampires, finally stabbing Charnel through the chest and ending the threat.
Blaze is reunited with his children, along with their orphaned companion Jesse Pinto, and returns the flaming sword to the recovered Uri-El. The rest of the Quentin Carnival arrive, having encountered and defeated a now shrunken down and imprisoned Shelob. Clara gives Blaze the jar containing the Eyes of the Kristall Starrer, stating she doesn't want to pay the price of using them anymore. Finally, the Punisher departs, telling Blaze to enjoy his happy ending because not everyone gets one of those.
THE ROADMAP
This is the final issue of the series. John Blaze appears next in Ghost Riders: Crossroads (1995) # 1.
John Blaze encountered the spider demon Shelob in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 11.
Blaze's children, Craig and Emma, are finally reuniting with their father for the first time since their disappearance in Ghost Rider (1990) # 50.
It is unknown if the angelic entity Uri-El in this issue is the same as the angel Uriel that appears in Ghost Rider (1990) # 92, but it's certainly possible despite their differences in appearance.
CHAIN REACTION
The comic rushes to a conclusion as it ties up the vampire storyline while paying the briefest of lip service to the many, many subplots that had been building throughout the series' run.
Blaze was a series that started off so incredibly strong and maintained its quality for so long that it really pains me to see it end with such a whimper in this issue. It all comes down to those damn vampires and whether or not Larry Hama had advance notice of the series coming to an end prior to starting this arc. The vampire arc, if it had been taken on its own, would have just gone down as a misfired storyline, it happens in comics all the time where an idea just doesn't work. As it stands, though, this was the series finale and by the time the vampire plot is wrapped up Hama has only a couple of pages to give resolution to everything else. Blaze gets reunited with his children, yes, but there's no end to the Baal storyline that dominated the first half of the series. Clara gives up her mystical eyes, Shelob gets defeated off panel, and the Wendigo disappears halfway through the comic. I understand and appreciate that Hama was able to at least provide what little payoffs that he could, but it still makes the comic suffer.
Speaking of suffering, the vampires are insufferable, especially their leader Charnel. I get their plan, that they want to use Blaze's hellfire to destroy Uri-El, who can in turn destroy them, but it begs the question of how it all fits into standard Marvel Universe vampire lore. I guess it doesn't really matter in the long run, I'm just glad none of these characters are able to make return appearances. Charnel starts speaking like a ye olde English pirate halfway through for seemingly no reason. The vampires are awful on every level.
What's not awful is the artwork by Gary Erskine, who finally seems to find his groove on this series just in time for it to end. His John Blaze continues to be impressive and his work on the Punisher is top notch. He just can't seem to handle anatomy and dynamic posing very well, the characters all flail around the page like marionettes. I do love the design for Uri-El, and the ending pages with the cherry trees blooming and dropping leaves everything really makes for a satisfying artistic conclusion. It's like the series wakes up out of a dark stupor just in time to say farewell to the readers, it's a really nice touch.
I loved this series when it began and I would kill to know where Hama would have taken the Quentin Carnival if sales hadn't killed things. Unfortunately, Blaze rides off into the sunset with this issue, a forgotten curio of the 1990s.
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