Cover Date: May 1993; On Sale Date: March 1993
Writer: Howard Mackie; Artist: Bret Blevins; Inker: Fred Fredericks; Letterer: Janice Chiang; Colorist: Gregory Wright; Editor: Bobbie Chase; Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco; Cover Artist: Bret Blevins
At midnight in Cypress Hills Cemetery, Ghost Rider stands, silently waiting. He is eventually discovered by Heart Attack, who has been searching the cemetery for him under orders from her employer. Ghost Rider viciously beats Heart Attack, stating that he will no longer wait to be attacked by her and her ilk. He asks her why the Firm wants him, and she answers that they want to make a weapon out of him, just like they did to her. Their fight is being watched by Stern at the Firm’s headquarters, ordering his men to close in and kill both Ghost Rider and Heart Attack. He’s contacted by a mysterious individual that demands Ghost Rider be brought to him alive. After they talk, Stern swears that he will find his “master” as soon as he disposes of Ghost Rider.
Back at the cemetery, the Firm’s soldiers attack and Heart Attack realizes that it was Stern who killed her friends, not the Ghost Rider. In the skies above the battle, the X-Man known as Archangel arrives by chance and recognizes Ghost Rider as an ally. He swoops down and assists with the fight against the Firm and the duo eventually forces the soldiers to retreat. Ghost Rider and Archangel pursue the men to a hospital that is secretly the Firm’s base of operations. While Archangel takes out the snipers on the rooftop, Ghost Rider advances through gunfire through the front door. A badly damaged Ghost Rider eventually fights his way through the building to find Stern, who he gives the Penance Stare. Ghost Rider and Archangel depart while Heart Attack sneaks inside to gain her revenge on Stern, who is suffering from the effects of Ghost Rider’s power. The mysterious “master” appears on the screen again and reaches out with mystical energy, devouring the soul of Stern and all of the Firm’s fallen men. He reveals his identity as Centurious just as Heart Attack arrives, only to be sucked into the screen by Centurious’ power. All that remains of the Firm is dust and Centurious says that it is time for all to emerge from the shadows
THE ROADMAP
Tyler Meagher, Heart Attack, first appeared in Ghost Rider (1990) # 8. Her team, H.E.A.R.T., were all killed by agents of the Firm in Ghost Rider (1990) # 33.
CHAIN REACTION
Another unnecessary guest-star helps wrap up the long-running Firm subplot while haphazardly revealing the identity of the year’s “big bad”.
So, this is an issue with lots of positives and lots of negatives. On the one hand, it benefits greatly from its singular focus on one plot and one set of villains, giving both the narrative and Ghost Rider as a character a chance to zero in on a tangible goal. The Firm, and their boss Stern, had been kicking around for about a year at this point, and they never really clicked. They were good for providing new “villain of the month” fodder for Ghost Rider to fight, and for updating older villains (like Blackout and Scarecrow), but Stern was never more than a vague manipulator type of villain. They wanted to make Ghost Rider into a weapon, sure, but why bother? This issue tries to answer that by revealing Stern as merely a middle-management lackey of another villain, and it doesn’t work the way I think Mackie intended.
So, Centurious is going to get two big reveals, this one and the one at the end of the same month’s issue of Spirits of Vengeance. I can see why Mackie wanted to go that route, connecting both titles with one overarching villain, providing some reason to a lot of the seemingly random villain encounters over the last several months. The problem is that the Centurious reveal needed to happen in Spirits of Vengeance first, and this issue totally robbed a lot of the shock and awe out of the villain’s return in that series. Sure, readers had already guessed that Centurious was behind Steel Wind and Death Ninja but having it all laid out as an afterthought here, a mere two weeks before his actual return, was a decision that didn’t do either series justice.
The best aspect of this issue is the use of Ghost Rider as an unstoppable force of nature, one that’s frustrated with everything spinning out of his control in the last few issues. He’s gone from villain attack to villain attack without much breathing space in between, so having that bit with him just standing in wait for the next villain so he can just get the damn fight over with is a nice touch. Unfortunately, it’s undercut by the inclusion of Archangel, whose presence lends nothing of importance to the story other than to allow that X-Men logo to appear on the cover. Like with last issue’s Daredevil appearance, it’s a case of a random hero strolling by and helping with the fight scene. It’s lazy, and it doesn’t even utilize the one bit of shared history that should have been the logical way in for the team-up. Archangel doesn’t just know about Ghost Rider from some files, he was good friends with Johnny Blaze. A wasted opportunity to call back to some forgotten Ghost Rider lore.
This is also the last issue by artist Bret Blevins, who moves on to DC Comics from here. He never truly clicked with Ghost Rider, I’m afraid, and this issue provides some of the most unflattering finishes of his whole tenure. Fred Fredericks makes everything look soft and mushy with an inability to reign in Blevins’ more cartoon-like elements, such as the lanky form he gives him on the opening page. I feel like Blevins’ work on the series was one of the major reasons for the downturn in sales in the book’s third year, but it’s not as if Mackie’s stories were setting the world on fire during that time either.
I would say that this was a good opportunity for the series to move on from the drudgery of the last several months, but there’s still a lot of mire to slog through before things really turn around for Ghost Rider.
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