Cover Date: May 1993; Publication Date: March 1993
Writer: Ann Nocenti; Artist: Steve Lightle; Letterer: Dave Sharpe; Colorist: Steve & Marianne Lightle; Editor: Terry Kavanagh; Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco; Cover Artist: Jae Lee
Ghost Rider has been lured into the Realm of Insanity, where he relentlessly pursues the Necromancer, becoming more and more obsessed with seeking vengeance. The realm is ruled by Dusk, who wants Ghost Rider to succumb to insanity and become his warrior to help claim the nearby dimension of Nightmare. Elsewhere in the realm, the pregnant girl Eve is charmed by the dream-like warrior who rescued her from demons. Typhoid Mary appears and chases off the warrior by pointing out that he is betraying Dusk by courting Eve. Typhoid uses her mental powers to project visions of her past on the walls of the realm surrounding them and tells the story of how she was abused as a child. She suffered until another personality, Typhoid, emerged to protect her and stop the abuse from happening ever again.
Meanwhile, inside the shopping mall that is acting as the gateway to the realm of insanity, the glowing souls of Mary, Eve, and Dan Ketch comfort one another, the last vestiges of their sanity clinging to life. Dusk emerges and confronts Typhoid, telling her that now he knows her secret past and can use it against her to control her. She runs into Ghost Rider, who has defeated the Necromancer and is now demanding that Typhoid must release her hold on the innocent Mary Walker. Rather than allow herself to be enslaved or punished, Typhoid leaps off a cliff to her death on the spikes below.
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| Huh, they could almost be cousins. |
THE ROADMAP
This issue of Marvel Comics Presents also contained stories featuring Wolverine, Crossbones, and Iron Fist.
CHAIN REACTION
Ghost Rider and Typhoid Mary enter the climax of their shared storyline and Dusk finally reveals himself!
I really like Nocenti's take on Ghost Rider as this unrelenting force of vengeance that easily falls into obsession the longer he spends time in the Realm of Insanity. We've seen this approach with the character before in Howard Mackie's run on the main series, with Ghost Rider relentlessly pursuing villains to exact vengeance, but never has it been spelled out as a form of mental illness quite the way it is here. Ghost Rider doesn't even realize he's being led further down the madness spiral by Dusk and the Necromancer, he just accepts it as his mission. It's not that subtle, of course, the writer spells it all out with Dusk's narration, but it's still a nice touch nonetheless.
We also have a strangely touching look at Typhoid Mary in this chapter, as she rails against women needing men as their saviors and explains her childhood backstory to the hopelessly romantic Eve. Nocenti doesn't explicitly type out "sexual abuse" when it comes Mary, but she hints at it thoroughly enough that there's little question as to what happened to the character as a child. Painting a villainous character like Mary, even though she's more of an anti-hero in this story, as an abuse survivor can be a touchy approach, I think it works well here. Mary doesn't reject the patriarchal world out of any kind of philosophical merit but because her relationships with men have been traumatic going all the way back to her father. I don't quite follow the purpose of the "white knight" chap that saves Eve and then turns away after a bit of pithy teasing from Typhoid, it's kind of a weak example of the gender dynamics Nocenti is playing with, but I do really like Mary's rejection of the other men in the storyline, including Dusk and Ghost Rider, before she throws herself to her seeming death.
Steve Lightle is also in peak form again with this chapter, giving the realm of insanity a chaotic and dream-like imagery that flows perfectly and doesn't have any of the clarity problems that plagued the earlier parts of the story. Pixies and fairies dance in the borders of the scene with the white knight and Mary's backstory is shown as crayon scribbles, while the Ghost Rider pages are all harsh angles and overwhelming details. I love Lightle's work when he's able to really cut loose and be left to his own devices, and he seems to be a natural pair with Nocenti.
This is a challenging story but it's also a very good one and I'm thoroughly excited to read the finale next issue.
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| Fairy tale romance. |
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