Ghost Rider (1990) Annual # 1

"Taste of Power" 

Cover Date: September 1993; On Sale Date: July 1993 

Writer: Howard Mackie; Artist: Chris Bachalo; Inker: Mark Buckingham; Letterer: Richard Starkings; Colorist: Christie Scheele; Editors: Bobbie Chase & Evan Skolnick; Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco; Cover Artist: Chris Bachalo 

In Central Park a gang of men attempt to mug a seemingly homeless drifter. They are in turn attacked and killed by the drifter, who is an amnesiac vampire. By drinking their blood the vampire also absorbs their memories while regaining pieces of his own. On the street outside the edge of the park, Danny Ketch rides past with Seer, a young girl who is acting as a guide. She receives a warning of danger and tells Danny he needs to go into Central Park. Upon entering the park he is attacked by the vampire, who drains some of his blood before he is able to transform into the Ghost Rider. The vampire flees into the park and is pursued by Ghost Rider to Lincoln Center. After losing Ghost Rider in the crowd, the vampire comes across a familiar door and rips it off it’s hinges, revealing a staircase. He’s watched on computer monitors by Ms. Malone, who recognizes him as Carl Blake, also known as Night Terror. Her superior, Mr. Batlin, orders a security team to kill Blake, while Ghost Rider also makes his way down the staircase. 

Night Terror kills the security team and escapes Ghost Rider again by turning into mist. When Blake arrives in the control room he kills Batlin. By the time Ghost Rider catches up Blake has killed all of the people in the facility but one, Ms. Malone. Blake explains that the facility represents a spy organization that he worked for as a freelance assassin. During a mission Blake disappeared and was found a year later as an amnesiac vampire. He had recently escaped from the facility again, killing many of the staff as he left. He now intends to kill Malone and drink her blood so he can learn where his last mission took place. Ghost Rider impales Blake to the wall with his chain while escaping the facility with Malone just before it self-destructs. Outside in Lincoln Square, Ghost Rider meets back up with Seer, neither of them seeing the mist rising from a nearby grate. 

“The Worm Turns” 

Writer: Joey Cavalieri; Artist: Kirk Van Wormer; Inker: Brad Vancata; Letterer: Kurt Hathaway; Colorist: Sara Mossoff 

In Cypress Hills Cemetery during a rainstorm, Ghost Rider fights a demonic woman named Rigor Mortis who can turn things to stone with a touch. The fight ends in an underground mausoleum filled with the eggs of ancient “conqueror worms” that Mortis has to midwife through birth. The chamber fills with mud, which Ghost Rider tricks Rigor Mortis into turning into stone, trapping her. The eggs hatch and die while Ghost Rider walks away. 

Ghost Rider 2099 (1994) # 3

"Search and Destroy"

Cover Date: July 1994
On Sale Date: May 1994

Writer: Len Kaminski; Artist: Chris Bachalo & Peter Gross; Inker: Mark Buckingham & Kev Sutherland; Letterer: Richard Starkings w/ John Gaushell; Colorist: Christie Scheele w/ Heroic Age; Editor: Evan Skolnick; Group Editor: Bobbie Chase; Editor In Chief: Tom DeFalco; Cover Artist: Mark Buckingham

Confronted by a squad of robots piloted by securi-cops, Zero Cochrane launches into an attack with his electro-saw only to find it won't cut the robots' armor. One of the robots slams Zero to the ground and tells him that nothing short of a monomolecular edge can cut through the suit. Just so happens, Zero comments, he has one hand – his fingers sharpen into blades that cut right through the windshield of the suit, severely wounding the pilot. In response, a massive police "street sweeper" barrels down the street while Zero's on board computer alerts him that his reserve power is down to 50%. With no other choice, Zero turns down an alley and runs.

Watching from the police cameras in D/Monix headquarters are two executives, Harrison and Womack. The two check in with the doctors examining the bodies of Zero and the other Hotwire Martyrs. While they can't retrieve any information from Cochrane's fried brain, his friend Warewolf is more or less intact. They induce a memory recall on Warewolf, showing the doctors just how Zero was able to download the secure Singapore Date File from the D/Monix network and the subsequent attack on the Martyrs by the mercenary Artificial Kidz. Womack comments that they still know nothing: the Martyr that's alive doesn't know where the file went while the one that does know is dead. Womack's security system informs him of an online inquiry into one of D/Monix's encryption algorithms, and that the perpetrators are in the process of being apprehended. Womack tells Harrison that he believes there to be a connection between the Ghost Rider and the Singapore File theft; and that they're going to use Warewolf to trace that connection.

Back on the street, Zero takes a wrong turn and comes to a dead-end alley. The cops close in on him, and with his power almost gone Zero barely manages to escape into the sewers. For the brief minute that the police lose their line-of-sight on Zero he implements his solidogram camouflage system that maps a hologram of his human body over his new robot shell. The police pass him up, thinking he's just a homeless man sleeping in the sewer. After they pass Zero goes back up to the street, and a convoy for police cruisers pass him by in route to apprehend his ex-girlfriend Kylie and the amateur hacker Dr. Neon.

At the Bar Code, Zero enters and asks to speak to the bar's owner, Anesthesia Jones. Jones meets with Zero, who asks her for a couple of hours of straight voltage in private. Jones thinks its weird and expensive, but doable. In return for the word on what's happening since the Martyrs were attacked, Jones agrees to Zero's request. The next day, Zero finishes his recharge and decides its time to settle things by first retrieving his bike from police custody. When he exits the back of the bar he immediately sees his friend Warewolf. Both are shocked, as they each thought the other to be dead. Warewolf has no memory of what happened to him after the attack on the Martyrs. Zero takes Warewolf out back and turns off his camouflage, revealing himself to be the Ghost Rider. However, this triggers a transformation in Warewolf, turning him into a monstrous creature programmed to terminate the Ghost Rider.

Ghost Rider 2099 (1994) # 2

"Detonation Boulevard"

Cover Date: June 1994; On Sale Date: April 1994

Writer: Len Kaminski; Artist: Chris Bachalo; Inker: Mark Buckingham; Letterer: Richard Starkings w/ John Gaushell; Colorist: Christie Scheele w/ Heroic Age; Editor: Evan Skolnick; Group Editor: Bobbie Chase; Editor In Chief: Tom DeFalco; Cover Artist: Chris Bachalo

Zero Cochrane, the Ghost Rider, has found the man that killed him a week before: Jeter, leader of the mercenary Artificial Kidz. With his laser chainsaw, Zero hacks off Jeter's limbs, severing his bionic implants from his body, but leaves him alive. Before he can do anything more, the police arrive in a flying convoy. Zero destroys one of the ships before hopping on his cycle, and then disappears into the night via his stealth mode.

Later, the executives of the D/Monix Corporation watch the news footage of Zero, dubbed by the media as the "Ghost Rider" due to his likeness of the 20th century vigilante. The head of the company, Mr. Kellerman, appears at the head of the table as a hologram. He tells one aide, Harrison, that he should see the resemblance of this Ghost Rider to the gang emblem of the Hotwire Martyrs, the group Harrison himself fingered as the thieves of the Singapore Archive disk. Kellerman then gives the order to rectify the situation with unlimited collateral damages.

Elsewhere in Transverse City , Zero's ex-girlfriend Kylie Gagarin sits in the Bar Code, dwelling on Zero and the video file he sent to her before his disappearance. She needs a hacker to find out what's on the file, and is immediately approached by a young amateur hacker named Dr. Neon, who promises he can decrypt the file. As they leave the bar, Zero rides past in stealth mode. His power levels drop to the point where he can no longer use the stealth field, something the Ghostworks warned him about. He needs daily recharges of energy to maintain full capacity; otherwise he'll crash his system. Zero figures out where he needs to go to recharge, but is spotted by the police. Meanwhile, Kylie and Neon arrive at his apartment and begin decrypting the information on the video file.

Zero leads the police onto "Detonation Boulevard", a street held as a constant war zone between two rival gangs. While Zero rides through the onslaught of artillery without a scratch, the police suffer heavy damages. At the end of the street, however, Zero comes to a roadblock, forcing him to turn around. He races back down the street and jumps off his bike to fight the cops. He rips one cop from his car, asking where they were when he was getting murdered. The police call for backup, which arrives as several pod-like war machines.

Ghost Rider 2099 (1994) # 1

"Burning Chrome"

Cover Date: May 1994; On Sale Date: March 1994

Writer: Len Kaminski; Artist: Chris Bachalo; Inker: Mark Buckingham; Letterer: Richard Starkings w/ John Gaushell; Colorist: Christie Scheele w/ Heroic Age; Editor: Evan Skolnick; Group Editor: Bobbie Chase; Editor In Chief: Tom DeFalco; Cover Artist: Chris Bachalo

In the year 2099, three members of the Artificial Kidz, a local gang of mercenaries, ride their motorcycles through Transverse City, a sprawling 20 lane/10 story super-highway that stands between Chicago and Detroit. Surprising to them, a cybernetic warbot on a hoverbike attacks and quickly defeats them. Capturing one of the Kidz alive, the robot asks him for the name of the person that hired them to kill another gang of data pirates called the Hotwire Martyrs. The so-called "Ghost Rider", one Zero Cochrane, thinks back to a week before, when after a theft of some encrypted data files had marked the Martyrs for death. Zero ran, the only one of the four to escape, but was pursued by the Kidz.

Shot in the arm by a poisonous flechette, Zero manages to evade the mercs, though he trashes his bike in the process. Stopping at a payphone, he wires his brain into the data feed and calls his girlfriend, Kylie. Knowing that the mycotoxin in his blood was quickly killing him, he uploads the stolen files to the link and asks Kylie to save it to disc. A second later, Jeter (leader of the Artificial Kidz) approaches Zero, demanding he return the stolen files. Instead, Chochrane uploads his entire consciousness into cyberspace, intending to melt his own brain and leave Jeter with nothing but a fried brain to examine.

Zero then awakens in a small corner of cyberspace called the Ghostworks, where he is brought before several resident archetypes, beings of artificial intelligence that have come to thrive in the data streams. They have managed to rescue Zero's consciousness from oblivion, and in return they bring an offer before him. Concerned with the state of Earthly society, the Ghostworks wishes to erase the information viruses of greed and stupidity from civilization, and they want Zero to be their "antiviral agent". Zero will be their symbol of rebellion, their myth-like figure through which they will start a revolution. Zero accepts, and is sent back to reality. The warbot body, armed to the teeth with ordnance, houses Zero's consciousness. Then, he's turned loose.

Back in the present, Zero is told Jeter's whereabouts by the captured Kidz member. He runs as the cops arrive, seemingly disappearing into thin air. Not long after, at the Kidz camp, the Ghost Rider reappears and quickly takes down the mercenaries. He finds Jeter, who tells him that the hit on the Martyrs was contracted by D/MONIX. He releases Jeter, who asks the Rider what more he wants from him. As a laser-fueled chainsaw emerges from the robot's wrist, Zero replies with one word: "Vengeance."