Phantom Rider: Sex Offender

From Mockingbird (2016) # 8

So, last week I posted the Phantom Rider Chronology list, and it was actually a huge coincidence that that very same week Marvel released the eighth issue of Chelsea Cain's Mockingbird series that featured an appearance by the Phantom Rider.  Well, ONE of the Phantom Riders anyway, the only one that people bother to bring up these days.  You don't see much of ol' Carter Slade anymore, and Hamilton Slade caught a case of lead poison back in 2010 (in, yes, a Mockingbird issue).  Why does Lincoln Slade get trotted out as the de facto Phantom in question more than his heroic kinsmen?

Lincoln was the second Ghost/Night/Phantom Rider, taking up the mantle after his brother and original Ghost Rider, Carter, died saving his life.  In a time-travel story from the 1980s West Coast Avengers series, Lincoln became obsessed with Mockingbird, then wife to Hawkeye, and kidnapped her right when her teammates were stepping through their time travel portal.  Using natural herbs and spices, Lincoln brainwashed Mockingbird into losing her memory and falling in love with him.  When she eventually broke free of her conditioning, she confronted Lincoln atop Spirit Peak.  During the fight, he fell off the cliff and she watched him die, fully able to save him but unwilling to do so since he, y'know, mentally and physically (though the last was only implied) raped her.

Lincoln came back as a ghost in the present day to haunt Mockingbird through the late 1980s, she died in the early 1990s, and when she was brought back to life in the early 2000s Lincoln was trotted out pretty quickly as her ghostly arch-enemy.  The Hawkeye and Mockingbird series of 2010 is the story that brought Lincoln Slade back, possessing the body of his great-great-granddaughter Jamie Slade, and it's a pretty great series that I highly recommend. 

From Hawkeye and Mockingbird (2010) # 3

The most recent Mockingbird series by writer Chelsea Cain saw its last issue published last week with # 8, and the storyline that had been running since # 6 featured Lincoln Slade as the villain once again.  This time, though, there was a huge bit of revisionist history introduced.  According to this series, Mockingbird had a consensual relationship with Slade that ended because he got too obsessive and clingy.  She then fought him and allowed him to die by falling off a cliff.  Instead of a rapist, the Phantom Rider was turned into, well, just kind of a dick, and she killed him for it. 

Don't get me wrong, the Phantom Rider IS a huge dick in this series, and the writer treats him as kind of a joke.  However, the story does two things: it makes Mockingbird out to be a pretty terrible person who cheated on her husband and then killed the guy she was cheating with, and it does kinda sorta rehabilitate the Phantom Rider as a character.  Now the guy doesn't have RAPIST stamped across his Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entry, and by association perhaps the more heroic Carter Slade might get some time in the spotlight. 

(Oh, and be sure to check out Cain's Mockingbird series, because it's really, really great).