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| Cover Artist: Bret Blevins |
Published: April 1993
Original Price: $1.75
Title: "Transformations In Pain"
Writer: Howard Mackie
Artist: Bret Blevins
Inker: Fred Fredericks
Letterer: Janice Chiang
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Editor: Bobbie Chase
Editor In Chief: Tom DeFalco
SYNOPSIS
In a Hell's Kitchen homeless shelter, a downtrodden man is visited by a ghostly woman that drains all of his strength. As she leaves she mentions that Dan Ketch is for her while Ghost Rider is for another, which prompts the hiding Calvin Zabo to comment to himself that Ghost Rider belongs to his alter ego Mr. Hyde.
Meanwhile, Danny and the Caretaker are observing the skeletal Suicide, who is slowly regenerating his body after it was vaporized. Caretaker mentions that Dan needs to find Heart Attack and Death Ninja, both of whom vanished after the previous night's battle. Danny leaves to get some rest and exits Caretaker's room into an alley. He again runs into the girl Adrienne, who had nearly videotaped his transformation the night before. When she leaves, Dan is visited by the ghostly woman, who calls herself Succubus. When she touches Dan, it triggers his transformation into Ghost Rider, which prompts her to flee so she can feed one more people to regain her strength. Ghost Rider collapses and transforms back into Dan, not knowing how the transformation was triggered. Dan tries to find the door to Caretaker's room, but it has disappeared.
Back at the homeless shelter, Succubus attempts to feed on another man's life force, but is stopped by Matt Murdock, who is there delivering canned goods to the shelter. When she escapes he changes into his Daredevil costume and gives chase. Inside the shelter, Succubus feeds on Zabo, triggering his transformation into Mr. Hyde. He throws Succubus through a window into the alley where Daredevil is searching, then busts through the wall. Dan drives by on his motorcycle and sees Hyde chasing Daredevil, who is carrying the unconscious Succubus. Debris from the fight knocks Dan off his motorcycle, and he's saved from Hyde's grasp by Daredevil, who recognizes him as Ghost Rider's human host. Succubus makes her way to the fallen Dan and grabs him, triggering the transformation again and again as she attempts to take his life force. Daredevil attacks Succubus, allowing Ghost Rider to have a brutal fight with Mr. Hyde, which ends with Hyde receiving the Penance Stare and Succubus being knocked unconscious. While Daredevil helps the weakened Danny escape the arriving police, Succubus crawls to the defeated Hyde to siphon away his strength. She states that her mission is to drive a wedge between Ghost Rider and Dan, which will send them both to her master, Nightmare.
ANNOTATIONS
Suicide was reduced to a skeleton by an AIM weapon in Ghost Rider (1990) # 35. Despite the Caretaker's assurances that he'll be needed as an ally, this issue marks Suicide's last appearance until 2011's Wolverine: The Best There Is # 1.
Succubus makes no further appearances after this issue and her relationship with Nightmare, who Ghost Rider and Danny last encountered in Ghost Rider (1990) # 30, remains unexplored.
The Caretaker's disappearing room is actually the Nightclub of the Blood, which we see next in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 13.
Adrienne, the photographer who first appeared in Ghost Rider (1990) # 35, makes no further appearances after this issue.
The Danny Ketch Ghost Rider will encounter Mr. Hyde one last time in Ghost Rider (1990) # 55. Many years later, Mr. Hyde will encounter another Ghost Rider, Robbie Reyes, in All-New Ghost Rider (2014) # 5.
Ghost Rider and Daredevil met previously in Daredevil (1965) # 295, which is where Daredevil learned that Danny Ketch shares a body with Ghost Rider.
REVIEW
This issue is the backbone of the Era of Abandoned Plots as we get three, count 'em THREE, characters who were introduced and never heard from again.
If anything else can be said about this period in the title's life, it's that Mackie wasn't afraid to throw shit against the wall to see what stuck. Unfortunately, by this point nothing was sticking because his plots were being reconfigured with each new issue to accommodate the marketing department's desire for Ghost Rider's origins to be explained. I'm sure he had grand plans to revisit Suicide and Succubus but they got tossed aside in favor of the Blood and (ugh) the Medallion of Power nonsense that was coming up in short order. This issue at least pays lip service to Mackie's long-simmering idea that a war for souls was coming, with Caretaker pulling in unlikely allies (or more likely cannon fodder) like Suicide just as Mephisto was doing the same over in the Spirits of Vengeance sister title. The Centurious reveal was coming up in a few issues time, and had the writer stayed the course maybe something really memorable and exciting could have been produced.
Ideas for what might have been won't save this issue, though, because it's a straight-up hot mess. Ghost Rider and Danny are just ricocheting from one threat to the next without any time for a breather, coming across a multitude of villains that are less interesting than the ones before them. Death Ninja and Heart Attack have given way to the Succubus in this issue, and she's even more of a cipher than her predecessors. Apparently she works for Nightmare and wants to sever the connection between Dan and Ghost Rider, I guess just for revenge on Nightmare's part? It makes it needlessly frustrating when every villain introduced is referring to "HIM" without using names and said "HIM" is a different person each time. Sometimes "HIM" is Centurious, sometimes "HIM" is Mephisto, other times "HIM" is Zarathos, and now "HIM" has become Nightmare. Roping poor Mr. Hyde into this story is a waste as well, since it does nothing but compare less than fondly with the last time Ghost Rider fought that villain. Daredevil serves little purpose and is the worst kind of guest-star, the one who's only there because he happens to be walking by the fight. He at least has a reason to be at the church, though, which makes it only slightly better than next issue's hysterical Archangel team-up.
The worst part of the issue has to be the artwork, though, and it pains me to say that. Bret Blevins is an incredible artist, his work on New Mutants and Sleepwalker was great in so many ways, but he's got two things working against him here. One, I think he's terribly mismatched on this title, it has none of the quirky charm of Sleepwalker nor the teenage angst and antics of New Mutants, instead he's locked into drawing uninspired superhero stuff. When he does get to do something creepy or unsettling, such as Suicide's skeleton regenerating, it just doesn't have the oomph that the sequence calls for. The second thing hindering him is the totally unflattering finishes by Fred Fredericks, who makes every line look way softer and blobbier (is that a word? it is now!) than it should. All that said, though, the fight between Ghost Rider and Mr. Hyde is pretty great, with GR getting more and more messed up throughout, including his jaw hanging by only one hinge by the end.
This is by far the worst issue of the series to date and it depresses me greatly to see how far the book has fallen in the last year.
Grade: F
