Ghost Rider #1 (May, 1990)

By Howard Mackie, Javier Saltares and Mark Texeira



Welcome to 1990. Marvel recently found people were buying books for the art, not the writing. So they let all their writers go and just had editors write the books. Howard Mackie is infamous in my mind for an extended run of terrible Spider-Man comics, for which I will likely never forgive him.

His Ghost Rider, on the other hand, is pretty decent. Maybe the dialogue could be cleaned up here or there. I realize it's important to his origin that he has blood on him when he finds the motorcycle, but how many times does he need to say that aloud to remind us?

Saltares is a capable artist, but it's really Texeira's dominating inks that define the look and feel of the issue. And that look is dark. Lots of shadows. Which fits with the fairly dark and violent script, which is what makes the comic so '90s. It does have the Comics Code on the cover, but it is not clear that means much of anything,

Generally speaking, Ghost Rider is pretty cool-looking, from the splash page where he appears, through the end. The classic look has been updated well. The fire comes off well, contrasted against the dark backgrounds.

This is an interesting moment in Marvel's history, when it was again trying to come out with new concepts. The fact that most of its new concepts are just revamps of existing concepts is because none of these creators are quite Kirby or Ditko. But it was a time for experimentation and innovation.

The story is this. Wimpy Dan Ketch and his bad-ass sister Barb are in a cemetery at night when they stumble across some kind of gang war, between some of Kingpin's men, and some red ninjas who are presumably the Hand. The ninjas are led by Deathwatch. Deathwatch can see your memories by touch, and takes pleasure in watching people die.

Deathwatch is one of many characters from the era whose name can be formed from a game. Take a word like "death", "dead", "night" or "blood", and append another word. This gives you Bloodshot, Youngblood, Deadpool, Bloodwulf, Deathcry, Nightwatch, Night Thrasher, etc. etc. etc.

Interestingly, Deathcry has repented her warrior ways and now goes by Lifecry.

Anyways, Barb gets shot, Dan gets blood on him, touches a mystical motorcycle and becomes Ghost Rider, Spirit of Vengeance! What if any connection he has to Johnny Blaze is not yet clear, and will be explored later in the series. He raves about the innocent a lot, uses his "penance stare" to make people feel guilty, gets in a car chase with the police, and reverts to human after disembarking his flaming motorcycle.

Dan's mom seems to be alive for the moment. We already mentioned his sister, but later meet his mom. And a lady who is perhaps his girlfriend. And her father, a police captain.

There's also something about a suitcase that both Kingpin and Deathwatch want. Whatever.

To be fair, it was mostly assistant editors that wrote the bulk of Marvel's lower tier titles in the early '90s. So much so that DC started a policy that editors (assitant or otherwise) could no longer write books, which is why Mark Waid, Priest, Tom Peyer, and Brian Augustyn ended up going freelance.

I'm not that keen on Augustyn, either, but I'd take him above pretty much all of Marvel's assistant editor writers from the '90s. (The exception, I guess, would be Len Kaminski, but technically, he was working as a proofreader.)

I'm going to skip over a few #1 comics of the era. A new Namor series by John Byrne appeared the month before Ghost Rider, but it doesn't quite fit in with what I'm going for here, and I really wanted to begin with Ghost Rider. The month following Ghost Rider saw the debut of a Black Knight miniseries. We'll skip this as well. In part because I had a Black Knight thread on the old forum I hope to one day resurrect.

Guardians of the Galaxy #1 (June, 1990)
by Jim Valentino and Steve Montano



I'm only going to review this one issue for the thread, I think. I almost skipped it, but it fit in too well, as Jim Valentino was also part of the Image migration, going on to creatre Shadowhawk. In some part, this thread is a look at the prehistory of Image, which went from somewhat ignoble beginnings to perhaps the best comic publisher today, putting out books on par with the heyday of Vertigo. Jim Valentino is not a man whose work I know well, so I appreciate insights by the readers.

He takes on both the writing and art duties here. When the assistant editors aren't writing the books, the artists are.

The issue opens with an unmotivated action sequence and heavy narration to introduce the characters, typical of many stories of the era. We will later learn they are on a quest for the legendary shield of Captain America. We learn the team consists of Starhawk/Aleta, Nikki, Charlie-27, Martinex, Yondu, and Major Vance Astro. All classic team members.

They fight a villain called Taserface.

That... is apparently not an ironic name. Y'see, he blasts a taser from this face. "There is reason why I cam called Taserface!" he boasts.

...

The story of the issue isn't much (though I like the basic premise of the quest for the shield) but Valentino seems to be on the better side of the early Image artists. His style is of the time, round boobs and heavy cleavage for the ladies, muscles lines and other detail lines for the men.

I'm a big fan of the recent Guardians of the Galaxy film, so I did enjoy seeing Yondu whistle to control his arrow in the issue.

The issue ends with them confronting the Stark. Taserface had weapons resembling Iron Man's, and we see he is part of a gang of aliens with armor resembling a whole host of 20th century armored heroes and villains. It will be a recurring theme of this series, the references to the 20th century Marvel universe.

Don't give Valentino much credit for the art. The LCS owner of the shop I frequented at the time was a friend of Steve Montano's. He showed me a couple of snapshots of what Valentino's "pencils" looked like. Calling them layouts would be generous. Whereas Liefeld drew people so hands and feet were hidden or off panel, Valentino would leave such things for the inker to do, as well as arms, legs, facial details, musculature, backgrounds...the finished page was usually 80-90% Montano's work, which is why when Valentino left and West took over, but Montano stayed as inker there was a lot of continuity in the look of the book, it was still mostly Montano's work, just not the page breakdowns/panel layouts. 

-M

New Warriors #1 (July, 1990)
by Fabian Nicieza, Mark Bagley, and Al Williamson



The New Warriors were introduced in Thor #411-412. I thought about reviewing those issues, but they were cover-dated December 1989 and this is a thread about the '90s. Tom Defalco and Ron Frenz are credited with the New Warriors concept.

This issue is set before those issues, though it was released 6 months later.

Of the editor-writers of the era, Fabian Nicieza is the one I have a soft spot for, perhaps because of the age I read his work. But I was glad, for example, that it was he to succeed Busiek on Thunderbolts. While Kurt is the more skilled writer, Nicieza seems to share his encyclopedic knowledge of the Marvel Universe, and more importantly, seems to share his passion and enthusiams for the characters, particularly many of the lesser-known ones, and that enthusiasm leaks onto the page. Additionally, he has a sense of soap opera and of melodrama that appeals to me. This is refeclted in his work in New Warriors, X-Men, X-Force, etc. I tend to enjoy Fabian Nicieza comics.

Mark Bagley is an artist that I actually love. He was the artist on Spider-Man when I started reading it and would forever define the look of Spider-Man to me. Some point to his odd positions, or the strange juxtaposition of very thin but also very muscular characters. But it always seemed to work. His Spider-Man seemed very fluid and graceful. His art conveyed dynamism and movement, in the tradition of John Buscema. And he knows how to arrange a page to tell a story, to make it flow. And he knows how to do this very quickly, able to put out several books a month. But when he is able to take his time, and has the right inker, I think he can work wonders. Ultimate Spider-Man to me represents just how good an artist Mark Bagley can be.

This is a long way from that. 9 years before Ultimate Spider-Man, Mark Bagley is a promising young talent still learning the ropes. The eyes and faces are already trademark Bagley, but he is still developing his preferred sense of body proportions and how much detail to include. While Al Williamson is a great inker, I am not sure they are well paired. He will do better with Randy Emberlin, and even better with Art Thibert.

Night Thrasher is a character I listed in the same vein as Death Watch, whose name was formed by combining two nouns, one from a very short list of "dark" words: night, death, blood... Choosing the second one is a bit of an art. "Night Thrasher" works better than "Night Pillow", but you get the hang of it soon enough. In concept, Night Thrasher seems to be Batman. Or perhaps, Batman but black. As still have a shortage of minority superheroes, I guess that is a strong enough concept. This series mostly collects classic heroes, but introduces Night Thrasher. And his mentors, Chord and Tai.

Mostly this is a forming-of-the-team issue. We see Night Thrasher gathering his recruits, some by design and some by chance: Nova, Marvel Boy, Firestar, Namorita, and Speedball. They battle Terrax then decide to be a team.

The scene where Captain America rejects Marvel Boy for Avengers membership is something of a classic, in that it gets referenced several times. Captain America will later apologize for it when a similar situation comes up with Rage. And it seemed to motivate Kurt Busiek's take on Justice in his run on Avengers. And we would see echos of this scene, perhaps unintentionally, in Captain America's interaction with the Young Avengers.

The truth is, I recall this series quite fondly and enjoyed this first issue. I wonder how much I will appreciate subsequent issues. It has been many, many years since I have read them.