Digging through the stacks…
My local library’s less than two blocks away, and, not surprisingly, I’m a regular visitor. Every couple of weeks I’ll look through the graphic novel shelves to see what’s new (and how amazing is it to live in an era where that’s a normal thing, a library stocked with comics? When I was a kid, my library had one Doonesbury collection and a few paperback collections of Peanuts and some of those awkwardly reformatted superhero comics printed in black and white with one or three panels crammed onto each page).
Also in the not-surprising category is the fact that my comic buying outpaces my bookshelf space, so the library’s a great way to check out those books that might not earn a permanent space in my collection. Over the weekend, I picked up two Epic Collections from Marvel Comics, nice, 500-page books that reprint about twenty issues’ worth of comics at a clip, the perfect size for kicking back on the couch or carrying around on my morning commute.
The second book in my stack is n collecting the late 1990s/early 2000s run of that title. I haven’t read these in a while, but just looking at the first covers takes me back to that “I don’t know when the next issue’s going to hit my local comic shop, but it will be worth the wait” era of the book, keeping up that sporadic shipping schedule established by Kevin Smith and Joe Quesada at the start of the Marvel Knights era for DD. I’m sure the first two-thirds of the book will be just fine, but I’m really looking forward to the final six issues of this collection, the start of the Brian Michael Bendis/Alex Maleev run that redefined the character for the new millennium. Bendis might say that he followed Kevin Smith’s lead, and subsequent creative teams may cite Frank Miller or Nocenti/Romita Jr. as their inspiration, but Bendis/Maleev set the tone for everyone who’s followed—Ed Brubaker, Charles Soule, Chip Zdarsky...it all comes back around to Bendis.
The first book, one that I dug into yesterday, is the first Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch collection, Vengeance Reborn, reprinting the first dozen issues and a bunch of early crossovers starring the 1990s Ghost Rider. While I was a post-college adult, already living in my current city, establishing my grown-up life (as grown-up as you can be when you’ve got “cartoon” in your job title, I guess) when I first read those Bendis Daredevil comics, I hadn’t read these Ghost Rider comics in about thirty years, so these took me back to a very different place.
The second Ghost Rider (third, if you count Marvel’s old west character from the ‘50s), Danny Ketch, made his debut in spring 1990, as I was wrapping up eighth grade and wondering what high school had in store for me. Anxieties, teenage angst, feeling that it’s time to put away my childish things but still hanging onto Marvel Comics...that was the perfect time for Danny Ketch to pull up with his hellfire-powered motorcycle and flaming skull, in an angsty, edgy origin story by writer Howard Mackie, penciler Javier Saltares, and inker Mark Texeira, whose gritty brushwork would set the tone for this Ghost Rider’s entire eight-year-run (including a ton of spinoff titles, too).
It’s a nineties Marvel Comics. Maybe the most nineties of the nineties Marvel Comics. Angst and darkness and death and chains and leather and vengeance and babes and no smiles or jokes within a hundred miles of its jagged panel borders. The obligatory early-series Spider-Man guest appearance is nowhere to be seen, but Punisher’s here for a two-parter as soon as possible after Ghost Rider’s origin story. Wolverine’s here for an eight-parter in the pages of Marvel Comics Presents. Vengeance on top of vengeance on top of vengeance.
Reading these again feels like unearthing a high school diary. Darkness, edginess, misery... I can see what appealed to teenage me, and the craft is still there, especially Mark Texeira’s artwork, but—and I’m taking this as a positive thing—the kid who would have listed Ghost Rider as one of his favorite characters is a stranger to me now.
I don’t remember when it was that I burned out (pun intended? Probably) on Ghost Rider, but about three years into that title’s run, with its companion title Spirits of Vengeance, a spinoff line of horror characters called The Midnight Sons, three monthly Punisher titles and regular specials and graphic novels and annuals, and even the Avengers, Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man went down that grim and gritty path...nobody seemed particularly happy or well-adjusted in those comics, bringing to mind that quote from High Fidelity: “Do I listen to pop music because I'm miserable or am I miserable because listen to pop music?”
I lost track of Danny Ketch’s story about thirty years ago. Did he ever break the curse that bound him to Ghost Rider? Did he find whatever it was that he was looking for? Did he talk to a therapist about his sister, about his guilt, about Moon Knight? I hope so. I choose to think everything worked out, and that he rode off into the sunset one last time—on a ten-speed—and that he got that happy ending he deserved. Ride on, Danny Ketch. Ride on.
