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Ghost Rider
Variant Cover to Ghost Rider (vol 3). Art by Marc Silvestri.
Publisher Marvel Comics First appearance Marvel Spotlight # 5 (August 1972) Created by Roy Thomas Gary Friedrich Mike Ploog
Characteristics Alter ego Johnathon "Johnny" Blaze Team affiliations Champions Midnight Sons Defenders Legion of Monsters Notable aliases Frank Ryder Abilities Superhuman strength Invulnerability to heat and flame Ability to project regular and ethereal flame Ability to travel between interdimensional realms and along any surface Wields magical chain Rides flaming motorcycle "Penance Stare" Wields shotgun that can produce Hellfire

John "Johnny" Blaze is a fictional character, a supernatural superhero in the Marvel Comics universe. He is the second Marvel character to use the name Ghost Rider, following the Western hero later known as the Phantom Rider, and preceding Daniel Ketch, the second supernatural Ghost Rider.

Contents 1 Publication history 2 Fictional character biography 2.1 The Road to Damnation 2.2 Vicious Cycle 2.3 World War Hulk 3 REVELATION 4 Behind the scenes 5 Christian-themed story arc 6 Powers and abilities 7 In other media 7.1 Film 7.2 Video games 7.3 Music 8 References 9 External links

Following the western comics character to originally use the name, this Ghost Rider first appeared in Marvel Spotlight vol. 1, #5 (Aug. 1972), created by Gary Friedrich and artist Mike Ploog.

The character received his own series in 1973, with penciller Jim Mooney handling most of the first nine issues. Several different creative teams mixed-and-matched until penciller Don Perlin began a long stint with #26, eventually joined by writer Michael Fleisher through #58. This Ghost Rider's career ended when Zarathos fled Blaze's body in issue #81 (June 1983), the finale.

Blaze occasionally appeared in the subsequent, 1990-1998 series Ghost Rider, which starred a related character, Daniel Ketch.

Johnny Blaze, a stunt daredevil, was the son of Barton Blaze and Naomi Kale, born in Waukegan, Illinois. He spent his early years in the Quentin Carnival where his parents starred in a stunt show with Craig "Crash" Simpson. Blaze's family had ended when his mother abandoned Barton and Johnny and took the family's two children.

Losing his mother caused Blaze to repress many of his memories of her and his siblings. When his father died in a stunt, Blaze was adopted by Crash and Mona Simpson. The Simpsons helped Blaze by fabricating his past with the hope that it would be less painful than the truth. Now believing that his real mother was Clara Blaze, who had died, Blaze became an enthusiastic member of the Simpson clan, growing closer to their daughter, Roxanne. The two soon became inseparable and, as they grew older their fondness for one another moved beyond familiar.

Blaze would eventually join the Simpsons into their own traveling stunt show — the Crash Simpson Stunt Cycle Extravaganza. Crash had become a real father figure in Blaze's eyes, and on learning of Crash's life-threatening cancer, Blaze turned to the occult. His studies led him to a spell which supposedly could summon Satan himself. Johnny was unaware that he in fact had summoned Mephisto. Desperate to save him, Blaze sold his soul to Mephisto in return for Crash's cancer to be cured.

Crash Simpson's cancer was cured, although Crash died soon after in a stunt trying to jump over 22 cars. Blaze, still at the mercy of Mephisto, believed he would lose his soul to Mephisto until he was saved by Roxanne. Roxanne proclaimed her love for Blaze, and drove Mephisto away with the purity of her emotion.

Blaze was unaware that Mephisto had bonded him with the demon Zarathos as an act of revenge for not being able to obtain Johnny's soul for himself. Johnny was transformed into a Ghost Rider, a leather-clad skeleton, his head cloaked in a sheath of flame, the night after Crash's death. While Johnny still had his soul, he was forced to punish the wicked and evil upon Mephisto's demands whenever needed.^[1]

Whenever he was in the presence of evil he would transform into the Ghost Rider, to exact the devil's revenge, returning the evil to Hell. Blaze was not completely lost in the transformation however, and would also help the innocent when they were in danger.

As the Ghost Rider, he encountered Daimon Hellstrom.^[2] Johnny later came to work as a movie stuntman for Delazny studios.^[3] As the Ghost Rider, he teamed with Morbius, Man-Thing, and Werewolf by Night.^[4] He lost a motorcycle stunt riding champsionship to Flagg Fargo,^[5] and later came to work as a stunt rider for the Quentin Carnival.^[6]

Eventually, Zarathos would gain control of Johnny Blaze, and the Ghost Rider would become the spirit of Zarathos unleashed. Johnny himself was becoming stronger as well, and the conflicting personalities led to a battle over Blaze's physical body.

Before too long Centurious appeared, stealing Blaze's soul into his soul crystal. Zarathos, weakened from the ordeal used the last of his strength to shatter the crystal, freeing Blaze's soul and many others contained inside of the crystal as well. Before the crystal was reformed, Centurious was absorbed into the crystal. Zarathos followed him into the crystal, freeing Blaze from the curse, restored his soul and ending his time as the Ghost Rider.^[7]

For a while, Johnny became a drifter and then an adventurer. He eventually became the owner of the carnival. In time, he learned of the existence of Daniel Ketch as the Ghost Rider. Believing the new Ghost Rider to be Zarathos, Johnny traveled to New York City to kill him.^[8] Johnny abducted Ketch and battled the Ghost Rider. Johnny became convinced that Ketch was not Zarathos, and aided him against Blackout.^[9] Alongside the Ghost Rider and Spider-Man, Blaze then fought the Hobgoblin.^[10] He also helped Ghost Rider and the X-Men battle the Brood Queen.^[11]

He later teamed up with the new to form the "Spirits of Vengeance". During this time Blaze would again ride a bike with wheels on fire and would sling a hellfire spitting pump-gun. Their mentor Caretaker would later reveal that they were in fact brothers. In the team's first appearance, they battled Lilith and her Lilin.^[12]

Blaze went back to leading his carnival. Despite it being staffed with many powerful entities, it was nearly destroyed in a demonic attack led by the creature Vengeance. The dead, friend and foe alike, were taken by government forces to be dissected. Blaze, with the help of friends, living and dead, breaks into the facility and destroys all the bodies.

A later confrontation with the forces of evil would lead to Roxanne's death. Blaze would later become a demon hunter and hunt down the demons responsible for her death and kill them all.

Starting over, Blaze eventually found a new job as an accountant and a new girlfriend, Chloe. Though free from the curse and with his soul back, Johnny would eventually transform back into Ghost Rider since Zarathos never really left him and had been reconstituting himself from within Blaze.

Johnny Blaze soon found himself constantly pursued by demons of Hell, intent on forcing him to make good on the demonic pact he had made. It was all that the Ghost Rider could do to out-run the evil, but it wasn't enough. Eventually, Johnny was captured and taken to Hell.

The Road to Damnation series, by Garth Ennis & Clayton Crain, finds Johnny Blaze trapped in an endless cycle of torture and escape in the pit. It is here that the angel Malachi appears to the Ghost Rider, offering to free him from Hell with his soul intact, in exchange for hunting down the demon Kazann who has been unleashed upon the earth.

Malachi tells Blaze that the only way he will be freed from Hell permanently is to beat the Archangel Ruth to Kazann, in order to stave off the destruction that she will cause should she fight him. Along the way, Blaze meets a demon, Hoss, who is also in pursuit of Kazann, and offers to help the Ghost Rider since they are after the same goal.

Hoss and Blaze fight with Ruth and she steals his bike, they pursue her in Hoss' Cadillac. When they arrive to where Ruth is Kazann is already free, thanks to the efforts of a corrupt paraplegic business owner named Earl Gustav. Hoss and Ruth fight while Blaze battles Kazann, who lets Johnny know he's been duped by Malachi. As this happens Gustav's secretary, Jemima Catmint, makes her boss recite an incantation that sends Kazaan back to Hell. Johnny thinks he's free, but gets shot in the head by a dying priest (whom he had blasted with hellfire earlier) with a holy bullet and is sent back to Hell. He confronts Malachi who reveals that he tricked Johnny. Johnny threatens to kill him, but is prevented from doing so by Ruth, who kills him herself. Hoss appears, and reveals that Kazann and Malachi were actually brothers, who passed information to each other about Heaven and Hell. Once Kazann escaped from Hell, Malachi needed to find someone (Ghost Rider) to get him back before Ruth, in order to prevent Kazann from spilling the beans about Malachi exchanging secrets of Heaven with him while he was being tortured by angels.

In July 2006, a new ongoing monthly series, titled Vicious Cycle began. Written by Daniel Way with art by Mark Texeira and Javier Saltares, the same artistic team from the 1990 series. The storyline takes place after the Ennis miniseries, and features Johnny Blaze finally escaping hell.

Blaze's escape is a plot engineered by Lucifer himself, as when Johnny escapes from Hell the devil comes with him. During a battle at a gas station, Blaze defeats the corpse of a recently-deceased father that has been animated by the Devil, but after the body is defeated he is confronted by another, who tells him that he will have six hundred and sixty-five more chances to kill him.

Detecting the magical disturbance caused by Ghost Rider's escape, Doctor Strange investigates the situation, but, believing Doctor Strange to be Lucifer in disguise, Blaze attacks him, and for the first time he uses the Penance Stare, debilitating Dr. Strange. It is then that the celestial being Numecet appears and reveals the intent of Lucifer to Blaze.

She tells Johnny Blaze that he is stronger than he can comprehend and is a vital part of Lucifer's plans, as he intends for the Ghost Rider to kill each of the bodies he has possessed. It is revealed that when Lucifer traveled to the mortal realm his essence shattered and spread to recently deceased people—exactly six hundred and sixty-six of them to be precise—each one of them resurrected and imbued with a portion of the devil's strength.

In order to reform his body each one of the human hosts has to die, but they cannot die from suicide as that is a sin and would send the devil back to hell. As each one would fall the remaining will become even stronger as the demon's essence is reconstituted. Ghost Rider must be the one to kill them because, although initially just anybody could slay the bodies, eventually the remaining bodies will become so powerful that only Ghost Rider could kill them.

Numecet attempts to dissuade Blaze but to no avail. He knows that if he had the ability to cross to the mortal realm with Lucifer, he must have the ability to return with him as well. Resolved to force Lucifer into a single body and then drag that body back to Hell with him, Johnny Blaze sets off to destroy Lucifer; as he leaves, Numecet weeps, her tears reviving the catatonic Doctor Strange.

Johnny Blaze angers the Ghost Rider when he tries to save several people and allows the Lucifer fragment they were currently fighting to escape. Later after watching a broadcast on T.V., Blaze decides to go to New York and fight the Hulk, against the Ghost Rider's will. The issue ends with Ghost Rider coming to a halt on his motorcycle in front of the Hulk.^[13]

After attempting to urge the Hulk to stop, Ghost Rider engages the Hulk. Their battle is monitored by Doctor Strange and Mister Fantastic. Dr. Strange believes that Ghost Rider's mystic power is more than capable of defeating the Hulk, even going as far as to call his powers "godlike". However, as it is Johnny Blaze, not Ghost Rider, who is engaging the Hulk, the battle is tipped in the Hulk's favor. At the end of the issue, Ghost Rider regains control of the shared body and rides off because, as Dr. Strange says in the end of the issue, Ghost Rider protects only the innocent, which none of the Illuminati are.^[14]

Recently revealed in issue 19 of the new ongoing series it is revealed through the use of the penance stare on an angel that the Ghost Rider is not a demon ,but in fact an angel.

Roy Thomas, Marvel's editor-in-chief at the time, described the character's genesis

"I had made up a character as a villain in Daredevil — a very lackluster character — called Stunt-Master... a motorcyclist. Anyway, when Gary Friedrich started writing Daredevil, he said, "Instead of Stunt-Master, I'd like to make the villain a really weird motorcycle-riding character called Ghost Rider." He didn't describe him. I said, "Yeah, Gary, there's only one thing wrong with it," and he kind of looked at me weird, because we were old friends from Missouri, and I said, "That's too good an idea to be just a villain in Daredevil. He should start out right away in his own book." When Gary wasn't there the day we were going to design it, Mike Ploog, who was going to be the artist, and I designed the character. I had this idea for the skull-head, something like Elvis' 1968 Special jumpsuit, and so forth, and Ploog put the fire on the head, just because he thought it looked nice. Gary liked it, so they went off and did it." [1]

Friedrich on the above, in 2001:

"Well, there's some disagreement between Roy, Mike and I (sic) over that. I threatened on more than one occasion that if Marvel gets in a position where they are gonna make a movie or make a lot of money off of it, I'm gonna sue them, and I probably will. ...It was my idea. It was always my idea from the first time we talked about it, it turned out to be a guy with a flaming skull and rode a motorcycle. Ploog seems to think the flaming skull was his idea. But, to tell you the truth, it was my idea."¹

Eventually, Marvel did do a Ghost Rider film, as well as a videogame and a line of action figures to tie in with the movie. Friedrich kept true to his word by suing Marvel Enterprises, Columbia TriStar Pictures, Hasbro and the makers of the videogame over profits gained for the use of his character.

Tony Isabella, a comic book writer in the mid-1970s, had written at one time a story arc where Johnny Blaze became a Christian, and in doing so, freed himself of the curse. Isabella said in May 2007, "I’d written a story wherein, couched in mildly subtle terms, Blaze accepted Jesus as his savior and freed himself from Satan's power forever."

Contemporary Christian music Sightings said on the subject, "According to Isabella’s account, the story arc took two years to unfold, and was approved by several editors. But when the story reached the big twist -- and a certain mysterious drifter was going to be revealed as Jesus Christ -- an assistant editor "took offense" and intercepted the issue right as it was about to go to the printer and completely rewrote the story."

Isabella says, "To this day, I consider what he did to my story one of the three most arrogant and wrong-headed actions I’ve ever seen from an editor."[2]

The common theme of the Ghost Rider is a human host who transforms into a flaming-headed motorcyclist with supernatural powers. When riding their bikes, the vehicles can travel faster than conventional motorcycles and can maneuver impossible feats such as riding straight up a vertical surface or across water. In a one-shot comic featuring Dr. Strange and the Daniel Ketch/Noble Kale version of Ghost Rider, it was shown to be capable of riding on nothing but air. This was repeated shortly after Kale started to regain his memories, causing him to alter his suit by sheer force of will, and created an entirely new bike.

Initially when transformed, Blaze's motorcycle would simply catch fire. Later, he could create a cycle made of pure flame (hellfire). Hellfire is a supernatural flame which typically burns the soul and not the body, but also could be used as regular flame. Projecting hellfire as a weapon is his main form of attack. He also possesses supernatural strength and resilience, as well as almost total invulnerability to physical damage. Any damage he does take is quickly recovered, as Ghost Rider is made of pure hellfire, which he can use to immediately regenerate any lost limbs or holes in his body. Ghost Rider's most powerful weapon is the "Penance Stare". When he locks eyes with his victim, he can make them experience all the pain and suffering that they have inflicted on everyone in their lifetime, permanently damaging their soul in the process.

For a time, when Daniel Ketch was the Ghost Rider, Johnny did not have his typical powers. Instead, he wielded a shotgun that fired mystical force-blasts and rode a mystic motorcycle (both somehow empowered by exposure to Ketch's hellfire).

In the newest incarnation of Johnny Blaze as Ghost Rider, another main weapon in his arsenal has been his chain. The chain, much like the rest of Ghost Rider, is made of hellfire given a solid physical substance. Ghost Rider can control the exact movement of the chain with his mind, allowing it to do things normal chains cannot, such as reach vast distances and wrap around enemies without fail. The chain is seemingly unbreakable.

• Ghost Rider was featured in his own film, played by star Nicolas Cage and his young form is played by actor Matt Long.

In the movie, Crash Simpson never adopted Johnny, and Barton Blaze is given his role as the dying father whom Johnny sells his soul to Mephisto to save. Presumably, this was done to avoid the controversial issue of having Johnny's love interest being his own adopted sister.

• The Ghost Rider has his own video game on PS2 and PSP: Ghost Rider.
• In Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, the Johnny Blaze version of Ghost Rider is a secondary costume.
• Ghost Rider also has a cameo appearance in the game Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter. He is locked in a container along with several other Marvel and Street Fighter characters who are locked in containers in Apocalypse's stage.
• Ghost Rider can be seen in the level "Race to the Bugle" in the video game Spider-Man.

• John Blaze is also the name of a song by rapper Fat Joe, including rappers Nas, Big Pun, Raekwon. Jadakiss and Method Man.

• Giant Sized Ghost Rider Reference
• MDP: Ghost Rider - Marvel Database Project
• Marvel Directory entry on Ghost Rider
• The Ultimate Ghost Rider Resource
• International Hero: Magazine Enterprises' Ghost Rider
• Marvel.com Ghost Rider history