The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 688: Ghost Rider #37, May 1993

My first thought on picking up this comic to read this morning was that this cover says everything you need to know about early 90s Marvel "We-wish-we-were-Image" Comics. The shoulder pads.

The. Shoulder. Pads.

Of course, two pages in we're treated to this:

Um.

I was surprised by this issue on a couple of fronts. First is the art by Bret Blevins. I'm usually a fan of his work. His run on The New Mutants late in that series is some stellar comics storytelling, and his designs are wonderful. But here it almost seems like he's either chosen, or been instructed, to do his best Rob Liefeld impression. I can't even begin to figure out the physics of the above panel. Is she sitting on a stool that we can't see? Is the gun made of foam? The other surprise was that the comic, later on, becomes quite philosophical on the subject of vengeance. Though, so was yesterday's comic, by the same writer, almost 3 years prior. Much as I appreciate this kind of thoughtfulness in a superhero comic, it speaks to one of the reasons that Ghost Rider remains a B-list character: he's got one motivation, one trick up his narrative sleeve. And it's hard to sustain something like that over the course of more than 40 years now. How does a character that's defined by being a fundamental force for one particular thing grow?

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 687: Ghost Rider #5, September 1990

When we next encounter the Rider, it's possessing a new host, the conveniently-named Danny Ketch. Over the course of this issue, some of the concerns I brought up about the previous issues are resolved. Ketch, musing upon the nature of the being that inhabits him, notes that it's basically a force for good, and that it never kills, only punishes, the guilty. This is a bit different from Johnny Blaze's understanding of the character, and of that iteration of the character, who purports not to care if it kills innocents or not.

Perhaps this is why we see such characters as Ghost Rider and the Hulk undergo such significant changes in this era of Marvel. Once Bruce Banner gains control over his monstrous alter-ego, or once the Rider becomes more like the Spectre and less a demon, the characters fit more comfortably into a superhero universe, and, indeed, a superhero comic book. The current television version of Ghost Rider, the Robbie Reyes iteration on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., shares some of Ketch's qualities, in that is pays little attention to the innocent. It does, however, kill the guilty, putting the character much more on a footing with the Punisher.

Speaking of whom - the Punisher guests in this issue, and it's an interesting juxtaposition to see two distinct spirits of vengeance, so to speak. One is fueled by his desire to keep anyone from undergoing the pain he endured, a more psychopathic version of Batman in some ways, and one acts as a fundamental law of the universe, punishing those who somehow are "deserving" of punishment. These two takes on the vengeance motif quite nicely sum up a spiritual versus rational take on the nature of reality. If you're a spiritual person, one who believes in purpose, destiny, providence, then there are immutable ethical laws of the universe. If you're a rationalist, then you believe that we make our own ethical strictures, our own best ideas of how to live in the world, and follow them.

I think there's probably something to be said about the three iterations of Ghost Rider, the varied mores by which it conducts itself, and the time periods in which each character comes into existence. But knowing as little about the character as I do, I don't feel quite qualified to comment. One more look at Ghost Rider tomorrow, and then Onward! to something else.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 167: X-Men Chronicles #2, June 1995

I've got much the same thing to say about this issue of Chronicles as I did yesterday's. Though this issue was published as the AoA crossover was winding up, it depicts a moment in the alterna-X-Men's history that sets up the series that we're going to be looking at. This is the tale of both Weapon X and Jean Grey, and Gambit, leaving Magneto's team and taking up the rebel cause for themselves. Between last issue and this one, Sabretooth has somehow joined the team, which may or may not be explained in the series proper. That, honestly, isn't one of the important moments in this team's history, so perhaps it won't be explored at all. As I mentioned yesterday, it's not the whole of the continuity that's important in this crossover. Just the major points. It also speaks to the fact that the AoA is a temporary measure. If it had happened and been a reboot of the universe, rather than a crossover, I'm sure we would have had a Marvel Saga-style series filling us in on all the pertinent historical information.

This, in a nutshell, is my problem with crossovers. They are never going to lead to anything more than a slightly altered (if only for a month or two) status quo. Even supposedly major reboots like DC's "New 52" merely gave us a younger version of the same old universe. I understand the desire to keep things relatively based in "reality," a problematic statement if ever there was one, but imagine the story possibilities if Marvel had taken an idea like Age of Apocalypse, and made it their primary universal continuity for 5 years. Sure, bring back the old Marvel U in the year 2000, but keep this continuity going for a while, just to see how their characters make out in such a different setting. It could be that this is the failing of the corporately-owned superhero: he or she requires the status quo setting in order to be effective. Only a truly well-realized, and fundamentally archtypical, character can exist, and retain continuity, in vastly different settings.

Maybe.

Tomorrow and Wednesday we'll be looking at the two Tales from the Age of Apocalypse specials. Both were published well after the AoA finished, and tell "untold" tales. I'm not entirely sure they narratively preface the main series(es), but as they're afterthoughts to the series proper, we'll look at them now since they're not going to speak directly to those series. Considering what I've been saying about the sparseness of the history presented, it really does feel like there's a lot of prologue to the AoA. See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 166: X-Men Chronicles #1, March 1995

Our second look at the Age of Apocalypse is X-Men Chronicles, which replaced X-Men Unlimited during the AoA. I've often enjoyed Unlimited for its long-format focus on single characters or its varied and generally charming short stories. Chronicles continues to be enjoyable, but this time as a vehicle of history. What makes AoA such an interesting crossover is that it doesn't just involve the present incarnations of particular superhero teams, but moves back into the past as well. Again, I think Hickman's current Secret Wars took a lot from the AoA. The problem is, as of 1995, there were over 30 years of Marvel continuity that had just been rewritten. How do we fill in a gap that big?

The short answer is that we don't. Chronicles gives us a look at one of the fundamental moments in the post-Xavier continuity. We don't need to know all of the particulars of how events that we're familiar with were different. What we need to know is what were the formative moments of this continuity that led us to the moment in which the revamped present series begin. We're dropped in medias res 30 years on. There's just no way we can get all 30 years illuminated. Stick with just a few.

Howard Mackie writes this comic. I've never really been a fan of his work. It's often very derivative superhero storytelling. This is not to say that it's bad. He deploys character very well, he obviously has a love for the Marvel U. It's just his stories seem somehow...lacking. I honestly couldn't tell you why. So much as I liked the history lesson, it seemed a little flat. Which, I've found in my educational career, is how history has always seemed to me. That's probably why I'm not a historian. In history, we can look at moments and create a typology, use one event to explain another, see a causal chain linking through time. This, of course, is not how history actually it. It's just how we see it from a particular ideological point of view. But in superhero histories, the causal events are often intrinsically causal. It's for this reason, or this is one of the reasons, that I argue that superhero comics function on a far more symbolic, mythic level. They unfold with inevitability.

Which I'll be thinking about further as I write my dissertation. But until then, more AoA tomorrow. See you then.