Oh, this series is drawn by Adam Kubert. Joe Kubert was a true comics legend, one of the best in the biz for decades, the founder of a well-respected school for comics art, and still doing strong work into his twilight years. His sons, Andy & Adam, became stars themselves, some of the biggest names at Marvel that didn’t jump ship to Image (I’ve read this is because their pay crept up to 7 figures to keep them in-house, the 90s were insane). Andy was a frequent fill-in artist for Jim Lee on X-Men (Ended up drawing Gambit’s first appearance despite Lee being his co-creator), and took over when Image happened, inheriting the best-selling comic in the industry. Adam would go on to succeed Marc Silvestri on Wolverine, but I guess not immediately if he’s doing this. Mackie writes, Bill Reinhold inks, Gregory Wright colors. Mackie managing to maintain control of Ghost Rider across 2 titles is kind of impressive, really. Blaze wakes up from being briefly unconscious and start shooting, and that goes into a 2-page spread of everybody fightin’ everybody.
I guess Blaze must be the POV character in this series, to better differentiate it from the main book. The explosion and resulting fire buys Blaze, GR & Venom some breathing room, but also sends the Deathspawn skittering in the opposite direction with Spidey, Doppelganger, Hobgoblin, and the priest. Ghost Rider says they can’t abandon Spider-Man, and Venom says those guys can’t kill Spidey if he can’t, so they sort of all want to go help. Sort of.
Venom and the fire guys argue and 90s tough guy posture across a rather ahead-of-its-time 2-page layout, then Venom uses his power to kind of cloak himself in shadow and stalk off after them, warning the others to stay out of his way. Then, in a very confusing turn, Ghost Rider just finds Deathwatch’s body on the ground. Apparently Hag & Troll were trying to bring him back from the dead. They also apparently escaped in the confusion after Blaze blew up the tunnel. Then one of those Deathspawn guys yoinks Deathwatch’s body out of GR’s hand and into a big, dark hole.
Another weird sequence from Kubert. We cut away to some Ghost Rider subplot business, including a woman with no eyes like a mannequin?, and then back to Blaze, GR & Venom.
So tuff! So 90s! They run off after Venom to discover he’s found a bunch of homeless people the Deathspawn have kidnapped to feed on. Both Venom an GR pledge to help them, and in a rather hilariously self-aware bit of business, one guy asks what makes them any different from the other monsters. Then we see all the other main characters stuck to a wall like they’re in Aliens, Spidey suggesting the good guys cut loose the priest and leave the others. Venom immediately tries to kill hm, but GR restrains him and tells him he’d better choose between his vendetta and saving these people. Then Hag & Troll show back up, and it’s once again fightin’ time.
Kubert sure is eager to do weird stuff with his layouts. That Venom with sunglasses and a smoke is pretty funny. It’s all-but impossible to imagine how they can wring 2 more issues out of this, but I guess we’ll see.