This issue is basically just Howard Mackie doing some pretty self-indulgent retconning. The Ghost Rider title got really weird after he left, adding all sorts of bizarre secret history and new ideas to the version of the character Mackie co-created and shepherded for 68 issues. Subsequent writer Ivan Velez, Jr. gave Dan Ketch a bizarre ancestral connection to Ghost Rider, a few new costumes, did a bunch of other weird stuff and then seemingly killed him. This is one of the weirder footnotes in Marvel history to me, as the final issue of the series was part 4 of a 5 part story, and the intended final issue was almost entirely finished, but Marvel canceled the series without publishing it, anyway. The original creative team would finish it up and Marvel would release it almost 10 years later. The premature cancellation is weird, the final issue getting put out way later, even moreso. But, anyway, its been all of 5 months since Ghost Rider was canceled, and Mackie has clearly decided to bring his boy back to basics, as we shall see. Cover credits are wrong this month, as this issue is drawn by Javier Saltares, who did layouts for Mark Texeira in the early days of Mackie’s Ghost Rider and for that series’ final arc, so it’s only fitting. The issue begins with an out of control fire in Cypress Hills Cemetery, where Dan Ketch first became Ghost Rider, out of which springs…
Meanwhile, Spider-Man is swinging around feeling good about not being wanted for murder anymore, and decides he has to work on his rep. So he gets a kitten out of a tree, stops a home invasion and rescues some kids from a burning building. But people still don’t trust him, no matter what. The bad press is too bad.
Well, that seems like no fun. Saltares looks so much better here than he did in Sensational 30. I really think that one must’ve been a rush job to beat a deadline. That’s a dangerous kind of job to take, ‘cuz it can make people think you suck. And to think, most of Sal Buscema’s career was those kinds of jobs. MJ starts walking home, brooding about Jill and her family, when Peter jumps out of a tree and scares her, having just changed out of his work clothes. He’s in as good a mood as she is a bad one, and he leaps them up onto a rooftop in his joy. But he’s not convincing MJ to have a good time, she’s too worried about his still-damaged rep. And then they almost get set on fire. Even though they’re up on a roof, Ghost Rider whizzing by melts cars, lampposts and hydrants in his wake, and almost cooked them if not for a hasty web shield. So, after they usual “I know you have to go” from MJ (Who is now trapped on some random roof?)…
Spidey finds GR’s trail pretty easily, as he’s left a wake of fire across the river, even. And further up ahead, the dismissal of all that happened in GR’s book since Mackie left begins:
Spidey has flipped up onto the safety of a wall, but GR starts begging for help, saying the pain is too great, and Spider-Man sees Ghost Rider has just smashed a hole in the ground to reveal some wouldbe super terrorists who’ve strapped a bomb to a gas main. Our man swings into action, and it’s just 3 dorks in armor, so it doesn’t take him long to put them down. However, there’s still the matter of the bomb.
Dan’s looking a lot less dead than advertised.
The notion that Ghost Rider was “Noble Kale,” and not the demon Zarathos who’d been bonded to both Johnny Blaze and Dan Ketch, was one of the many weird swerves in the GR book post-Mackie. He clearly wasn’t having it. So now he’s got his guy back to one. But I think this was largely ignored, and then they decided to make Johnny Blaze Ghost Rider again for awhile, and eventually King of Hell, even. That’s comics for ya.