{"id":17079,"date":"2023-05-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-19T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=17079"},"modified":"2022-01-24T22:29:12","modified_gmt":"2022-01-25T02:29:12","slug":"spirits-of-vengeance-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2023\/05\/19\/spirits-of-vengeance-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Spirits of Vengeance 6"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Not to be outdone by Web\u2019s Tex cover this month, here was have Kubert painted over by the great Ken Steacy. His extremely vibrant work always stuck out to me as a kid. I first saw his paintings on the covers of Ghostbusters comics, of all things. All that said: pretty gross. But this kind of foolishness is what the 90s are all about! When we say \u201cthe 90s,\u201d I guess it really means roughly 1988-1996. The over the top nonsense, the \u201cImage look,\u201d began to fade in favor of a less absurd and more manga-influenced direction led by Joe Madureira. By 1998, the industry may have been in the toilet, but comic art started to be less embarrassing again. Anyway! Page one, Venom is coming for Ghost Rider for allowing Spider-Man to escape, and this splash is from the inside of Venom\u2019s mouth. Then it\u2019s into a 2-page layout of them fighting. Kubert is clearly having fun. Ghost Rider makes the point that Spider-Man was busy protecting innocent people, but big V ain\u2019t hearin\u2019 that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That\u2019s interesting. Ghost Rider\u2019s vaguely Christian superpower having an unforeseen effect on an alien is fun. The exchange takes more out of GR than Venom, who\u2019s all set to press the advantage until Blaze is holding a gun to his head, just having appeared in frame impossibly and people tend to do in the 90s. But Venom sends some of his other into the trigger to prevent it from firing, so Blaze just pulls a knife and stabs Venom in the shoulder, and gets swatted across the room for his efforts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Blaze\u2019s tough guy routine is one of the more absurd in all the 90s comics I\u2019ve sampled, and he had some stiff competition. We cut away to some subplot business that\u2019s no concern of ours for a page, and then, somewhat to my surprise\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He\u2019s not done yet! And lucky for everyone else, because they\u2019re now all stuck to big nondescript slabs with some nondescript green stuff around an altar with Deathwatch\u2019s corpse on it, and Troll is getting ready to do a ritual or whatever. He exposits about Deathwatch and the connection he, Hag, the Deathspawn and other villains have to him, and all that, but that\u2019s none of my business, this is not a Ghost Ride blog. Then all the Deathspawn dive into the body, I guess partially reanimating it, enough for Deathwatch to get up and feed on the heroes and Venom. But, you know\u2026 lucky for them\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What a bizarre choice of shots for Spidey yoinking Deathwatch off that platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 Wacky. Ghost Rider\u2019s only concern is keeping Deathwatch from regaining his power, and Blaze is just a regular guy who talks like a 12-year old\u2019s idea of a cool guy, he\u2019s been badly beat up and can\u2019t do much, so he makes the decision to free Venom. Venom\u2019s idiotic vendetta means he has to fight Hag & Troll before he can fight Spider-Man, so everyone\u2019s on the same side for now. So, GR wraps Deathwatch in his chain and tells Blaze to shoot it with his evil gun, which he does, and this somehow creates \u201ca continuous circuit of hellfire\u201d around Deathwatch, trapping the Deathspawn inside of him. I am really ready to stop typing about these guys. Blaze then easily tackles the fleeing Hag & Troll at the same time, and they just lay on the ground while he holds his gun on them, no problem. This issue is clearly running out of pages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Before the fire boys can do anything, the Guardsmen show up and sonic cannon Venom into submission. Blaze lights a celebratory cigarette (Don\u2019t smoke, kids, it\u2019s as dumb as Blaze), and the adventure is over. All that\u2019s left is another sideways last page. What\u2019s the deal with these, Adam?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Johnny Blaze apparently still lives with the carnival he used to do motorcycle tricks for? I dunno. I don\u2019t care. Even as a kid, I thought this character was silly. And, I would learn later, so very different from how he was in the 70s, when he was Ghost Rider. But, that was a pretty wild 4-issue brawl, I\u2019ll give them that. Next month, we return to Spectacular Spider-Man for more anger, more brooding, and more sadness!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not to be outdone by Web\u2019s Tex cover this month, here was have Kubert painted over by the great Ken Steacy. His extremely vibrant work always stuck out to me as a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[1572,1573,419,1458,560,275,1569,163,415,1310,2,1571,1570,409],"class_list":["post-17079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-adam-kubert","tag-bill-reinhold","tag-demogoblin","tag-doppleganger","tag-ghost-rider","tag-gregory-wright","tag-hag","tag-hobgoblin","tag-howard-mackie","tag-johnny-blaze","tag-spider-man","tag-spirits-of-vengeance","tag-troll","tag-venom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17079"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17088,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17079\/revisions\/17088"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}