Let's just say you're a little girl. And say you are alone and in danger.
And say that the only super hero around to save you...is Ghost Rider.
Like, seriously, how terrified would you be if you saw this lunging at you?
Image taken from Ghost Rider #35 by Jim Starlin, reprinted in Ghost Rider Annual #2, available in fine comic shops everywhere.
I am so into Jason Aaron's run on Ghost Rider. I urge everyone to jump on board.
Jason Aaron, of course, being the very talented writer behind the amazing ongoing series Scalped, along with the Vertigo mini-series The Other Side. He also recently completed a brief-yet-awesome run on Wolverine.
Ghost Rider is a character that I have always liked, but have never really found the books to be particularly awesome. The nineties kind of left a bad Ghost Rider taste in my mouth, because I will always associate the character with comics that look like this:
Yeah, that aged well.
Aaron completely understands what is awesome about the character, and it should be pretty obvious: he's a flaming skeleton on a motorcycle. This character should be in a comic book which is fun.
So he's taken Ghost Rider and basically set him in a grindhouse movie. We learned at the end of Daniel Way's run that Johnny Blaze was not in fact cursed by Satan, as he had always believed. Instead, he's been a tool of a rogue angel. So now Johnny is looking to ride into Heaven and kick some angel ass. But along the way he is running into all sorts of crazy stuff, including a bunch of nurses with machine guns:
I can't think of a single reason why someone wouldn't like this comic. It's fun, it's crazy, it's violent, and the art (by Roland Boschi and then Tan Eng Huat) is great too! Plus, Aaron has taken over the letters column, which makes for good reading as well. I especially liked this excerpt:
I'm not even exaggerating: Ghost Rider is now one of my favourite comics. I just enjoy reading a comic where I am constantly giggling and shaking my head in disbelief.
And, hey, it just so happens that I interviewed Jason Aaron for The Dollar Bin when I was at HeroesCon in June. I would like to say that this was done live at his table in the middle of the convention hall, so it was a little noisy. And I had to make up the questions on the spot. So forgive me if I sound nuts. You can listen to the interview here.
And since I am promoting Jason Aaron-related things anyway, y'all should check out the messageboard he runs, along with fellow awesome creators Brian Azzarello, Brian Wood, Cliff Chiang, Jock, David Lapham and G. Willow Wilson. It's called Standard Attrition and you can check it out here. Y'know, if you like talking about stuff on the internet. With comic fans. I dunno if you're into that sort of thing.
Over at the Invincible Super Blog, Chris Sims is having a contest to celebrate the most nineties-looking covers of all time.
Although you basically can't top any cover in the Marvel 2099 universe, I feel that issue #15 in the oh-so-90s Ghost Rider/Blaze Spirits of Vengeance series is a pretty good representation of the era:
Yep. That's a lot of pink.
It doesn't glow in the dark. It glows in the day.
What If?, for those of you who may not be giant nerds, is an on-again, off-again series from Marvel comics, filled with tales of alternate realities and hosted by the cosmic-powered, blue-toga'd Watcher. The Watcher's entire race are bald, emotionally detatched voyeurs in blue togas who observe other civilisations for no discernable reason* and are not adverse to telling easily-illustrated tales of the wonders of the cosmos.
The series filled two major needs: firstly, it had about a hojillion artists, and each of them got to draw the Watcher as he or she had always envisioned him, from concerned alien baby:
To grotesque, horrifying alien baby:
But more than merely a vehicle for the apparantly burning need of all comic book artists to draw their own radical new type of alien baby in a blue toga, What If? allowed comic book writers free reign: as all of the stories were set in alternate dimensions, all bets were off. Mostly, this involved taking some major or minor event in Marvel continuity, putting a new spin on it, and killing off as many characters as logically possible, from a dead Iron Man in a story about the Hulk going nuts, to a pretty cool little yarn where giant snake gods eat literally everyone on earth.
But as cool as it always was to see how Captain Britain was going to get killed off this issue, the really great thing about What If? was when it suddenly veered off at right angles and gave you something like this:
Ghost Rider getting ready to sacrifice Pope John Paul II. I don't even remember why anymore. I'm just glad I saved the picture.
JOHN APPROVED
*Note to any comic book nerds that may read this post: Earth X was a shitty reimagining of the Marvel cosmology, and I choose to ignore it, so there.
Living Between Wednesdays is a place for people who love comic books and superheroes.
