A demonic serial killer is murdering innocent mutants. But what is it about this deadly new villain that forces Wolverine and Ghost Rider to team up? And what buried secret does he share with Wolverine and Ghost Rider’s never-before-seen first meeting? Find out in Ghost Rider/Wolverine: Weapons of Vengeance Alpha #1, written by Benjamin Percy, drawn by Geoff Shaw, colored by Rain Beredo and lettered by Travis Lanham.
Tony Thornley: Welcome to ⌠1980? Maybe? Well, whenever 90% of this story was set, this wasn’t what I expected. And to talk about this A-list blast from the past, I’m joined by our editor-in-chief, Mr. Dan Grote!
Dan Grote: Iâll be frank ⌠Castle, the Punisher, another badass overused Marvel character who was introduced in the 1970s and peaked in the 1990s. This is the first post-Hellfire Gala X-Men comic I read that I didnât like.
Tony: You know, if this was Danny Ketch GR, it would be a Hearts of Darkness sequel!
Bad Nostalgia
Tony: So you say this is the first FoX issue you havenât liked, and while I didnât dislike it completely, I canât disagree with you either. It feels so disconnected, both from the Fall of X and from the main ongoing narrative of Wolverine. This is an especially jarring issue when you consider that Wolverine has been nothing but narrative momentum for, what ⌠the last year? Since X Lives/X Deaths at least. Last issue (which yeah, I know this is technically a one-shot, not the next issue of Wolverine) ended with Logan defeating Beast and declaring he was done with Krakoa.
Then the Gala, and now this.
Dan: The Gala one-shot included a scene of a dying Jean Grey calling out to Logan to âdo what he does bestâ and avenge mutantkind by slicing and dicing some Orchis goons. One would think that would set him on his future path, but instead we have this fairly generic team-up comic where Wolverine and Ghost Rider take on a heretofore unknown villain from their shared past. Nary an Orchis goon to be found. Itâs a very Marvel Comics Present/Marvel Team-Up story.
Tony: The present-day sections, all four or five pages, could have at least had a moment that referred to that, if Percy couldnât have shown Logan stabbing a dude or three first. But itâs kind of glaring that in 40-some pages about 90% are flashback. It feels like more should have been focused on the now â Logan and Johnny hunting, some stuff about Fall of X, and so on.
Dan: Thereâs a throwaway caption-box line in the beginning when we see present-day Johnny Blaze in a hotel room that says, âeven our nations â they fall apart.â I guess that counts, but honestly, just a little bit more is all it would take. âTired. Been on the run for X weeks now. Clawsâve been spotted with Orchis blood ever since. They killed the woman I love. They killed my friends. I wanted to be done with Krakoa. Not like this. The Olâ Canucklehead needs a minute to clear his head.â
Sigh ⌠Larry Hama âŚ
Anyway, the Alpha issue appears to largely be set in a narrow window during the 10-issue period of Uncanny X-Men post-âDark Phoenix Sagaâ when Angel was back on the team and Johnny Blaze was presumably back on the road doing awesome motorcycle stunts like the demonically possessed Evel Knievel pastiche he started out as. It reads like one of the many nostalgia books Marvel has been littering the direct market with of late.
Tony: All the Johnny Blaze stuff before his head lit on fire was so foreign to me. It made me realize that the majority of my Ghost Rider knowledge comes from the â90s and later. Which maybe says something about exactly WHAT nostalgia series they should be publishing.
Dan: Except those have a formula: Pair writer who was on the book at the time with whatever artist Marvel can get for cheap. This is Benjamin Percy, the current writer of Wolverine, and Geoff Shaw, who worked with Donnie Cates on stuff like Thanos, Guardians of the Galaxy and Crossover. And yet this story, so far, reads like nothing more than an issue of X-Men Legends. And honestly, if it were â if it were written by Larry Hama or Howard Mackie â I might be more into it. Would it be a better story? Maybe. But at least it would show Marvel has an interest in keeping its veterans paid.
It all just makes me wonder who this comic is for.
Tony: Yeah, something about this issue felt off, and you hit it right on. The nostalgia-mini train is reaching a critical mass. I mean, Marvel just announced a Daredevil: Black Armor miniseries. Whoâs nostalgic for the Black Armor era? DG Chichester and Scott McDaniel, maybe?
Dan: I ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT ARMOR WAS GRAY. Goddamn evolution of comics coloring!
Tony: I joked about it being a Hearts of Darkness semi-sequel, but anyone could be forgiven for thinking this actually is exactly that! I mean, itâs a Logan and GR team-up to fight a demon. All it really is missing is Howard Mackie!
Dan: I read this comic with the above-the-paywall section of Sktchdâs recent piece about the state of Marvel fresh in my head. How is Marvel supposed to get us excited about the future by playing to the fact that I remember Wolverine and Ghost Rider being cool 30 years ago? You just gave the X-Men line its biggest kick in the pants in four years, and THIS is what youâre doing with Wolverine?
This is especially disturbing coming from Percy, fresh off the culmination of his four-year plans for X-Force and Wolverine. I didnât love everything he did in those books, but goshdarnit that deep-voiced mountain man got to play his long game his way, and this just doesnât feel like that. Maybe he needed the palate cleanser. Heâs entitled to that. He can have a little self-contained story, as a treat. But itâs not for me.
Tony: At least itâs only four issues though, so the diversion is short.
Dan: How the crossover is structured is also bad. Time was, you could break this up between two issues of Ghost Rider and two issues of Wolverine and be fine. But no, we HAVE to have #1s with multiple variant covers to guarantee pre-orders, so we get bookends of âCharacter Name 1 Slash Character Name 2 Colon Subtitle Greek Letter #1.â What fan is gonna remember all that if they ask for it in their pull? âGimme the ⌠what the hellâs it called? Gimme the Wolverine Ghost Rider thing.â Thatâs what theyâre gonna say.
We should probably talk about the actual story and art at some point, but itâs crazy how much this comic feels like Everything Wrong with Marvel NOW.
Tony: As in Marvel currently, not the Marvel NOW! Initiative, aka the strongest recent era of Marvel Comics in the past ⌠20 years. But yes, on to the story.
Flesh Statues
Dan: One day, a demon-possessed kid and his social worker show up at the X-mansion hoping Charles Xavier will take him in. Charles reads his mind and realizes the child, Bram, is not a mutant but something supernatural. Realizing he wonât find a home there, Bram lashes out. This demonic energy summons Johnny Blaze, the first modern Ghost Rider, to the scene. They fight for a split second before realizing they have a common enemy and begin to investigate. X years later, murders with a similar profile spring up, and Logan and Johnny separately come to the conclusion they need to finish what they started.
Tony: I JUST realized that Percy named the creepy kid Bram. A demon kid, not a vampire kid. I mean, if you wanted to be on the nose with character names, wouldnât Regan or William (after William Peter Blatty) have been more apt? I mean, normally I wouldnât think much of an homage name (unless itâs in Gotham City), but with horror, I feel like youâd need to consider the sub-genre first.
Dan: TIL that William Peter Blatty wrote The Exorcist. Also, speaking of homages, in the right light, I get big Will Byers-from-Stranger Things vibes from this Damien-from-The Omen knockoff.
Past Wolverine feels out of character. Way too angry, way too berserker-y. Would he honestly tell Colossus during this period, âYou can shove that king up your steely assâ? Yes, the berserker rage was more of a thing back then, but by this point in X-Men Logan had some level of trust and camaraderie with the rest of the All-New, All-Different team. Except maybe Warren. But thatâs why Warren didnât stick around long in his second go-round.
Also, the Ghost Rider-Wolverine misunderstanding-based fight seems even more superfluous than usual. But such is the nature of superhero crossovers.
That all said, for as much as Iâve been railing against nostalgia, I did like the moment where Nightcrawler bamfs into the kitchen looking for ice cream and then bamfs out, at which point Kitty Pryde phases through a wall to confirm that Kurt had taken the last of the good ice cream. That was charming, classic mansion hijinks.
Hey, I have a question: I havenât read Percyâs Ghost Rider series. Any good?
Tony: It takes a lot out of the Supernatural playbook. Itâs incredibly dark and unsettling, as Johnny solves supernatural mysteries. I like it quite a bit, and I think itâs probably Percyâs best Marvel work.
Dan: I do appreciate that this book doesnât assume Iâve been reading Ghost Rider. That said, my complaints stem from a feeling that it isnât rewarding me for reading Wolverine, so maybe Iâm a hypocrite.
Tony: Like I said, I didnât DISLIKE this, but itâs so out of place in the scheme of what Wolverineâs been for so long, and the other Fall of X stories. I think six months ago, we might have been raving about it. After almost a full year of looking forward, this was so backward looking. It doesnât help that somethingâs off about Shawâs art. Itâs been a minute since Iâve seen his work, but itâs shifted from his normal, slightly gritty, slightly cartoony style into something that just feels like Deodato.
Dan: Oh my god, YES! Mike Deodato meets Bryan Hitch. Totally.
X-traneous thoughts
- Bramâs viscera statues look like the twisted version of the Warring Triad you have to fight before you get to Kefka at the end of Final Fantasy VI. I didnât peg Ben Percy for a JRPG guy.
- And they reminded me of the descriptions of the protomoleculeâs victims in Leviathan Wakes. Either way, great body horror.
- Always nice to see Stevie Hunterâs name dropped. Hey, isnât she a congresswoman now? What does she think about all these Orchis shenanigans?
- Love that as soon as Xavier realizes Bram isnât a mutant he tries to foist him on one of the other Illuminati. âStrangeâll take him, he loves that weird demon stuff.â
- Thing is, Strange TOTALLY would have taken him.
- âKid stunk like a steaming pile of sulfur.â Dude, your best friend smells like a steaming pile of sulfur.
- The coloring on the candles Logan fetches from the attic make it look like Xavierâs about to light a giant birthday cake.
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. Heâs also very humble.
Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, heâs a newspaper editor, and by night, heâs ⌠also an editor. He co-hosts The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.
