I’ve noticed a trend recently in our little corner of comic fanfiction: there are a lot more writers trying their hand at Ghost Rider than I’ve ever seen before in our community. Most likely due to the recent feature film, this surge in popularity for the Spirit of Vengeance is a mixed blessing.
Let’s face it; Ghost Rider is not an easy character to write. I should know – I’ve personally failed as many times as I’ve succeeded when it comes to him.
From Johnny Blaze to Dan Ketch (and now back to Blaze again), the Ghost Rider has long been my favorite comic book character, starting during the excellent early-80’s run on the series by Roger Stern, J.M. DeMatteis, and Bob Budiansky. I consider myself to be something of an authority on the Spirit of Vengeance, having run a fansite (Vengeance Unbound) for the past five years, but by no means does that make me an expert on how he should be written. He’s a character with possibly the single greatest visual design of any in the medium, and he’s full of potential when it comes to mating the genres of horror and superheroes. However, he’s also a character that has, over the years, become strangled by his own convoluted continuity. He’s a character that’s withstood three major origin stories, each different than the last, and several incarnations that are quite literally mind-boggling to the uninitiated.
And it’s that respect that divides the use of the character in fanfiction, broken down into two distinct categories on how he is approached. The first of these two is one that attempts to embrace the oft-times confusing history of the character in a direct continuation of what’s come before. Barry Reese has attempted this numerous times, most notably in his Ghost Rider U.K. series for the Pendragons line and his current Ghost Rider series at Marvel 2000. Mike Hintze started a similar series recently for the new Marvel Knights site, and hell – I even did it myself once for Strange Tales. But there’s an inherent problem with this approach: unless you spend an immense amount of time explaining the back story, readers will come into the series blind and deaf, literally tossed into an ongoing mythology that in no way can be summed up briefly or easily. It becomes a hindrance instead of a boon, and most writers – including myself – fall into the trap of trying to make sense of what’s come before instead of forging ahead with new interpretations.
But that brings us to the second division of approaches: the revamp. Usually involving a new, original host character for the demonic Ghost Rider, these titles – whether they be straight “Ultimate” style revamps or continuations that simply decide not to reference past events – are usually the ones that work the best. When asked what my favorite Ghost Rider fanfiction works are, I find myself pointing to ones in this second category, such as Mike McGee’s Ghost Rider 1957 (currently being re-posted for the first time in several years at Strange Tales) or Meriades Rai’s series at Marvel Omega. These are the stories that dare to brave new avenues and approaches to the character without bogging themselves down in the back story, obviously making them much friendlier for readers that are not well-versed in the character’s history.
Ultimately, what writers sometimes fail to realize with Ghost Rider is that the character’s greatest asset – his unique visual appearance – is absent in a prose environment. Many years ago, I made my first attempt at writing the character at Marvel Dark Design in a series that fell into the second category explained above, featuring an “Ultimate” style take that starred Frank “Punisher” Castle as the Ghost Rider’s host. I wasn’t a very good writer at this point, and while I received accolades for the concept the actual writing was pretty horrible…and it all came down to me trying to fit both approaches to the character into one series. Yes, it was a revamp of the character, but I filled the stories with references and nods to previous stories by other writers, and it failed miserably. I’ve been lucky enough to get the opportunity to try the series again at the recently launched Ignition branch of Avengers 2000, and I hope the lessons I’ve learned about the character over the last few years have made it as good and accessible as possible.
But who knows? Maybe I’m still falling prey to my fanboy sensitivity to the character and trying to both have my cake and eat it to.
-- Chris Munn
Vengeance Unbound – http://ghostrider.omegacen.com