Ghost Rider #1

Featuring: Ghost Rider
Release: December 1, 1966
Cover: February 1967
12 cents
Edited by… Stan Lee
Written by… Gary Friedrich and Roy Thomas
Plotted and drawn by… Dick Ayers
Inked by… Vince Colletta
Lettered by… J. Verpooten
17 pages

Previous	#643	Next
Tim Holt #11, Story B	PRELUDE
Sgt. Fury #38	Reading order	Tales to Astonish #88
	Ghost Rider	Ghost Rider #2

It is sheer folly to do battle with a ghost!

Magazine Enterprises is long since defunct. So nobody owns the character of Ghost Rider we met in Tim Holt #11. The co-creator Dick Ayers is now a Marvel regular, so Marvel takes the character and has Ayers revive him.

Of course this means Marvel, now owned by Disney, owns the character of Ghost Rider and will for all time.

Ayers would attempt to return to his character in the ’90s, adding some new covers to the old stories, but they had to call him the “Haunted Horseman”, as they had no rights to the name. Because of the world we live in (or at least the country I live in) and laws built to serve corporations and not artists.

Gary Friedrich is a mostly new name to us. This is his first Marvel work. He’s in his early ’20s. He started at Charlton and we saw his work with Steve Ditko on Blue Beetle over there. He’ll become a prolific writer over the decades.

Gary has no relation to Mike Friedrich, who will be starting work at DC soon.

The letterer John Verpooten is also new to us. He’s just started as a regular at Marvel, working on staff. He’s here for behind-the-scenes stuff, and we’ll start seeing him occasionally as a letterer, and soon enough as an inker. He’ll spend a decade with Marvel until his untimely death in 1977 at the age of 37.

Giving Ayers a plotting credit is part of a general trend we are seeing of recognizing artists for their plotting contributions.

Though Thomas would much later claim that credit was false, and the plotting was entirely done by Friedrich and himself.

While the name and likeness are lifted directly from Ayers’ 40s hero, this is a different character with a different origin. The original Ghost Rider was Rex Fury. This issue introduces Carter Slade.

Carter Slade is a school teacher from Ohio, come west to teach when he runs afoul of Indians. Except they turn out to be white men disguised as Indians. Slade is shot and left for dead.

A child named Jamie lived in the house that was raided, and both his parents were killed.

Slade is rescued by real Indians and the medicine man Flaming Star sees in Slade the fulfillment of a prophecy. The man who will ride the night winds.

Flaming Star tells of a shooting star from which he’d gathered the stardust to make a glowing cloak, which he now bestows upon the man he believes to be the intended champion of the Great Spirit.

He also offers a horse, too wild for the braves to tame. But Slade played polo back East, so has no issues. He names the horse Banshee.

Slade takes on the identity of Ghost Rider. He uses the stardust to make his costume and horse glow. He also uses other trickery the comic promises to explain in a later issue to mimic other ghost effects. He can separate his head from his body, bullets pass through him, he can float…

Only Jamie will know his secret.

The setup is the standard setting for many a western tale. The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed settlers to claim land out west if they would farm it. But ranchers had taken advantage of the open land for their cattle grazing. And this created tension between the cattle ranchers and farmers.

The homesteaders include Ben and Natalie, who we will meet again. Though we don’t learn their surnames here.

The rancher and his goons are disguising themselves as Indians to scare off the homesteaders. But they are about to meet something scarier: the Ghost Rider.

Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot.

Carter adopts Jamie and they rebuild his destroyed parents’ house into their new home.

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We’ve been trying to read Marvel going back to 1961. But we’ve focused on the superhero comics. Skipping the westerns, girl comics, and weird tales.

The weird tales were short one-off stories in anthologies.

But there were two ongoing western characters when FF #1 hit: Kid Colt Outlaw and Rawhide Kid. Another title Two-Gun Kid had recently gone on hiatus. We have met Two-Gun Kid as well as the new Two-Gun Kid, introduced in 1962.

There were also ongoing girl comics: Millie the Model, Patsy Walker and Hedy Wolfe, Kathy, and Linda Carter Student Nurse. Linda’s title was short-lived and canceled in 1963. Patsy and Hedy both just lost their title and have gone into comic book limbo until they are revived in another decade.

Millie and the three western heroes will continue late into the 1970s. It was just too much to cover for this little blog.

This is the first new western title since we’ve started. I decided to read it for a few reasons:

• The big one is it’s not that many issues, so isn’t a burden like the hundreds of issues of Millie would be.
• The character will show up in later Marvel superhero comics (though that’s also true of all the other characters).
• The namesake of the character will be very important in Marvel comics.

So here we are.

Rating: ★★★☆☆, 53/100
Significance: ★★★☆☆

Introducing a new character and title would usually earn a 4-star significance rating, but this doesn’t really introduce Ghost Rider. He’s a blatant copy of the 1940s hero. And this Ghost Rider isn’t as significant to the Marvel Universe as the next character of that name will be.

Characters:

• Carter Slade/Ghost Rider
• Jamie Jacobs
• Flaming Star
• Banshee
• Jason Bartholomew
• Ben
• Natalie

Minor characters:

• Blackie

Story notes:

• Carter Slade a teacher from Ohio, come west, when he is apparently killed by Indians, though they are really white men in disguise.
• Jamie Jacobs is a boy whose parents had been killed by those same raiders.
• Slade and Jamie are rescued by real Indians.
• Slade doesn’t think primitives know anything about medicine; maybe he was saved by the Great Spirit for a purpose.
• There had been a prophecy the spirits would send a man who will “ride the night winds”.
• Flaming Star tells the story of the Cloak of Brightest Night. He had once climbed a mountain to commune with gods and found the dust of a falling star, which glowed. He made a cloak of it, to share with the promised warrior to come.
• Flaming Star leads Slade to a magnificent white horse, but the braves cannot rope him. So Slade uses his polo experience to try. Slade is a horse whisperer.
• Slade names the horse Banshee after his unusual neigh.
• Slade agrees to take care of Jamie.
• Slade realizes he can cover his clothing and his horse with the stardust to make them glow.
• Slade becomes Ghost Rider.
• Other trickery allows his head to seem to separate from his body.
• Only Jamie will know that Slade is Ghost Rider
• Jason Bartholomew behind the attacks on settlers. He wants to claim all the land to build a cattle empire.
• Bartholomew has a henchman named Blackie. The standard name for criminal henchmen.
• Bartholomew thinks he is right and the government should not give grazing land to sodbusters.
• Bartholomew wants to make sure the school doesn’t open, as it will attract more “nesters”.
• Bartholomew’s men burn the schoolhouse disguised as Indians, but the settlers see through the disguise. Blackie takes Natalie as a prisoner.
• They suspect the illegal land baron Bartholomew is behind it, but can’t prove it.
• Ghost Rider appears as a ghost to warn Bartholomew and his men. They try to shoot him, but he claims to be immune to bullets.
• Ghost Rider appears to float.
• The men flee to turns themselves in. Bartholomew is still not convinced and shoots the Ghost Rider, but bullets again seem to have no effect.
• Bartholomew is convinced to surrender to federal marshals.
• Carter and Jamie agree to rebuild his folks’ place and live there.

Previous	#643	Next
Tim Holt #11, Story B	PRELUDE
Sgt. Fury #38	Reading order	Tales to Astonish #88
	Ghost Rider	Ghost Rider #2