‘Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch’ #2 is a very niche delight

If you were following Danny’s life back in 1992, then this will feel like you’ve got your toys back.

June 21, 2023

If I were to hazard a guess, Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch takes place somewhere near 1992’s Rise of the Midnight Sons. It would have to – it was in that story’s first issue that the mysterious supporting guru Caretaker was introduced.

There is, as with many of Marvel’s current slate of time-capsule stories, a bit of continuity discrepancy. Storied creators have been invited back to take a swing at untold or divergent stories set during their heyday, but doesn’t mean they staked out the perfect spot to place them.

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Here, it’s major Dan Ketch architect Howard Mackie, whose work encapsulates what many consider the best portion of 1990s Ghost Rider – Mackie was building mythology, crafting character-specific villains, and introducing the now-rote concepts of Rider legacy. Midnight Sons was game-changing all on its own, suggesting a much darker and more complex set of horrors for the Marvel Universe.

In Danny Ketch #2, Mackie presents a new force of evil in that vein, as if Ghost Rider’s adventures were so dense with monsters that some were battled and bested without being chronicled. A being called the Broker is going about, tapping the Rider’s iconic baddies and providing them upgrades at the behest of some newly-revealed grotesquery.

What this feels like – what so many of these flashback stories feel like – is the gathering up of a creator’s favorite toys. Mackie has selected Blackout and Scarecrow, has pulled in Caretaker, and has checked in with Johnny Blaze’s carnival-folk family. We spend a little time catching up with Danny’s distant girlfriend, Officer Stacey Dolan. We even – because we’re lucky – get the suggestion that Dan’s motorbike has a mind of its own, showing up just in time to ruin Dan’s social life.

I say lucky because these stories are fun for those who were fans at the time. If you were following Danny’s life back in 1992, then Danny Ketch will feel like you’ve got your toys back, too. Daniel Picciotto’s art even suggests the scratchy art of that era, leaving pencil-roughed artifacts and overt hatching so that this book might look at home next to the Texeira and Kubert issues from thirty years ago.

This sort of greatest-hits storytelling has a troubling double edge, however. These stories are nostalgia bombs, self-celebratory visits to the long ago, which means that new readers looking to understand the Dan Ketch they’re reading over in the contemporary series aren’t going to be so easily wowed. Blackout and Scarecrow, and all the trappings of that old continuity, won’t shine with ‘good-old-days’ charm to the uninitiated.

This means that Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch – and Nocenti’s Storm, and Hama’s Patch, etc, etc – is a niche experience, one that can’t help feel a little pandering for older grumps longing for comics to be like they were back when I was a kid, walking uphill both ways in the snow. That is, it panders to anyone who might try to attempt to place this story in the continuity of 1992.

This second issue is a delight for me, personally. It’s likely a delight for Mackie, and (one hopes) Picciotto. It’s a delight for any kid who spun a spinner rack in the ’90s hoping to find that very specific glowing skull. We can only hope it’s as much a delight for the kid in the comic shop today, discovering that skull for the first time.