Despite its promise, the Midnight Sons line wasn’t long for the world. Planned to explore the darkest, most horrific corners of the Marvel Universe, Midnight Sons was born out of the popularity of the 1990 Ghost Rider series, kickstarting four new titles during the incredible Rise of the Midnight Sons of 1992.
Those books – Morbius: the Living Vampire, Darkhold: Pages from the Book of Sins, and Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance – were plagued from their earliest days by iffy storytelling and loose, unpredictable art quality. Incredibly compelling concepts were reduced to their lowest common denominator within months of their debuts.
Marvel
The comics collected in Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch Epic Collection: Siege of Darkness were meant to bring the Midnight Sons books in line as an imprint among themselves, adding Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme and Midnight Sons Unlimited and introducing new ‘dagger’ shaped trade dress to the covers to visually differentiate the books from the rest of Marvel’s output. Instead, Siege of Darkness documents the imprint’s collapse. While Morbius limped along for another year, Darkhold, Spirits, and Nightstalkers concluded with next to no resolution within months of Siege’s final pages.
As with the imprint itself, the crossover had inherent promise. One of the most important villains of the Ghost Rider saga – the demon originally bound to Johnny Blaze in the 1970s series, Zarathos – had been resurrected in the pages of Ghost Rider and Spirits of Vengeance. With decades of historic weight to the demon, he alone could have provided enough dramatic fuel for dozens of issues of those books – he had already conceptually haunted the pages of Ghost Rider since Johnny Blaze’s return in Ghost Rider #14.
Marvel
But the inclusion of the larger Midnight Sons cast implied a need for a larger force of evil; the creators decided to bring back the villain who had necessitated the formation of the Midnight Sons: Lilith, with her endless supply of demonic children. To introduce the ultimate bad guy as a supporting villain for a neglected Big Bad feels distinctly as if Siege of Darkness is trivializing both villains. Further burying their moments in an endless chain of momentary monsters (at the rate of one or two new demons per issue) bleeds the narrative potential for a proper central dramatic force.
All this means that the Midnight Sons are scattered, the team made impotent, even within the pages of their own books; Doctor Strange disappears into the background of his issues presented here. Ghost Rider is forced to share his spotlight – in not one book but two – with Blaze and Vengeance, undermining any interesting personal arcs any of them might have brewing (Blaze had recently been turned into a cyborg; not a single line of dialogue is spared to address the novelty or tragedy of this).
Marvel
The crossover blankets its characters and narrative clarity with a never-ending parade of bad guys, some of whom seem too compelling to be so disposable. Hints at many interesting but never-to-be-utilized concepts and characters – monsters such as the people of dust hint at interesting history in which Caretaker defeated and imprisoned them — leave the reader disappointed at their brevity. Conversely, most of Lilith’s children and, later, Zarathos’ followers, were made so disposable that artists couldn’t be bothered to draw them; they became vague black shapes, devoid of personality and purpose.
Ultimately, Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch Epic Collection – Siege of Darkness documents a boring mess. The central narratives of each title are abandoned in favor of this swamping out of the imprint, erasing the efficacy of their preceding runs. Each character feels wasted, and each issue a chore to complete. The book illustrates yet another illustration of the decay at the heart of mid-’90s comic books, a period prone to narrative bloat and under-considered character.
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