Ghost Rider (Johnny Blaze) - Publication History

Publication History

Johnny Blaze first appeared as the Ghost Rider in Marvel Spotlight #5 (August 1972). He was created by Roy Thomas, Gary Friedrich, and artist Mike Ploog. He received his own series in 1973, with penciller Jim Mooney handling most of the first nine issues. Several different creative teams mixed-and-matched until penciller Don Perlin began a long stint with issue #26, eventually joined by writer Michael Fleisher through issue #58. This Ghost Rider's career ended when Zarathos fled Johnny's body in issue #81 (June 1983), the finale. Johnny occasionally appeared in the subsequent 1990–1998 series, Ghost Rider, which starred a related character, Daniel Ketch.

Thomas, Marvel's editor-in-chief at the time, described the character's genesis:

I had made up a character as a villain in Daredevil—a very lackluster character—called Stunt-Master... a motorcyclist. Anyway, when Gary Friedrich started writing Daredevil, he said, "Instead of Stunt-Master, I'd like to make the villain a really weird motorcycle-riding character called Ghost Rider." He didn't describe him. I said, "Yeah, Gary, there's only one thing wrong with it," and he kind of looked at me weird, because we were old friends from Missouri, and I said, "That's too good an idea to be just a villain in Daredevil. He should start out right away in his own book." When Gary wasn't there the day we were going to design it, Mike Ploog, who was going to be the artist, and I designed the character. I had this idea for the skull-head, something like Elvis' 1968 Special jumpsuit, and so forth, and Ploog put the fire on the head, just because he thought it looked nice. Gary liked it, so they went off and did it.

Friedrich on the above, in 2001:

Well, there's some disagreement between Roy, Mike, and I over that. I threatened on more than one occasion that if Marvel gets in a position where they are gonna make a movie or make a lot of money off of it, I'm gonna sue them, and I probably will. ...It was my idea. It was always my idea from the first time we talked about it, it turned out to be a guy with a flaming skull and rode a motorcycle. Ploog seems to think the flaming skull was his idea. But, to tell you the truth, it was my idea.

Ploog recalled, in a 2008 interview:

Now, there's been all kinds of dialog about who was the creator of Ghost Rider. Gary Friedrich was the writer on it. ... The flaming skull: That was the big area of dispute. Who thought of the flaming skull? To be honest with you I can't remember. What else were you going to do with him? You couldn't put a helmet on him, so it had to be a flaming skull. As far as his costume went, it was part of the old Ghost Rider's costume, with the Western panel front. The stripes down the arms and the legs were there merely so I could make the character as black as I possibly could and still keep track of his body. It was the easiest way to design him.

Blaze returned in a six-issue, 2001 miniseries written by Devin Grayson; a second miniseries written by Garth Ennis in 2005; and an ongoing monthly series that began publication in July 2006.