Western Marvel Firsts - Ghost Rider!

In the late 60's Marvel was feeling its oats. It seemed like success was around the corner with nearly every concept they launched. The groundbreaking Fantastic Four, the wildly successful Amazing Spider-Man, the remarkable runs of Thor and Iron Man and even revivals of Captain America and the Sub-Mariner seemed to be finding a footing. They'd tried magic with Doctor Strange and they'd had success with the Western in Rawhide Kid and Kid Colt, so why not marry the two. And better than that, they had access to a ready-made character and the creator who fashioned him.

Dick Ayers was a reliable part of the Marvel machinery, able inker on Jack Kirby and increasingly important as pencil artist on Sgt.Fury and elsewhere. So someone thought it natural enough to dust off an Ayers western hero called the Ghost Rider. Ghost Rider had been published originally by Magazine Enterprises, a now defunct competitor. But somehow it seemed that that the character was available. So Gary Friedrich and Dick Ayers made a new Ghost Rider, but one very like the original. This Ghost Rider was originally a dude named Carter Slade who came west and quickly learned he was out of his element. He ended up being tended by an Indian medicine man named Flaming Star who for some reason became convinced Slade was destined to adopt a traditional Indian role of the Ghost Rider. Slade as Ghost Rider became something of a predictable western superhero type and battled many colorful baddies.

(Reprint of Ghost Rider #1 with new Gil Kane cover.)

Later when Johnny Blaze took to the roads on his flaming hog, it became necessary to change "Ghost Rider" to first "Night Rider" and later "Phantom Rider" to avoid confusion (too little too late I suspect). The debut Ghost Rider story appeared in the Marvel Firsts 1960s volume but to my knowledge none of the other tales have been collected.

There's a lot of Marvel goodness (if not greatness) out there still to find its way into the trade market.

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