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| Image copyright MARVEL COMICS |
GHOST RIDER - MIKE PLOOG - a real comic. What's
not to like? I give you - MARVEL SPOTLIGHT #7. ("Hey,
stop shining it in my face, why don'tcha?!") Now that's what I
call a cool-looking cover! I bet he's glad he traded in his horse.
(Yeah, yeah, relax - I know he's a different GR. Incidentally,
excellent choice of initials for a hero, I'm bound to say.)
12 comments:
Agree Kid, love the Ghost rider covers. Although my favorite is not in this series but Marvel team up 15, with Spider-Man as well. Have it slabbed at 9.6.
Terence.
Regarding those 'slabbed' comics, T, does anyone ever crack them open in order to read them? Or are they really only investments by speculators?
I would say not Kid? Especially if the case is in good condition, a great way to preserve it in it's current state then buy a reader to read through it. I do not have many slabbed but bought the Marvel Team up in high nines as I like the cover so much, the rest of my collection I can as you mentioned earlier read and smell as required!
Terence
I always thought the case was only to preserve it in its current state until it was sold, then the buyer would open it to enjoy. Keeping it in the case (and therefore preserved) seems like something only a speculator would do. I think I'd buy a really good copy (cheaper than a slabbed one), plus a cheap reading copy - then that way I'd have the best of both worlds, but at a cheaper price.
Up to the individual but usually they stay slabbed. Of course some people are speculators but also some collectors (with folding) only want the best. As mentioned I bought that one becausce of the cover but would hardly buy it for speculating, I have not checked any recent prices but a 9.6 Marvel team up 15 is hardly going to allow you to retire early if you know what I mean!
Terence
Yeah, but I was thinking in general terms as it hardly seems worth the bother of 'slabbing' a comic unless it's going to enable you to retire early. Surely they should only be slabbed if they're worth loads of dosh, or expected to be worth loads of dosh at some stage in the future. (I think that's where the word 'speculation' comes in.) It would frustrate me to have a comic I couldn't touch, even if I had a spare reading copy. It would be like having a sexy wife you couldn't make love to. What's that? H'mm, my married friends say that's par for the course.
I remember Ghost Rider drawn by Mike Ploog from the pages of Dracula Lives. I'd heard of Ghost Rider before I saw him and when I did finally see him I was a bit disappointed as I thought he'd be riding a horse - somehow he seemed scarier riding a horse than riding a motorbike.
I think Marvel got things backwards with this one, CJ. I'd have left the horse-riding GR as he was, name intact, and called the bike-riding stuntman Skull Rider or Night Rider - perhaps Death Rider. The western GR looked ghostly, whereas the modern one didn't, so the name suited the western one more. (And the image fitted in with the song that 'inspired' him.)
Anyone see Ghost Rider's guest appearances in TV's, "Agents of SHIELD?" After the woeful Nicolas Cage movies, it was a relief to see the character handled properly and, for me at least, it was a bit of a shock that a show like, "Agents of SHIELD," managed to do such a good job of representing him.
I was also impressed by the way that, whenever he needed a chain, in order to dispense righteous vengeance, there was always one lying around handy. I don't think I've ever been in a room where there just happened to be a chain lying around. I don't think HE ever managed to go into a room where there wasn't a chain lying around.
I don't watch Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., SDC, 'cos everyone in it looks at least half as old as me. I don't like being reminded of being practically a coffin dodger. One of my mates speaks very highly of it 'though, and says that GR drives a car, not a bike.
If Ghost Rider was set in the '50s, he'd have been all right for chains as that's how toilets were usually flushed back then. True, he'd have had to hang about the W.C.s and may have gotten a name for himself, but it's a small price to pay for being a superhero.
Ghost Rider can always find a chain when he needs one, just as Bugs Bunny could always find whatever material or equipment he needed for a disguise or a trap.
In First's E-Man comic in the 1980's, there was a spoof of the the TV series The A-Team. They make an armored vehicle out of scrap metal and spare parts, and when someone asks how they found the stuff, the leader laughs, "Oh, we always do."
Presumably, Marvel used "Ghost Rider" since they already had a trademark on that name. Fun fact: a few years earlier, Gary Friedrich created Hell Rider for a short-lived B&W horror magazine published by Skywald.
Yeah, knew about Hell Rider, 'though he wasn't a 'supernatural' character like GR was. The western Ghost Rider was at first re-named The Night Rider, then, later, The Phantom Rider. The modern GR never struck me as being particularly 'ghostly', so another name - like Skull Rider - might have been more apt.
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