Ghost Rider: Four on the Floor

Comic Info

Ghost Rider (Limited Series) #1 Variant

Reprints Ghost Rider (Limited Series) #1-5 (January 2017-May 2017).  Robbie Reyes finds “Eli” is getting harder to control.  As the Ghost Rider begins to take over more aspects of his life, Robbie discovers the hiring of a former ex-con gang leader named Ramon could lead to danger for the garage and his neighborhood.  Meanwhile, the Totally Awesome Hulk has accidentally unleashed an unknown creature in Los Angeles with the ability to absorb powers.  With Hulk, Wolverine, and Silk trying to track and stop the creature, the absorbing of Ghost Rider’s powers could mean creating an unstoppable enemy.

Written by Felipe Smith, Ghost Rider:  Four on the Floor is a Marvel Comics limited series collection.  Following the Secret Wars limited series Battleworld:  Ghost Racers, the series features art by Danilo S. Beyruth.

Robbie Reyes doesn’t do much for me as Ghost Rider.  It isn’t necessarily the characters, but the stories.  In the attempt to keep Ghost Rider a “local hero”, it feels like repetition of the same story:  Robbie tries to keep control of Ghost Rider while battling gang members (kind of some of my same issues with Punisher…who often just fights drug dealers over and over again).  This story is even worse in the fact that Ghost Rider feels like a guest star in his own series.

Ghost Rider (Limited Series) #4 Variant

Ghost Rider is kind of the framework of the story, but the real story seems to be about Hulk’s battle against the very Venom-esque organism that gains the powers of those it bites.  The series in general feels like a showcase for the “next-gen” comic book characters by adding “All-New” Wolverine and Silk to the roster of Hulk’s team (along with Agent Coulson and May from S.H.I.E.L.D.).  While Ghost Rider fits in with this next generation team, he isn’t really brought into it and just happens to cross paths with them a few times.  As a result, it feels like Ghost Rider is sidelined in the story.

The series is also a limited series.  By making it a mini-series, I kind of expect more from it.  To necessitate a stand-alone series, I feel it needs to big bigger and bolder than simply a Ghost Rider storyline.  A similar technique was used for Venom in the 1990s and it kind of feels like it diminishes the character by making repeat attempts by having a new first issue every few issues.  If “Four on the Floor” was the first storyline in a new Ghost Rider series, I’d feel a bit better about the lack of character development and action.

Ghost Rider:  Four on the Floor is a pretty poor storyline.  It never feels like any of the players involved in the story ever get to really develop into rounded characters (even if Hulk, Wolverine, and Silk are just guest stars).  The series needs to do better to develop the Reyes character (simply putting him in shows like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t enough for a comic draw when comics are so easily cancelled).  I hope that future stories will be more developed and less of a showcase for other heroes.

Related Links:

All-New Ghost Rider 1:  Engines of Vengeance

Battleworld:  Ghost Racers