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In
the summer of 2003, the writer I was currently working
on a couple of projects with got the idea for a submission
to Marvel's revived Epic label of comics. This was
supposed to be a forum where creators, known and unknown
alike, could submit ideas and Marvel would choose
which ones they wanted to produce. The guy I was working
with always came up with some grade-A ideas, however
it seemed that everything we'd tried to accomplish
up to that point just ended up disintegrating into
a puff of smoke. I honestly thought that this would
be different however, I had real faith in the story
because it was something that had never been done
with this particular character before. We were going
to turn what was currently (hell, almost always) a
second or third tier character, and give him his grand
opus. Unfortunately for us however, just as I was
about to start pencilling the first few pages Marvel
stopped taking submissions for the Epic project, thus
crushing our dreams and spoiling what would have been
an awesome book. While I don't feel I should reveal
any of the story here (because it's not really mine
to divulge, and communications have currently broken
down between myself and my former partner), I'll show
you some of the sketches and character designs. Here
is what may have been Ghost Rider:End of All Things.
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I don't know if anyone
out there knows this, but Ghost Rider is a character
MIRED in continuity issues. There are about three different
explanations of origins of the character floating around
that people argue over, and the last series featuring
the Ghost Rider ignored all of it completely by just
returning the mantle mysteriously to Johnny Blaze (the
"original" Ghost Rider)who was bonded to the
demon Zarathos, when Danny Ketch (Blaze's half brother),
who wasn't bonded to the demon Zarathos, was
the last character known to possess the Spirit of Vengeance
(Despite he fact that he was "dead" and his
soul was trapped in Hell). See what I mean? It's confusing
already and that's not even mentioning the ancestry
of John Blaze and Ghost Rider. If you really want to
check it all out (and I doubt most of you do) the website
Vengeance Unbound
is a good resource.
Our plan for this story was to take GR and boil him
down to what he was: a person bonded to the "Spirit
of Vengeance." We had a detailed plan to explain
out the convoluted backstory, but we were also going
to avoid confusing people by not delving too far into
said backstory. |
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| The look we were
going for was one that was a little more grimy, or decrepit,
at least in the beginning.The sleeves were torn off of
the loosely hanging jacket. His chains were wrapped around
his interiors instead of just flapping around (I wanted
to have an implied symbolism with those. The chains represent
how he is bound to carry out vengeance for others.)with
lots of the skeleton exposed. In Ghost Rider form we wanted
him to look more "demon" than he ever had before.
We even pushed the spikes he usually has on his jacket
and pants by making them extensions of his skeleton poking
out through his clothes. We were also going to push for
more fire. Having the sleeves ripped and the jacket open
would let us burst fire out of every available open spot.
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| To show you how dedicated
we'd become to this project in such a short amount of
time, I've included the two color studies done by my wife
Amanda Morley over top of my sketches.This one, obviously,
is the Ghost Rider. A color version of Blackheart is a
few sketches down. We were really going to push for a
mood with this project. We wanted to give the character
the dark kind of grim look he'd been missing for quite
a few years. |
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We
were also trying to go slightly more demonic in the
features of the skull. I Morphed the cheek bones slightly,
added more sharp angles and ridges overall, and sharpened
the teeth.
Before we thought about how the
flaming skull looked in color, I tried a couple of different
approaches to how it would stand out well in black and
white. I liked this one in the way that the dark at
the bottom makes the skull stand out and then fade off
into the top as the flames begin to branch off. I think
the colored version kicks much ass though. |
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| For those of you unfamiliar,
this is Blackheart, Mephisto's (Marvel's version of the
Devil) son. At the time, Mephisto was "dead"
so we thought it may be cool to have Blackheart take the
reins and become the ruler of Hell. Instead of just having
the naked demon, we wanted to show him as one who was
mobilizing the forces of evil. We costumed him like a
military dictator. I'm not sure if this would have been
the final costume but it was almost there. |
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This
was a quick sketch I did of Johnny Blaze. Basically
I just took him the next step from where he'd been in
Hammerlane (the most recent Ghost Rider series to see
print. He's a little older, and very haunted. He doesn't
really want the responsibility of being Ghost Rider
but has almost become addicted to it. |
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We were going to
go the opposite way with Danny Ketch. We wanted him
to be a little younger, and have some personality. In
all our research for this project, we came to the conclusion
that Ketch had never really been given much character
on his own.(If any of you out there think I'm wrong
and can point me out some comics that say otherwise
please do). Since we were going to be going to the trouble
of bringing him back from the dead, we wanted to at
least make him worth it.
This sketch was never approved
by the writer before the project ended, so I don't know
if this would have been the Ketch we would have used. |
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