Issue(s): Ghost Rider #33, Ghost Rider #34
Cover Date: Dec 78 - Feb 79
Title: "...Whom a child would destroy!" / "The boy who lived forever!"
Credits:
Roger McKenzie - Script
Roger McKenzie & Don Perlin - Plot
Don Perlin - Penciler
Don Perlin - Inker

Review/plot:
This book practically becomes an all Perlin vehicle, as he picks up inking on top of his recent addition of co-plotting, and of course penciling. These are Roger McKenzie's last issues. Next issue is a Jim Starlin fill-in and then Michael Fleisher will take over (and Perlin will stop getting co-plot creidts but will continue to draw and ink).

This is a bizarre story. It starts with Johnny Blaze stranded in the town where Bounty Hunter left him last issue, except now there's a crazy prospector in the town.

The prospector, Woody has wound up with wish-fulfillment powers.

The person he got the powers from has been sending agents to retrieve them, and Woody originally thought Johnny was one of them. But while they're talking some more agents arrive, coming from a giant spaceship.

And of course they are on motorcycles.

And they turn out to be cyborg things.

Ghost Rider is offended by them, calling them abominations. So he takes the fight to their boss, who turns out to be a boy in a bubble.

From there we get into some Twilight Zone stuff (It's a Good Life).

The boy in the bubble was born back in the days of pilgrims, i guess, and his mom was killed as a witch, although it didn't work out for her killers in the end.

But he's really a mutant, and he's kept his father (and mother, sort of) alive all these years while he's enjoyed his godlike powers and tried to find a way to get out of his bubble.

Can you believe that the blurb on the back of my Essentials trade of these issues touts Professor X as one of the guest stars appearing here, entirely because of the above panel?

Ghost Rider escapes to battle Bubble Boy, but poor Woody gets turned into a tree.

An explosion caused by the battle destroys the spaceship and seemingly ends the threat of Bubble Boy.

This story almost seems to be designed to allow Perlin to draw whatever the hell he wanted: Wild West prospectors, spaceships, cyborg bikers, X-Men, etc..

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Takes place soon after the end of issue #32. I'm treating the picture of Cyclops and Professor X as "conceptual" and not listing them as characters ("Guest starring Doctor Strange, Professor X and more!", my ass!). The Johnny Blaze and Ghost Rider personalities continue to become more and more distinct...

...so i am going to begin listing Zarathos as a separate character appearing.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Essential Ghost Rider vol. 2