Issue(s): Ghost Rider #36
Cover Date: Jun 79
Title: "A demon in Denver!"
Credits:
Michael Fleisher - Writer
Don Perlin - Penciler
Don Perlin - Inker
Roger Stern - Editor

Review/plot:
Michael Fleisher begins his run with this issue. If it hasn't happened already, this is the point where the Ghost Rider book stops being a book about a hero who fights to control his demon side and use its powers to help people and just straight up becomes a book about a monster. Like any ongoing monster book, the monster's victims are usually "deserving" of their fate, but the real appeal of the book is just seeing the monster being terrifying.

The book opens up with the Ghost Rider delivering a (mild) punishment to a truck driver for speeding.

And then he proceeds to tear up the streets of Denver just because.

Of course the other appeal of the book is the awesome motorcycle stunts.

The rest of the book is Ghost Rider terrorizing some local toughs because they were jerks to Johnny Blaze in a diner. Johnny Blaze himself is a fast mover with the ladies. He meets a dancer at the diner and, after the toughs fight him for talking to her, gets invited back to her place.

If only it wasn't for the dancer's dog-in-the-manger of a sister and her kidneys.

It's on the way to the hospital that the toughs from the diner attack again, and Blaze transforms into the Ghost Rider to terrorize everyone, including his date.

She eventually convinces him to stop tormenting everyone and take her sister to the hospital, which he does. But needless to say, not the best first date and she won't be seeing him again.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Essential Ghost Rider vol. 2