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Title Character
Cosmic Ghost Rider
Formerly The Punisher of a universe where Thanos killed literally every other living being. Upon his death, he made a deal with Mephisto, becoming the Spirit of Vengeance, then received the Power Cosmic on top of that from Galactus, although he and Galactus were defeated by the Mad Titan. He then became the Black Hand of Thanos before being killed by the Silver Surfer. He was then 'escorted' out of Valhalla by Odin and sent back in time. It's a lot, we know.
- The Atoner: Frank's made A LOT of mistakes from the time he made a deal with Mephisto onwards. So he gets Odin to send him back in time, so that he could fix his mistakes and find a measure of redemption (Death says that it's hopeless for him, but Frank just tells her off). However, after this, he admits to his younger self that he believes that they deserve punishment.
- Ax-Crazy: Both more and less so than usual - more, in that he's more obviously nuts, but less in that he's actually come to terms with who he is a lot better than present-day Frank and doesn't always want to just resort to killing. While Frank is not very sane in most universes, this one is completely off his freaking gourd as a result of first wandering the barren Earth as Ghost Rider for several centuries with no one to punish, acting as a Herald of Galactus for who knows how long, then spending millions of years with Thanos, who enjoyed his Penance Stare. Per Cosmic Ghost Rider #1, some of it is also down to the fact mortal minds - even those as skewed as Frank's - aren't meant to handle those powers. Indeed, Frank refuses having the powers back when he decides to leave Valhalla… but Odin returns them to him regardless. He also notes later in the series that the longer he's in Hellfire mode, the odder he gets.
- Beware the Silly Ones: He's crazy enough to earn the comparisons to Deadpool, cracks wise a fair bit, and is generally fairly kooky. Oh, and he tends to forget about his powers. However, if he turns off/is stripped of the Hellfire, he is shockingly lucid and capable of removing a dead god's nose with a broken bottle or leading an all out an assault on Hell. Even with the Hellfire, he reminds the alternate future Thanos, who he raised and who turned into a tyrant, just who and what he really is by delivering a brutal Curbstomp Battle.
- BFG: Frank seemed to have rubbed off on ol' Galactus, because when they were a team, Galactus would wear a raggedy olive cape a la Hope Summers and wield a gun the size of a skyscraper.
- Breakout Character: Of the 2016 Thanos series. He ended up getting two solo miniseries out of it and went on to temporarily join the Guardians of the Galaxy.
- Canon Character All Along: He was introduced as a "new" character taking on the legacy of the Ghost Rider. While his role as Rider is new, fans surely know Frank Castle for a long time.
- Chain Pain: This version of the Rider carries a chain made from the Crimson Bones of Cyttorak. It's so tough that not even Thanos can break out of them.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Out of his mind and hilariously so, getting lampshaded comparisons to Deadpool. He is certainly by far the oddest version of Frank Castle you'll ever see.
- Composite Character: He's a version of Frank Castle who made a deal with Mephisto to become Ghost Rider, then swore to serve Galactus as his new Herald and attained the Power Cosmic, and finally went into servitude of Thanos himself becoming the Black Hand of Thanos.
- Curbstomp Battle: On the receiving end of one from Hela, thanks to being dead, and the Fallen One version of the Silver Surfer. Conversely, he hands these out to one of the most powerful teams of 616 Avengers and to an alternate version of Thanos.
- Deal with the Devil: Actually made four of these. First it was Mephisto - a dying Frank gets to be the Spirit of Vengeance and has the power to kill Thanos in return for Frank sending evil people to Hell in mass quantities. Next he makes a deal with Galactus - become a Herald and gain the Power Cosmic in return for handing over the Earth. Then he makes a deal with Thanos the Final King - he serves as Thanos's Black Hand and he'll have an opportunity to kill more evil-doers than Frank had ever imagined. Finally, he makes another deal with Mephisto to sell his soul and become the Ghost Rider again, in exchange for getting Cammi's back.
- Death Is Cheap: In a short time since his debut, he's already died and come back twice. And that's not including his death as the Punisher, which started his new career.
- Did Not Think This Through: Along with the aforementioned Sanity Slippage, this Frank Castle's decision making skills have greatly suffered as a result of wielding two sets of powers mortals weren't meant to have (and being hundreds of millions of years old), which he's explicitly stated affect his mind - especially if he's in Ghost Rider mode for too long. This is demonstrated when he goes back in time to kill a baby Thanos but instead kidnaps him with the ultimate decision to raise him. He's called out by both Galactus and Uatu the Watcher who point out that a timeline where the Punisher raises Thanos is not a good one. This produces hilarious results as Frank faces the immediate consequences of his actions due to Time Travel shenanigans.
- The Dragon: To King Thanos, although Thanos didn't really need him. Frank serves more as a recording of Thanos's greatest hits and a glorified butler.
- The Dreaded: The other Ghost Riders fear him for being the most powerful of them all… and for being totally insane.
- Empowered Badass Normal: As the Punisher, Frank was already one of the greatest and most feared Badass Normals the Marvel Universe had to offer. As Cosmic Ghost Rider, he now possesses the powers of a Ghost Rider and a Herald of Galactus - and uses them for ass-kicking.
- Failure Hero: He's almost a poster boy for this because of his Cloudcuckoolander insanity, lack of judgement, bad luck and poor use of his powers. Johnny Blaze calls him out on this when he recruited Frank to do some wetwork for him and failed: "You're totally useless! The only thing you're good at is getting your family killed!" Frank then fails to hunt down Blaze after that cheapshot.
- Fights Like a Normal: He's a cosmic, supernatural powerhouse but he has an overwhelming tendency to default to shooting, stabbing and chain-smacking. Such as when Thanos was getting jumped by the Surfer's Annihilation Wave, and had to tell Frank to stop shooting them and do something hellish. Frank unloaded a hellfire storm that wiped the bugs out and mentioned he keeps forgetting he could do that. When he does get serious (usually when he's not using the Ghost Rider powers), he's much more effective.
- Friend to All Children: He's generally mellowed out a fair bit, but he's honestly much kinder to children than he is to most.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Downplayed. Frank is no genius and may even be dumber than the average person now, but all those eons of hanging around Galactus and Thanos seem to have taught him a few things about technology. In a fight against Captain Marvel, Frank was able to make a Ray Gun with parts that Iron Man left around, using only one hand.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: Spending god knows how long wandering around on a dead Earth made the already questionably sane Frank go completely cuckoo, to the point where you would be forgiven if you thought he was a version of Deadpool than a Punisher.
- The Juggernaut: Frank may have gotten stupider but if he's not up against an upper-echelon Thanos and above, he's practically unstoppable. As he mentions to baby Thanos, he's got cosmic hellfire powers, of course he can kill every alternate-universe superhero out to get him. And he does. He also easily slaughters an alternate version of Thanos who hadn't been empowered by Death or a Cosmic Cube. In an offscreen fight, he decapitates and carries off the head of Eli Morrow, who was possessing the body of a Celestial at the time.
- The Knights Who Say "Squee!": He reacts this way upon meeting Wraith, idolizing him for the exact same reasons that readers mocked the character back in Annihilation Conquest.
- Kryptonite Factor: Brute force doesn't work that well on him as Hulk and Thor found out, but Frank is vulnerable to some supernatural attacks especially if they affect the dead.
- I Hate Past Me: Inverted. The Punisher hates Cosmic Ghost Rider and tried to kill him, once he found out that future Frank went back in time and failed to save their family. For his part, future Frank is merely disappointed at how miserable and misguided his past self was.
- Last of Their Kind: He was the last living thing on Earth and after that he became the sole survivor of his timeline's universe.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Pretty much the basic concept: an elderly Punisher as Ghost Rider wielding the Power Cosmic (and, briefly, the Phoenix Force - before it dumps him for Jean. Apparently because she has better hair).
- Odd Friendship: He considers Galactus one of his closest friends, is fond of the Phoenix Force and has friendly relations with Thanos the Final King (but not the 616 Thanos).
- Papa Wolf: He was very protective of baby Thanos.
- Physical God: Demonic powers from Mephisto plus the Power Cosmic from Galactus. It took a greatly aged Silver Surfer with the Annihilation Wave and Thor's hammer to kill him. He's so powerful that he can possess and animate the dead Celestial that's the Avengers's current base, then immediately after he fought and was winning against the Avengers which included powerhouses like Thor, Hulk (Jennifer Walters version) and Captain Marvel as well as Captain America and Black Panther who were both infused with Celestial power. When something does manage to hurt him, like Moondragon did when he was briefly on the Guardians of the Galaxy, he gets genuinely shocked and impressed.
- She Is the King: Inverted - his time travel adventures include him briefly being the one to take on the Phoenix Force, and just like in the Dark Phoenix Saga, gets brainwashed into being the Black Queen, costume and all. According to a facepalming Sebastian Shaw, that is literally the only position the Hellfire Club had open.
- The Stoic: Averted; his days as the Punisher are long over and he's become very emotional (he's far more capable of expressing happiness and sorrow) after living so long and through so much.
- Time Abyss: By the time we meet him he's spent millions of years with Thanos, and that's after his years as the Ghost Rider and as Galactus' Herald. He later went to an undetermined point Earth 616’s past and made it to the present the long way. He’s very old.
- Took a Level in Badass: Frank Castle was a mere man, a Badass Normal yes, but still a man. Now he has the powers of Hell and the Power Cosmic on his side, and he delivers one Curb-Stomp Battle after another on the waves of superheroes alternate Cable sends after him, and when he fights the 616 Avengers, he whoops their asses seven ways to Sunday. He even possesses the corpse of a freaking Celestial.
- Took a Level in Kindness: A far cry from the glowering Punisher he previously was. All those millennia of being alone on a dead Earth have made him a MUCH friendlier person and a lot less contemptuous of superheroes.
- Unwitting Pawn: Turns out to have ultimately been manipulated by Death to help make Thanos into the person he is.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The Power Cosmic and the powers of the Ghost Rider can both have somewhat odd effects on even stable minds, and at least one is a power mortals were never meant to wield. The combination, plus hundreds of millions of years of existence plus trauma plus going nuts from isolation, on a mind like that of Frank Castle? Yeah. His behaviour tends to get markedly weirder the longer he's got the Hellfire going, as he himself lampshades, and he sobers up pretty quickly when he powers down.
- Worf Effect: He jobs a lot of fights, including against himself - there's a draw in fist fight against a pre-Punisher Frank Castle, and another draw against the Punisher. However, the first time, he was powered down and didn't want to fight, and the second time, the Punisher was ready for his future self (he had hellfire rounds in a submachine gun and a knife made of an adamantium-vibranium alloy) and even then, Frank was mostly just surprised and annoyed. That aside, though, if the events from his time travel adventures were even a little bit true, then he was captured by Moloids.
Supporting Characters
King Thanos
A version of Thanos from The same alternate future. He declared himself king of the universe after killing nearly everyone in it.
- Cessation of Existence: This version of Thanos gets erased from existence due to his younger self from the past vowing to never become like him.
- Combat Pragmatist: How does he kill the Celestials? He just stabbed Black Bolt and let his death screams do the trick.
- Death Seeker: He seeks to die so that he can finally be with Death. The only being he deems worthy to kill him is himself, specifically his past self.
- Kick the Dog: Boasts a long string of heinous crimes including stabbing Black Bolt which makes him scream in pain at maximum volume that disintegrates the Celestials. He also has surviving heroes fight in his death pit... until the Hulk got in there, where it instead changed to feeding survivors to the Hulk. The Hulk also became his enslaved pet that he had leashed up on a chain.
- Omnicidal Maniac: This particularly maniac did it by killing everyone pretty much one by one. It took him a few million years but he did it.
- Ridiculously Successful Future Self: He has achieved pretty much everything present Thanos aspires: the death of those meddling heroes and the annihilation of all life in the universe. The only thing he doesn't have yet is Death's heart(?) and he's on the verge of attaining it anyway.
- The Worf Effect: It speaks volumes to how powerful this Thanos has become when he singlehandedly kills Galactus without breaking a sweat without the Infinity Stones.
The Fallen One
The former Silver Surfer, now rechristened the Fallen One. The one being who managed to elude King Thanos after he wiped out all other life in the universe.
- All Your Powers Combined: The former Silver Surfer, leading the Annihilation Wave, and wielding Mjolnir.
