Alejandra Jones's father, and a true monster.
"I fought my share of psychos as Ghost Rider, but he was one of the worst. He'll find out what you care about most and take it from you. No one's off limits — women, kids... and he'll commit murder with less thought than you and I give to what size coffee we want."
— Daniel "Danny" Ketch to Otto Octavius on Blackout, Superior Spider-Man (2013) Annual issue #1—"Hostage Crisis"
Ghost Rider, in all their incarnations, is the spirit of vengeance who pays back evil in all its forms. This naturally pits them against various true monsters with the vilest listed here.
This is for the comics only. Other examples for the franchise can be found elsewhere:
- Mephisto can be found here.
- Examples from the Ghost Rider Duology can be found here.
- Examples from video games can be found here.
- Examples from an unproduced script can be found here.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Johnathon "Johnny" Blaze
Examples
- Midnight Sons Unlimited issue #1's "Eyes of the Beholder": Clarisse Van Ripper is a deeply psychopathic Serial Killer who primarily preys on children. As a young woman, Clarisse welcomed a bunch of children to her home to play, but decided that she needed some entertainment back, so to this end Clarisse decided to go around the house and kill every child she came across. While chasing one child who saw her kill another, she is paralyzed and put in a wheelchair but manages to escape justice anyway. Forty years later, a demon comes and gives her demonic powers, which she instantly abuses to kill a random couple and then kill a bunch of other children. When Ghost Rider investigates, Clarisse becomes worried that he might steal her powers, so she sends a demon to kill him. Although the comic has multiple vicious cult leaders and serial killers, Clarisse stands out by being the only one who primarily targets children.
- Blaze issues #1-3, written by Larry Hama: Ice Box Bob was a murderous hick with a preference for runaway children in life, who became unable to truly die after being stabbed with a magical nail file that kept his soul rooted to a deathless Pocket Dimension. The pregnant woman who stabbed him, Mary, killed herself after Bob murdered her 3-year-old son in revenge, causing the disembodied soul of Mary's pregnant child to grow up with a lust for revenge. His only desire to return to the living world to begin his murder spree all over again, Ice Box Bob possesses a harmless storekeeper and uses his body to start torturing dozens of innocent people to death, turning the storekeeper's basement into an abattoir-maze where the gurgling, flayed bodies of Bob's victims are nailed, still living, to the walls. After Johnny Blaze thwarts him, Bob homes in on Blaze's two young children instead.
- Vol. 5—"The Road to Damnation" arc, written by Garth Ennis:
- Kazann, formerly the angel Micah, is Hell's resident chessmaster. In league with his treacherous brother Malachi, Kazann has assured victory after victory for Hell and the widespread proliferation of evil on Earth for centuries. Unsatisfied with this, Kazann seeks to overthrow Hell and create a "new and better one" on Earth for himself to rule, damning all humanity to destruction in the process. Kazann teams up with the corrupt oil tycoon Earl Gustav, using his resources to drill open a hole in Hell through which he has a veritable horde of fiends attempt to rip the world to pieces, starting with Texas.
- Earl Gustav is a bloated Evil Cripple who, after killing eight children in a drunk-driving accident, blames the entire world for his negligence. Earl Gustav happily sells out all of humanity to Hell on Earth for the chance to get his legs back, and after firing his board of directors, rehires them so he can have them all gruesomely sacrificed to Kazann.
- Vol. 6 (primarily): Zadkiel is a truly monstrous excuse for an angel. The lord of the Black Host, Zadkiel was also the angel in charge of the Spirits of Vengeance and began to desire to use them to overthrow both God and humanity. Zadkiel subtly influenced the lives of Johnny Blaze and Dan Ketch, destroying those close to them to make them vulnerable to the Ghost Rider spirits. Zadkiel, as The Man Behind the Man, negotiated multiple deals with demons and other monsters on Earth, allowing them to prey upon those they wished, while directing his other minions to murder multiple innocents in addition to those who could prove problematic—and everyone close to them as well. Even death brought no respite, as Zadkiel showed a penchant for annihilating the souls of his defeated enemies. While manipulating Danny Ketch, Zadkiel showed no remorse slaughtering and torturing his angelic brethren until he finally had the powers of the Riders and banished Ketch and Blaze to Earth to die in the apocalypse he would create. Zadkiel succeeded in conquering heaven and began to achieve omnipotence with his final goal to become the new God and then commence genocide on all of humanity and all other beings who didn't worship him.
- Vol. 10 issues #18-21: Stefan Skaar is the leader of the Cult of Mephisto and one of the most evil men ever fought by Ghost Rider. Skaar started off as a hooligan teenage warlock who terrorised his community and murdered his girlfriend Talia Warroad's parents to further indoctrinate her fully to him. Sealed away by Doctor Strange, Skaar resurfaces years later and founds the Rocky Mountain School for Troubled Youth, by which he kidnaps troubled children and teens and indoctrinates them as loyal soldiers for Demon Lord Mephisto. Skaar corrupts the kids to mutilate, torture, and murder, and in one noticeable incident turns the child population of the town of Burrow against their parents and convinces them to mass murder them as human sacrifices to Mephisto. Skaar is responsible for a reign of terror which stretches over the entire country as his brainwashed pawns cause chaos. After Johnny Blaze and Talia Warroad enter his academy, Skaar is revealed to have a massive pile of the bones of human sacrifices and mocks and lethally harms Talia.
Daniel "Danny" Ketch
Examples
- Marvel Comics Presents Vol. 1 issues #138-142's "Fellow Travelers" arc (featuring the Masters of Silence): Tsin Hark is a vile Chinese sorcerer seeking to scourge the Earth of science to return the world to an age of tradition and dark magic. Tsin Hark systematically murders countless hundreds of innocent Chinese immigrants, storing their blood in huge iron drums he stores by the stack. When tempted by an outer power to forsake his humanity for more power, Tsin Hark gleefully does so, and his tainted blood destroys him when it mixes with all the innocent blood he's gathered as an expression of his sheer evil.
- Vol. 3 (primarily):
- Deathwatch is one of the Trans-Lords, an extradimensional being who arrives on Earth to dominate and feed off human suffering. As "Steven Lords", Deathwatch wages a gang war against the Kingpin, killing many people in the process while also trying to steal a group of canisters with a nerve agent. Deathwatch has the vampire assassin Blackout murder police officers and their families, killing others along the way before tracking down the biker gang with the canisters, killing one young woman's friend in front of her before revealing he intends to unleash the agent on the Tri-State Area, killing half the population instantly and subjecting the other to agonizing and lingering death which will spread through the country. Deathwatch later blows up an apartment building to kill Ghost Rider, killing hundreds of innocents and even his own men, before revealing his supposedly philanthropic homeless shelters are places for him to torture and feed upon the less fortunate.
- The vampiric Blackout makes his living as an enthusiastic hitman who hunts down and murders cops for Deathwatch, slaughtering their families and killing most who cross his path. When he gets his hands on the canisters, Blackout plots to unleash the biotoxin himself to cause a nuclear war and reign over the night, before his face is scarred by Ghost Rider. Upon learning Ghost Rider's identity as Danny Ketch, Blackout begins murdering all close to him, even his comatose sister Barbara in her hospital bed, later trying to help his grandmother, the demonic Lilith, try to raze humanity. A Serial Killer in his spare time, Blackout targets children and teens, including a troubled teenage girl named Alicia whose death is enough to spur Ghost Rider to finally use lethal force against the killer.
- Issue #55—"Skin Games" (featuring Werewolf): Morphine is a sadistic one-shot foe of Dan Ketch and a friend of Calvin Zabo, aka Mr. Hyde. A former killer-for-hire who got bored of the rote ways he usually killed his marks, Morphine founded a club he called "Skin & Bones" with fellow minded sadists so he could use it as a hub to torture random hobos to death in every way imaginable, all for the sake of providing some live entertainment to his sick, wealthy audience.
Multiple Ghost Riders (Blaze; Ketch; "Vengeance")
- Vol. 3 (primarily): Anton Hellgate is the Arch-Enemy of Michael Badilino—"Vengeance"—who admits Hellgate is one of the most depraved men he's ever fought. A Corrupt Corporate Executive who kills and resurrects his minions at his own whim, Hellgate has his fingers dipped in all sorts of crime, from systematically having cops trying to take him down murdered, to peddling immortal Super Soldiers to the gangs of Manhattan while murdering those who refuse to take his deal. Hellgate also attempts to murder the family of Johnny Blaze as a cheap distraction; orders his Psycho for Hire Choam to massacre dozens of people just to get Vengeance's attention; and has Badilino agonizingly tortured to figure out his genetic makeup. Anton ultimately intends to dissect Badilino and record the process for his amusement, all in order to use the Spirit of Vengeance to make himself supreme.
Caleb
- Trail of Tears: George Reagan used to be a rich slaveholder before the abolition of slavery led to Reagan massacring all of his slaves and shooting a Union lawman in pique. Reagan became the head of a gang of outlaws after with a taste for Rape, Pillage, and Burn, targeting escaped slaves and Native settlements. In one instance, Reagan forced a former slave named Caleb to watch as he and his gang raped his wife, tortured his kids, then killed his entire family and murdered him as well, leading to Caleb's tormented soul being possessed by the Spirit of Vengeance. Reagan later kills himself to bring himself and his gang back as undead spirits, laying waste to an entire town that sees not even the children spared from rape or slaughter, while threatening a second slaughter solely so Reagan can get the Ghost Rider's attention.
Alejandra Jones
- Vol. 7 issue #5: The father of heroine Alejandra Jones is a taciturn human trafficker with no regard for human life. A man known for a silent brutality that cost his own bookkeeper his hand, Jones has sold off countless Mexican women and children as sex slaves, raping them so frequently himself that he inevitably has a slew of children from the affairs, Alejandra included. Jones simply sells off his own babies as well, and when Alejandra finally confronts him in the same business decades later, he's stone-cold in admitting he's sold every single one of Alejandra's brothers and sisters.
Roberto "Robbie" Reyes
- All-New Ghost Rider: Elias "Eli" Morrow was a Mafia hitman who was killed by his own boss, who found out that Eli was also a Satanic Serial Killer. Using dark magic, Eli managed to came back as a spirit, merging with his nephew, Roberto "Robbie" Reyes, immediately working to corrupt him until Eli can take control over Robbie's body; this included, among other acts, manipulating the boy into accidentally killing an innocent person. Once Eli takes over, he acts abusive towards Robbie's younger brother, Gabriel "Gabe" Reyes, creating a rift between the two brothers. After trying to murder Robbie's teacher, Eli then goes on a killing spree to avenge his own death. After Robbie takes his body back, Eli tries pushing him more and more to kill somebody, which would allow him to take over again. Failing, Eli manipulates Gabe into jumping from a building, allowing Eli to form a similar connection with Gabe as he did with Robbie transforming Gabe into a monster who almost kill Robbie. Eli also claims to be responsible for Gabe's condition, having tried to kill her by pushing her down the stairs when she was pregnant. Once Robbie bonds with Eli permanently, Eli has to resort to hunting and killing the worst people to feed Eli's thirst for blood and to keep the spirit away from hurting Gabe and others he cares about.
Ghost
- The Avengers (Jason Aaron) issue #7—"Fire and Bone": The Wendigo, a white stranger who befriends the very first inheritor of the Ghost Rider mantle, reveals by the end of his conversation that he slaughtered and ate his entire tribe in a bout of sadistic, evil hunger. The Wendigo promptly follows suit on every single being within Ghost's own clan, sparing the boy out only out of amusement and dubbing him "Ghost" to begin with—"a thing that doesn't even know it's dead". The Wendigo has murdered and eaten countless people, enough that Ghost can fashion a chain with them, and he proclaims he won't stop killing until he's strong enough to be a god.
