Ghost Rider: The Complete Collection

I had been a fan of the original Ghost Rider (Johnny Blaze) years ago, and even owned the Marvel Spotlights, and a number of the early issues of the mag in the day. I was even a fan of Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan, who appears in a few of these issues (now why doesn't Marvel re-release that series?) After re-reading a few of the issues (with Satan as the primary conflict with the protaganist) I noticed something about the artwork I didn't catch the first time I read these. Having studied both mainstream religions and new religious movements, I noticed that in all cases, what is supposed to be the Satanic pentagram (the Star of Baphomet, with the central point facing down) is actually the Wiccan pentacle, with the central point facing upward. I don't know if this is ignorance, fear of evil portents if they rendered the Satanic star correctly in their illustrations, or something the Comics Code Authority just wouldn't permit them to publish if they wanted their seal. (Of course, as I write this, the Spiderman issue with the Gil Kane cover illustration of Harry Osborne popping pills comes to mind. Marvel couldn't get CCA approval for that story, so they printed it WITHOUT the seal, since they felt so strongly that that story just HAD to be told as they had envisioned it.)In any case, having recently seen the movie with Nicholas Cage, the stories are even more entertaining in retrospect. Again, all the scans are from the printed comics in two-page spreads, and the first few issues at least, didn't seem to be the best copies from the print run.Nonetheless, it's very refreshing to be able to read these again, knowing that they won't be worn by handling, as a 30+ year old physical magazine on cheap paper would. When you print the comics, you get the two-page spread with a light "Marvel" watermark appearing on the center of each page - so there's no worry of recreating the original comic books by printing them. (Although the bios are single pages without watermarks, which is nice.) Overall, this is more than well worth the cost.I have visited Marvel's new online comic site, and I must admit, although the quality is very good, I don't like the idea of having to rent access to comics on someone else's server. Acrobat PDFs have become enough of a standard that we should be able to continue to access them in the future, while I fear that what Marvel is using on their website is proprietary and experimental, which may change in a few years: potentially rendering access to old titles obsolete. Marvel should re-license to GIT, but as another reviewer has suggested, provide the original artwork to scan, instead of old printed copies. (Unless of course, all they still have in their archives are copies of the printed comics).

As compared to other titles produced by Graphic Imaging Technology (GIT), this title is just below the quality of the other 7 titles that I own such as 40 Years of Avengers, 40 Years of X-Men, Captain America-The Complete Collection, etc. Image quality is OK, they just didn't use very good original pages to create the PDF's from so the images are not very sharp. If you are a Ghost Rider fan, it's a good collection to have. It would've been a great collection had GIT used better quality source material to scan.

As a child, my favorite comic book characters were always the darker, scarier types. The horror comics, supernatural heroes, and the anti-heroes were always huge favorites of mine. So it was only natural that the Ghost Rider was in my top five subscriptions.But, as with all things from our youth, I "out grew" my comic collection and sold everything I had.Jump forward a couple years and suddenly Ghost Rider is back in the spotlight. A major motion picture is being made. Action figures are being sculpted and produced, the comics are coming back and I'm suddenly a geek again. :)So imagine my joy when I find that EVERY SINGLE Ghost Rider Comic book that I once had (and the ones I didn't have) are all collected on a single DVD! So I had to have it.The Entire disk is pretty much Adobe Acrobat files. Scans of each and every Ghost Rider Comic book EVER. Including the covers, the ads, the geeky "letter to the editor" sections, everything.Because of this, the scans aren't much more than high-resolution photos of the printed materials. I would have preferred scans of the original prints so that the old comic book "dot" printing was gone, but we can't always get what we want.Aside from the image quality mentioned above this disk is a walk through my twisted, sick, and geeky childhood that brings all those fond memories which takes an honored spot in my new collection of all things Ghost Rider. Right next to my Giant 12 inch tall Ultimate Ghost Rider Action figure with it's Giant "Movie-style" Hell Cycle... Hey, I'm a geek...

I really enjoyed this collection, sadly I only had problems with one file being corrupted and that was for issue 4 of volume 2. Does anyone know how to contact the seller and hopefully get a replacement file?

I bought this when it was less than 20 dollars just to see if I liked reading comics on the PC. It is not bad at all and for the price you cannot beat it. I have Spiderman, Hulk, Xmen, Fantasic Four, Captain America, Ironman, and Mad magazine complete collections just like this one now. They are amazing they are a scan of the original so you see all the old ads and what not. They are very pricey now but you can still catch them at a decent price sometimes.The spiderman one for instance is around 200 most of them time but it is still a fraction of the cost of trying to even get issue number 1.These complete collections are out of print if you can find them at a decent price pick them up you will not be disappointed.

I have always been fascinated with Ghost Rider but have never been given the chance to actually read the comic books and see for myself where the whole story began. This complete collection finally gave me the chance to experience Ghost Rider the way it should be, in its original comic book format. All of the images were directly scanned from the comics themselves (you can tell if you look close enough) and navigating through the disk is very simple. My only complaint is that The ads in the comics could have been left out with no damage done, but you can just simply pass them so it is not a big deal. For the price, this is definitely worth it for someone who has never read Ghost Rider before or is a fan of Ghost Rider but does not have a majority of the issues.

The Ghost Rider is a unique comic book idea. In this collection you are getting some great stories. The copy I got came with two discs--one was a backup of the original in case the original didn't work. This knocks the review down, but it doesn't bother me terribly. I like having so many comic books at hand.