There was a Marvel Western hero called the Ghost Rider, which debuted several years before Johnny Blaze. The Legacy: As the movie states, there was a Ghost Rider before the flame-headed, motorcycle-riding hero. In the age of Tony Hawk, however, the movie made the choice to make Blaze famous and admired. The life of a stunt rider: As originally conceived, Blaze was a sideshow artist - very, very good at stunts, but it was clear he wouldn’t make a fortune with his abilities, not even when he worked as a stunt man for a TV show. However, given the Faust overtones of the Ghost Rider story and name recognition, Mephistopheles is probably the better choice for the name. Although the name of the former echoes the latter, there is not a one-to-one correspondence here the Marvel Universe has no “Satan,” instead having quite a few major demons who might lay claim to being the Judeo-Christian tempter: Mephisto, Satannish, Lucifer, Avarrish, etc. The devil you know: In the comics, Johnny Blaze made the deal with Mephisto, not Mephistopheles. The elder Blaze dies anyway during a stunt, which seems petty of Mephistopheles. In the movie, ol’ Mephistopheles approaches Johnny out of the blue and makes a better deal, that his father will be healed of his lung cancer. Crash doesn’t - he dies during a stunt, just like Johnny’s biological father. He then makes a deal with the devil - all right, a devil - that Crash won’t die of cancer. The deal: In the original, rough and tough Johnny makes a hurried study of the occult when he learns Crash is dying of cancer. In the movie, Johnny rides with his father and falls in love with Roxy on the side. Crash becomes his surrogate father, and Johnny falls in love with Crash’s daughter, Roxanne, while becoming a stunt motorcycle rider himself. Johnny Blaze: In the original comic book stories, Johnny Blaze’s father dies in a stunt when he’s still a boy, and he’s taken in by his father’s stunt-rider colleague, “Crash” Simpson. This is the first in what I hope to be a series of articles showing how the comics have changed on their way to the silver screen. This is more true in comic books than most print sources comic books (well, superhero comic books) usually have decades of stories for moviemakers to choose from, and many of these stories contradict each other. In any adaptation from print to screen, there are going to be some changes from the source materials.
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