Review by Ian Keogh

Over the opening pages of The Last Stand Jason Aaron emphasises how compared with most Marvel characters Ghost Rider has so few quality villains. Of course, being the spirit of vengeance, most don’t survive for a second round with him, but then when you’re dealing with the supernatural they’re also relatively easily returned from the dead, and what a shoddy bunch they are. Aaron treats them with all the respect they deserve, and it’s very funny.

So are other aspects of The Last Stand, like nuns with nunchucks, but while Aaron maintains his grindhouse atmosphere there’s a slightly more serious side due to the torments of Danny Ketch. Once the all-new, all-improved Ghost Rider of the 1990s his star faded considerably, and so has that of his one-time mentor Caretaker.

Tan Eng Huat drew the final chapters of Hell Bent & Heaven Bound, with which this is collected as The War for Heaven Book 1, and continues in the same strange style here. His people are distended, distorted and distressed, but he draws a great Ghost Rider, and there’s a new one introduced here.

That’s the result of a logical extension of Ghost Rider’s origin, cogently explained by Aaron, but the danger of such expansion comes when others run with the idea and decide it would be great to unite the Ghost Riders of every nation.

Midway through Aaron serves up a clash of the Ghost Riders: Johnny Blaze vs. Danny Ketch. Ding, ding, round one, place your bets now! Danny is corrupted by Zadkiel, while Johnny’s inner purity remains. Visually it’s a stunner, but most readers will have already realised this is a fall and rise arc, and Aaron’s means of achieving that aren’t greatly convincing. The feeling is that a Ghost Rider possesses greater resolve. Also unconvincing is the spirit of encouragement, a former nun imbued with the knowledge of the ages. She would have fitted the intentional trivialities of the previous volume, but here she’s merely a sounding board and cheerleader.

It also takes considerable suspension of disbelief to swallow the lines Aaron gives Danny in the final pages. Ghost Rider readers invested in the past would surely prefer Danny to survive, but if that’s going to happen he has to see the light, and his doing so pretty well instantly after half a dozen chapters of ignoring what he’s being told is poor. There is an explanation of Danny’s uncharacteristic behaviour, but unfortunately for readers of The Last Stand it’s in Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch – Addict.

No-one other than covetous angel Zadkiel is very happy as the final page is turned, but there’s another desperate battle to be won. That, however, isn’t in the following Trials and Tribulations.

Alternatively, the entirety of Aaron’s run is collected in hardcover as Ghost Rider by Jason Aaron Omnibus or over two thicker paperbacks titled The War for Heaven.