Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Characters Case File #473: Cosmic Ghost Rider

OK, I had a plan to do another Spider-Woman sort of character…but then I forgot when I realized I never covered the Cosmic Ghost Rider.  I’ll maybe get that other spider-character next week, but in the meantime, how about the craziest Ghost Rider Marvel ever came up with?

He’s more than just Ghost Rider In Space.

Cosmic Ghost Rider came from an alternate future where Thanos won.  And by “won,” I mean he won everything.  Cosmic Ghost Rider first appeared in Thanos #13 in January 2018 by writer Donny Cates and artist Geoff Shaw.  He first appeared out of nowhere in the present day Marvel 616 Universe where he swooped in, wrapped Thanos up in his chains, and then took Thanos to the future to meet King Thanos, an older Thanos who had mostly wiped out all life in the universe.  He had the Cosmic Ghost Rider as a servant, the Hulk as a nearly mindless pet, and by the end of the storyline, he took out the last hero alive when the Silver Surfer showed up leading the Annihilation Wave.  The Surfer was away for a while because he was working to “become worthy” in order to wield a certain Asgardian hammer.  The two Thanoses–Thanoi?–managed to defeat the Surfer while costing the Hulk and the Cosmic Ghost Rider their lives, but who was this new Ghost Rider?

Oh, he was Frank Castle, the Punisher.

See, in this timeline, Thanos attacked the Earth and was in the process of killing, oh, everybody when Frank died and went to Hell.  Probably for all those people he killed, ya know?  Anyway, Frank was good and mad, so he cut a deal with Mephisto to be the new Ghost Rider and go back to get Thanos and make him pay for what he did.  Small problem:  Thanos was already finished killing everything on Earth, leaving Frank alone as a flaming skulled biker on a dead planet.

So, that’s the Ghost Rider part.  Where’d the Cosmic come from?  Oh, that’s simple:  Galactus.  After he’d been alone for a while and lost whatever was left of his sanity, Frank found Galactus coming to Earth, looking for help to take down Thanos.  Frank made an offer:  he’d be Galactus’s new herald, even letting Galactus have what was left of the Earth, on the condition that Galactus help Frank take down Thanos.  Galactus then infused Frank, a guy who already had the power of the Ghost Rider, with the Power Cosmic.  And together, they went off to charge Galactus up enough to take on Thanos.

Or they would have had Thanos not basically one-shotted Galactus.  The only thing that kept the now even-more-broken Frank alive was that the Penance Stare was actually something Thanos enjoyed.  The universe basically thoroughly broken by now, King Thanos gave Frank even more upgrades, most notably some fragments of the Time Stone to allow for some light time travel and the bones of the entity Cyttorak, the guy responsible for some crimson bands and for giving the Juggernaut his power, as this Ghost Rider’s chain weapon.  That brings me more or less full circle and explains how this Ghost Rider, on his flying space motorcycle, was able to travel to the past and capture a younger Thanos.

Now, that storyline ended with Thanos so disgusted by his older self, he vowed to never become him, thus ending that future timeline.  By then, Frank was dead for the second time, but Odin decided a warrior like him was good enough to Valhalla.  Or he would have been if Frank wasn’t such a moody, violent bugger that he got kicked out not long after he got in.  Frank’s personality by this point was more Deadpool than Punisher, so it’s not much of a surprise that no one wanted him around.  Given permission to go to the land of the living at any point in time of his choice, Frank chose the year Thanos was born, opting to take out the Mad Titan while he was still a baby and save a lot of people a lot of trouble.

But he couldn’t kill an innocent baby.  Oops.  Instead, Frank opted to raise Thanos to be good, only that just made Thanos a Punisher in the future, and that really messed with time and space.

Once that was fixed, that basically meant Cosmic Ghost Rider was loose to fly off into space and take out bad guys there because, well, he’s the Cosmic Ghost Rider.  There are enough Ghost Riders left on Earth.

Should I cover one of them next?