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[WWC] JASON AARON TALKS DANNY KETCH VERSUS JOHNNY BLAZE | | The scribe dishes on his 'Ghost Rider' arc that will face off the two Ghost Riders and the future of his run | | | By Jim Gibbons | | Posted 6/27/2008 | |  | | Two flaming headed motorcycle riders is better than one, or at least that's what Jason Aaron is banking on when he pits Johnny Blaze against the recently reappearing Danny Ketch! With art by Tan Eng Huat, the arc entitled "The Last Stand of the Spirits of Vengeance" begins at issue #28 will span five issues as Blaze and Ketch face off!
Wizard caught up with the writer to see what's what with the upcoming arc. | | ![[WWC] JASON AARON TALKS DANNY KETCH VERSUS JOHNNY BLAZE](http://ep.yimg.com/ip/I/wizarduniverse_2057_439111782) WIZARD UNIVERSE: So, Danny Ketch versus Johnny Blaze-—how’d it all come about?
JASON AARON: When we were just planning out the whole storyline of Blaze right after Zadkiel, since we don’t see Zadkiel for a good bit in the beginning, we needed someone to function as his earthly lieutenant and it was actually [former Marvel editor] Aubrey Sitterson who suggested Ketch.
At first I wasn’t so sure about it, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it and I know fans had been clamoring for him to come back for a while. I liked the idea that we were bringing him back but not in the way that people would be expecting. I mean, how do we avoid the continuity headache that comes with bringing [him] back? I think we’ll be able to-—we’ll be telling the story of where he’s been and what he’s been up to and how he got to this point and I think fans will be satisfied. I think a lot of fans are just glad to have him back, whether he’s helping Blaze or fighting him, I think people just like the character, and want to see him back.
Even though he’s back, he’s kind of an up in the air—maybe he’s a villain, maybe he’s working secretly to help Blaze—has it just been positive, what you’ve been hearing back from people so far, or are you worried that there’s going to be some sort of backlash?
AARON: I was beforehand. I haven’t heard anybody so far. Most of the people I’ve heard were just happy that he was back. But he is the villain at this point—he’s not secretly helping Blaze out—but we don’t know why, we don’t know his motivation or why this change has happened. And we don’t know where he’ll be going in the future, which are two of the questions that will be answered.
With a year and a half left in you Ghost Rider run, does this Ketch versus Blaze story lead up to the end of Act I, the halfway point, or the end of the overall story?
AARON: Yeah, the end of that arc—the arc is actually titled "The Last Stand of the Spirits of Vengeance"—and the end of that arc will be pretty much the midpoint, and will dramatically change the landscape and change Blaze’s mission and really what he’s up against.
So this is all building up to the inevitable war on Heaven? The war on Zadkiel?
AARON: Yes, but even that will be sort of flipped on its ear a little bit.
Are you a big fan of the Ketch stuff from the '90s?
AARON: I prefer the Blaze stuff, because I like him as a character. I think that he’s more interesting as a character. Blaze was the guy who became Ghost Rider because he sold his soul to the Devil, while Danny just seemed to initially kind of get stuck with it by happenstance, and eventually you find that it’s because of his family curse and they’re long-lost brothers and blah blah blah. But I always liked it when they were together, they always had kind of a cool dynamic when you saw the two of them together. | | As far as Ketch/Ghost Rider reading goes, was there any particular stories that really led up to how you integrated him into this? Was there a required reading list that you used?
AARON: I don’t know. I told you, that stuff was just the earliest Howard Mackie stories—I liked the stories especially with Blackout and with the Scarecrow as a villain. But I don’t know if there’s a required Danny Ketch reading list. Continuity-wise, I feel the book is accessible to people who have no idea who Danny Ketch was and you don’t want to try to explain the whole long-lost brothers [thing] and the difference between Zarathos and Noble Kale and all that—you’re going to lose any chance of getting new readers. So, we tried to pare that down and basically ignore as much of it as possible, but at the same time, not in a spiteful way, not to throw off people who’ve been fans of the book through that whole period. We still want to be respectful of everything, but just try to pare it down and make it accessible.
What elements between Blaze and Ketch do you think you’ll be focusing on most? More of that long-lost brother stuff, or more straight-up enemies?
AARON: From the get-go, I wasn’t looking to do a situation where we dramatically changed Ketch’s character but there’ll be a reason to why he’s doing what he’s doing—it’s a situation where he feels like he’s doing the right thing. So, I wasn’t going to turn him into a "Bwa-ha-ha" over the top villain.
The main thing is really to make him a more interesting character and a stronger character after all this is over, because he’ll be a character that’ll continue to be a part of Ghost Rider, because Blaze kind of needs more of a supporting cast of characters. He hasn’t really had one for quite a while. So yeah, they’ll be adversaries but in the sense of kind of this brotherly rivalry, and we’ll see some of the issues that are finally bubbling to the surface in terms of brotherly rivalry.
And how does this arc tie-into or benefit from Simon Spurrier’s Danny Ketch Ghost Rider miniseries that was just announced?
AARON: Issue #28 is the moment when Blaze and Ketch finally come face to face, so issue #29—the second part of this arc—is really the first round of Ghost Rider versus Ghost Rider. So Simon’s story will be filling in the blanks of how we got to this point. His story will pick up about the time that we left off Danny Ketch, and fill in the gaps of when we first saw him, and my first arc. And yeah, just kind of how did he go from being the guy we once knew to the guy who’s siding with Zadkiel, you know, what’s his rationalization? If he has powers now, how did he get those powers? Are they the same as what he had before? Is he still riding the same bike? Is he still Ghost Rider? Is he different? What’s the deal? Almost all that will be filled in by Simon’s story.
I was just reading our interview with Simon [check back for that tomorrow Wizard readers!], and he said that one of the bigger deals in the first couple of pages is that it's revealed Danny’s going to be human now. He’s not the Ghost Rider anymore. Can you elaborate on that? Obviously, you can’t give too much away, but...
AARON: Yeah, we’ve actually been talking today, the last two days, about what do we want to give away, what do we want to hold back? And my arc, what we’re doing is Ghost Rider versus Ghost Rider, Blaze vs. Ketch, and it wouldn’t be much of a fight if it was Ghost Rider versus Ketch. They both are the Ghost Rider, but we don’t know if Ketch is the same as he used to be, and in the beginning of Simon’s story he’s not the Ghost Rider that he used to be. And how does he get these new powers, and he actually goes through a couple of changes over the course of Simon’s story. We may get to see a couple variations of the Ghost Rider. And the title of my arc is "The Last Stand of the Spirits of Vengeance," so what does that mean? In the very first issue, in #28, Blaze learns something that sort of changes the landscape for the Spirit of Vengeance and what we thought we knew about it.
Now, I know you’re a Kansas City guy and you took Wolverine to KC in your recent arc with him, so when are the flaming headed cycle guys going to end up in Kansas City?
AARON: I don’t think I have any plans for Kansas City yet.
[Fear Aget and Exterminators artist] Tony Moore had suggested [I take the Ghost Rider to} this real-life bar near his hometown in Kentucky that’s haunted. So, it’s the kind of place where if you go to use the urinal, somebody will mysteriously punch you in the back of the head. It’s like a haunted honky-tonk bar. I don’t know, "Roadhouse" took place somewhere outside of Kansas City, so maybe we could have Johnny Blaze stumbling into the midst of "Roadhouse," that would be good. But I don’t want to be the guy who works Kansas City into everything he does. I don’t know, we’ll see.
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