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M384--Ghost Rider (Robbie Reyes) — Description

Ghost Rider
Real Name: Robbie Reyes
First Appearance: All-New Ghost Rider #1 (May 2014)
So long as injustice persisted, the Spirit of Vengeance could never rest. Even when Zarathos seemingly sacrificed itself when its latest host, Danni Ketch, expunged the last of Mephisto’s remains, its essence lingered, binding itself to the soul of the criminal Eli Morrow. A former member of Daimon Hellstrom’s Midnight Sons commune, Eli had been expelled after he fell under the influence of dark forces. He had thought he was serving Hellstrom’s demonic father, but he had in fact been lost to Mephisto’s influence, even after the deceiver had been torn asunder. When he died at the hands of rival gangsters, the last essence of Zarathos bound Eli’s soul inside the car in which he died to prevent any potential resurrection as Mephisto reborn.
Years later, this vehicle fell into the possession of Eli’s nephew, Robbie Reyes, a young mechanic in Los Angeles. Despite having long been estranged from his deceased uncle, gang violence still followed Reyes in his neighborhood and he often entered illegal street races to win money in hopes of making enough to move him and his young brother out. In one such race Reyes ended up losing his life to the same violence he had hoped to escape. But the Spirit of Vengeance could never rest. Bound to Eli Morrow and Zarathos’s fused soul, Reyes was reborn into the all-new Ghost Rider, who would use this second chance to protect the innocent from the damned–including the dark soul of his uncle that now took residence inside his own.
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This is all years down in the timeline around the same time Sam Wilson becomes Captain America and leads a new team of Avengers… who ends up recruiting Reyes to his team.
Robbie is a character who has been a long time coming, I dunno why it took so long for me to get around to him in the order. One of the newer legacy heroes from the 2010s who has had a lot of staying power, it felt natural to set his origin in this time period in my universe too, so he’s a member of Sam Wilson’s Avengers here–I think Robbie being a long term member of the Avengers is something from the comics that I think sets him apart from Johnny and Danny. His overall origin here is pretty close to his comic origin, I just adjusted some aspects of Eli Morrow’s backstory, connecting him to my Midnight Sons interpretation (mentioned in Hellstorm’s profile), Mephisto, and Zarathos directly here. So here Robbie is not just combating Eli’s influence because Eli is a bad dude, but because his tainted soul is trying to be reborn as Mephisto–so more stakes for Robbie to work against.
Transferring Robbie’s more distinct mask-like skull face to my established monstrous Ghost Riders was tricky but a fun challenge. Bound to Eli’s tainted soul, the Spirit of Vengeance returns to an orange flame after it was blue in Danni’s body, but now it burns brighter and hotter. Or something. Beyond that, modeling his suit after real racing suits was pretty straightforward. And he’s got a crowbar because, hey, he’s a mechanic, why not.