Ghost Rider #39, pages 2 & 3 (1993) - 3rd App. of Vengeance

If there is one thing comics were all about in the 1990's, it was being "extreme." The more and bigger you did it the better, it seemed. So, how could you possibly get more extreme, than to take an already extreme character, like Ghost Rider, and create a darker doppelganger that was even more extreme than he was? Enter: Vengeance!

While Ghost Rider would attempt to avenge the innocent, by punishing the guilty with relatively non-lethal means, Vengeance simply does away with any he finds unworthy, in the harshest ways imaginable. Of course, having been spawned through the evil machinations of Marvel's own "devil," the demon lord Mephisto, you could hardly expect a different result. Vengeance was born to be extreme. Even the design of his bike, while having a semi-futuristic feel, bears that out. This was artist Ron Garney's debut on the series and, having cut his urban avenger artistic skills on characters like Daredevil and Moon Knight before this, he made a perfect fit into dark and gruesome world of Ghost Rider. Inker Chris Ivy is the perfect compliment to Garney's rough and rugged style. This double page splash of Vengeance in action shows you all you need to know to understand the character. He began as a foe for Ghost Rider and, while he would later reform and become an uneasy ally to him, he ended the same way before his demise a few years later, after the "grim and gritty" era of comics had run its course.

If you had to sum up the character of Vengeance in a few words, I'd say those words would be "an extreme taken to an extreme." He is probably one of the best embodiments of 90's comics that ever existed. So, that makes this image of him, in one of his earliest appearances, a very welcome addition to my personal comic art collection. It's also one hell of a way to end my acquisitions for 2020, to the "extreme!"