What is it with late Bronze Age books and cults?

I think I know the answer to that one, and it honestly shouldn’t have been a surprise to see a Satanic cult in a Ghost Rider comic, but when I came across this story that details the origin of Witch Woman (I think that’s what her name was), I still had to wonder how much weird crap was circulating among the comic book creators of the time.

The book that I’m talking about, by the way, is a reprint book that began at some point in the early 1990s when Ghost Rider was becoming one of Marvel’s hotter properties. They obviously had a slew of 1970s stuff they could toss into a reprint book (a la Marvel Tales or Classic X-Men), so The Original Ghost Rider was born.

I’ve personally never had much experience with the character beyond seeing him on Agents of SHIELD as well as the occasional glimpse in an issue of Wizard or a Marvel House ad. This comic was a Marvel grab bag book, and those have been proving kind of fun to read because of their randomness (well, they are grab bags).

Anyway, the origin of this character is that she was seduced into a Satanic cult by her college roommate and given powers and now Ghost Rider has to fight her. The story is actually pretty engaging and well written by Gary Freidrich with solid art by Tom Sutton and Syd Shores. What cracked me up, by the way, is that there’s definitely a “Betty getting Veronica to worship Satan” vibe throughout the origin sequence. And it’s all written with the classic Marvel hyperbole.

Additional material in the book includes a Phantom Rider story that is pretty interesting, at least as far as a six-page backup is concerned. I don’t know how much of this character I’d go out of my way to read, but for what it’s worth, this was thoroughly entertaining.

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