The complete history of Ghost Rider amid Ryan Gosling-MCU rumors

While the Marvel Cinematic Universe is already chock full of characters ripped straight from the comic book page, there is still a treasure trove of characters awaiting Marvel Studios to bring to live action across film or television. One of the most demanded characters in recent years has been the spirit of vengeance itself, Ghost Rider, and it has only intensified with rumors swirling that Ryan Gosling has already been cast as the rider.

It wouldn't be the first time Ghost Rider has been brought to live action, with Nicolas Cage portraying Johnny Blaze's iteration in two pre-MCU films and Gabriel Luna appearing as Robbie Reyes in the ABC series Agents of SHIELD.

However, these two previous adaptations only scratched the surface of one of the cornerstone characters in Marvel Comics' gallery of supernatural characters. But in order to understand this, it requires going back to Ghost Rider's beginning.

A Phantom Rider

Modern audiences may be more familiar with Ghost Rider sporting a flaming skull and high-octane vehicles powered by the spirit of vengeance, the original Ghost Rider began as a gunslinging hero in the Old West.

Drapped in a white suit, cape, and hat and riding a white horse, the original Ghost Rider introduced in 1967 was a heroic outlaw who traveled across the west dolling out justice to any who crossed his path. Several characters would don the suit of this Ghost Rider over the years, but the most recognized remains the original, Carter Slade, who would have plenty of interactions with the Ghost Rider readers would become more familiar with in later years.

The character would later be renamed to the Phantom Rider after Marvel revamped the Ghost Rider into the spirit of vengeance that remains popular to this day.

Carter Slade would have the honor of being brought to live action, though, as part of the 2007 Ghost Rider film and featured veteran actor Sam Elliot as the aged gunslinger and rider. However, his version of the Ghost Rider was tweaked to fit with the more popular spirit of vengeance iteration of the character rather than the original white-suited gunslinger.

You Can't Live in Fear

After the original iteration, Ghost Rider would undergo a massive revamp in 1972 from the western gunslinger into the blazing spirit of vengeance that readers would come to associate Ghost Rider with. The revamp would also introduce the character most audiences would come to associate with Ghost Rider – Johnny Blaze.

Blaze's early life would be riddled with loss between his mother leaving Johnny and his father, Barton, while taking Johnny's younger siblings with her. Barton, a stunt cyclist, would end up dying some time later during a stunt gone bad as part of the traveling Quentin Carnival.

Johnny would then be adopted by another stunt cyclist, Crash Simpson, and his wife Mona and join them on the road as part of the Crash Simpson Stunt Cycle Extravaganza. Johnny would also grow close with Crash and Mona's daughter, Roxanne, during this time, as the Simpsons provided the young man the family he never had to that point. However, this too would come to a tragic halt after Crash was diagnosed with life-threatening cancer.

Instead of accepting more loss, Johnny would turn to the occult in hopes of finding a way to save his surrogate father and spare himself more heartbreaking loss. This search would lead to the young man summoning the demonic Mephisto, who offered to cure Crash in exchange for Johnny's soul, which Johnny would ultimately accept.

Crash would be cured, but died shortly after during another stunt gone bad that was implied to have been caused by Mephisto's influence. The demon would attempt to claim Johnny soul's, but Roxanne's intervention would ultimately drive Mephisto away and save Johnny, for the moment.

He did not come out of the encounter untouched, though, as Mephisto bonded Johnny's soul with that of the demon Zarathos and became the Ghost Rider, a being forced to punish the wicked at Mephisto's behest. This would transform Blaze into a demon-like being with a flaming skull and his motorcycle's wheels to ignite thanks to the power of Zarathos.

He would lose and regain the power of the Ghost Rider plenty of times over the decades while battling Mephisto and various other demonic entities hellbent on ridding themselves of Blaze as he regularly interfered with their plans.

Blaze also found himself regularly weaving in and out of major Marvel Comics crossover events during this time, such as Civil War and World War Hulk. At one point, he would even find himself ruling the universe's version of Hell for a time after usurping Mephisto with the aid of the Midnight Sons .

A New Fire

During one of the periods where Johnny Blaze was free of the Ghost Rider, it would find its way to a resident of New York City named Danny Ketch. Ketch was introduced as the new Ghost Rider in 1990 as another rider born out of desperation, though under entirely different circumstances from Blaze.

Ketch and his sister, Barbara, were attacked by a group of gangsters one night while out in New York City. Ketch was injured in the altercation but managed to flee to a junkyard to escape the gangsters where he found a motorcycle bearing a strange symbol. Upon touching it, the young man was transformed into the Ghost Rider and returned to save his sister, but was ultimately too late.

Barbara would be killed by a half-demon named Blackout and, as a result, become Ketch's archnemesis.

During his time as the rider, Ketch functioned in a largely similar fashion to Johnny Blaze and punish the wicked at the subconscious behest of Mephisto or Zarathos.

It was later revealed that Ketch was none other than Blaze's long lost brother Danny and that their respective time as Ghost Rider was part of a family curse that bound them to the Spirits of Vengeance. While Blaze would grow to accept this and use it to battle evil, Ketch harbored a degree of resentment despite also using the Ghost Rider to protect the innocent from demonic forces. The brothers continued to aid each other, as well, with Ketch becoming one of Blaze's trusted agents during his time as the King of Hell.

The Demon of East LA

While others would briefly serve as the spirit of vengeance in between Ketch and Blaze's respective times, the Ghost Rider would find its next significant host in Robbie Reyes.

The East Los Angeles-native, high school student, and mechanic found himself having to support his developmentally-disabled brother while trying to earn enough money for them to leave the gang violence dominating their neighborhood. To this end, Reyes would enter himself in illegal street races to earn extra cash in the hope of escaping East LA with his brother, Gabe.

One race does not end well for Reyes, though, as he ends up being shot to death by local gangsters searching for pills belonging Calvin Zebo, better known as Marvel Comics' take on Mr. Hyde, that were in the trunk of a 1969 Dodge Charger. However, Reyes would be revived and transformed into a similar demonic creature to Blaze and Ketch, though with his skull resembling more of a helmet, and driving the Dodge Charger instead of a motorcycle.

Unlike Blaze and Ketch, though, Reyes was not possessed by the demonic entity Zarathos. He was instead possessed by the ghost of a man calling himself Eli Morrow. Morrow initially claimed to have been killed by gang members and aided Reyes in hunting down those responsible for his death.

It was later revealed that Morrow was actually a serial killer and Satanist who was shot to death by police in 1999 after killing 37 people in various rituals. In addition, Reyes learned that Morrow was in fact his uncle and one of his victims was Reyes' mother, who Morrow killed by pushing down a flight of stairs and caused Reyes' brother Gabe to be born with disabilities.

The pair would battle for control of Reyes' body during their time together before it ultimately ended in a tenuous agreement – Reyes would satiate Morrow's murderous appetite but they would only target those with evil souls. It would continue on this way for years until Blaze, who was King of Hell at the time, managed to finally separate Morrow from Reyes while allowing Reyes to retain his powers as a Ghost Rider.

Riders of Vengeance

While Reyes, Ketch, and Blaze are the three most prominent versions of Ghost Rider in the character's history, others have had to the spirit of vengeance's burden.

Alejandra Jones is a Nicaraguan women introduced in the 2011 event series Fear Itself where she, along with several other orphans, were being trained to potentially become Ghost Rider. The spirit would end up inhabiting Jones thanks to a ritual by a man named Adam as part of a plot to wipe sin from all of mankind by any means necessary. She would end up working together with Blaze to stop Adam before returning the spirit to Blaze, though a remnant of the power remained in her and would appear cross multiple comics in the following years. She would ultimately be killed during the events of Absolute Carnage when her home village is attacked by Carnage, though she was still able to briefly return to stop him after possessing the body of a dead villager.

Michael Badilino was an ex-NYPD officer and becomes a Ghost Rider thanks to be him being one-third of what is known as the "Organic Medallion of Power," which imbued with powers similar to the rider. However, he would go by the name Vengeance and became a regular ally to Blaze despite initially trying to kill the him when they first met due to Badilino believing Blaze to only be Zarathos.

Kushala was the latest alternate-Ghost Rider introduced in 2016 as an Apache woman living in 19th Century America when, after the death of her parents and tribe at the hands of the U.S. Army, became possessed by the spirit of vengeance while praying to her creator. She would use the powers to train herself in sorcery and became one of her era's Sorcerer Supremes. Kushala would then be recruited to aid a team of Sorcerer Supremes from across time, including Doctor Strange, to stop an entity known as The Forgotten. They would succeed, though not before being betrayed by one member of the team, and Kushala would find herself navigating life in the modern world before eventually finding a way back to her original time.

The Powers of Hell

Despite the various individuals to take up the Ghost Rider mantle, from the more well-known riders mentioned above to lesser-known iterations such as Alejandra Jones and Michael Badilino, the powers of the Ghost Rider have remained largely consistent from user to user.

First is the sheer god-like superhuman strength, speed, and durability all Ghost Riders have as a result of their respective possessions. It isn't to say they can't be killed, as Blaze and Ketch have been on several occasions in the comics, but it is a difficult task and often requires another god-like being such as Mephisto in order to see it done, and even then, the Ghost Rider often returns.

The Hellfire Ghost Riders are often engulfed in are powers unto themselves, as well, as they are almost physical manifestations of the fires that birthed their demonic connections. As such, they can be used in a variety of ways ranging from simple projectiles to physical constructs and even psychic attacks.

Ghost Rider's most potent ability, though, is known as the Penance Stare.

As the spirit of vengeance, Ghost Rider's key purpose is to punish those considered wicked either in its eyes or Mephisto's eyes, depending on who the rider answers to any given time. The Penance Stare is the ultimate embodiment of this purpose as Ghost Rider stares deep into the soul of their adversary and forces them to relive all the pain and suffering they have inflicted on others during their life. The Stare can often prove fatal to whoever is unfortunate enough to be standing opposite Ghost Rider, though some riders are able to control how damaging it can be while some who suffered the Stare, such as Doctor Strange, were able to recover from it.

The rider's demonic roots also give the host the added benefit of protection from nearly all types of magic in the Marvel universe. This has made it a useful character to have as an ally or extremely difficult to deal with, as characters like Doctor Strange and Mephisto have learned all too well.

Bringing to Life

The rider has also enjoyed making the jump out of the comic page and into other mediums plenty of times in the past, including two films centered on the spirit of vengeance.

Nicolas Cage portrayed Johnny Blaze in the 2007 film Ghost Rider and its 2011 sequel, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. The first film was met with mixed to negative reviews while the response to the second was largely negative, with most of the criticism for both films being levied toward the scripts, special effects, and performances, especially Cage's as the titular hero.

Before that, though, the rider made brief appearances across three of Marvel's animated series from the mid to late-90s. First was an almost "blink and you miss it" cameo in X-Men when Professor X is looking into Gambit's mind, followed by a slightly larger appearance in Fantastic Four where he helped stop Galactus, and finally as a central character in an episode of The Incredible Hulk where the rider is chasing after Hulk for the destruction of a small town.

Rider's next TV outing came in season four of the ABC series Agents of SHIELD, with Gabriel Luna portraying the Robbie Reyes-version of Ghost Rider. He would play a central role in the first third of the season before making only sporadic appearances for the remainder of the season and the series, as a whole.

On the video game front, Ghost Rider has appeared as a playable character in a variety of Marvel-centric titles including the Marvel Ultimate Alliance games, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and the Lego Marvel games. The character got its own game in 2007 as a tie-in to the Nicolas Cage film, though reviews for the game were mixed at best.