TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN: Terrifying Tuesday with the Nightstalkers !

Looking over the posts of this month I noticed that they are all about DC Comics series so I thought we should have a little bit of variety here and add another Marvel Comics post. Now my first idea was to do a Ghost Rider post but I have already done so many and while I have more than enough for another I wanted to use some material that has accumulated over quite some time but which I never get to use. So Today my ghouls, we are having a double feature about Marvel Comics NIGHTSTALKERS.

Now my last GHOST RIDER post was last December for Mark Texeira's 64th birthday and before that I had a classic Ghost Rider double feature in 2023 where Doctor Strange guest - starred but it was in my 2023 GHOST RIDER post that I mentioned THE MIDNIGHT SONS. What do they have to do with the Nightstalkers you might ask. Well, as anybody who was reading comicbooks in the 1990s knows there was no chance of ignoring Marvel Comics success with their newest incarnation of the Ghost Rider. Not only was the book a big hit, the Danny Ketch Ghost Rider guest - starred in any comicbook series you could think of. And a few you never would have expected. Although I can't complain about that because it brought me back to Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz run on THE MIGHTY THOR right at the beginning of THE SOUL SHROUD SAGA .

But I have told that story in enough posts so let's concentrate on the Nightstalkers. Thanks to the success of GHOST RIDER naturally wanted to expand their line with more books as there was a fierce war for shelf space in the comic book shops going on at that time. The idea was that if Marvel Comics could take up more space with more series there would be less space for their competitors like their eternal rival DC Comics as well as other comic book companies like Dark Horse Comics, Malibu Comics, Eclipse Comics but most of all new upstarts like iMage Comics and Valiant Comics which were chipping away at their foundation.

So everybody and their dog was getting a spin - off series and in the case of GHOST RIDER they expanded to five series adding the GHOST RIDER / BLAZE : SPIRITS OF VENGEANCE ( which was a team up book featuring the new Danny Ketch Ghost Rider and Johnny Blaze, the former host of a Ghost Rider ), DARKHOLD : PAGES FROM THE BOOK OF SIN, MORBIUS : THE LIVING VAMPIRE and last but not least Today's stars NIGHTSTALKERS.

Which brings us to the difference between the Nightstalkers and The Midnight Sons. The Nightstalkers was a team of vampire hunters that included Blade, Frank Drake and Hannibal King ( who all originated in THE TOMB OF DRACULA by Marv Wolfman , Gene Colan and Tom Palmer ) while the Midnight Sons was a super group including the Nightstalkers, the Darkhold Redeemers, the Ghost Riders and living vampire Morbius.

Now that we cleared that up the NIGHTSTALKERS series was written by D. G. Chichester and pencilled by Ron Garney with inks by Tom Palmer .

And in my opinion the last one is a big reason why this books is readable.

Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of Ron Garney no matter if it is his work on CAPTAIN AMERICA, HULK, WOLVERINE or JUSTICE LEAGUE but he was doing NIGHTSTALKERS, DAREDEVIL, MOON KNIGHT and MORBIUS at the same time which left him with no more than a week for each issue and it really shows in a big dip from his usual quality. In any case, that is a big part of the reason why these pages have languished so long in my GHOST RIDER folder. But as I said, Today I wanted to do something a bit different than usual and we will definitely continue this in part two.

By the way, in this first part we come up to issue 4 - with a small peek at who will guest star in the next issue - and at the end there is a tribute to the death of Superman. So even though Marvel and DC Comics are rivals - or as Stan Lee called them their distinguished competition - that does not mean they can't enjoy or respect each others work. Thanks go to the hardest working man in comics for bringing this to my attention through this instalment of his Meta Messages series on COMIC BOOK RESOURCES.