Ghost stories

Ghost Rider, the comic book character now immortalized in the top grossing movie in America, can trace its roots to two men from Southeast Missouri. But who created the motorcycle-riding, flame-haloed avenger is now at the center of lawsuit between one of them and Marvel Comics.

Jackson native Gary Friedrich, who wrote for Marvel Comics at the time the character was created in 1972, claims to be the sole creator. Friedrich, who did not return calls to his home in Arnold, Mo., is suing Marvel for compensation.

Another Jackson native, Roy Thomas, a legend in the comic industry who wrote portions of the Spider-Man, X-Men, and the Avengers comics, says Friedrich deserves a good deal of credit but says Ghost Rider's creation was more of a team effort with both he and another artist adding elements.

If that isn't confusing enough, the Ghost Rider character also got its name from a country music hit, was first written in 1950 as a cowboy and borrows elements from Evel Knievel and Elvis Presley.

Wrote first comic at age 7

Roy Thomas

Roy Thomas, 66, graduated from Jackson High School in 1958. He always loved comic books and says he wrote and illustrated his first at the age of 7. "All Giant Comics" was Thomas' 50-page creation with outsized characters and animals.

"I was a little kid, so every character I drew I wanted to be a giant," he said by phone from his home in South Carolina.

Thomas avidly read comics as a child, but in those days the scene was dominated by adventure and western stories with little room for superheroes. In high school he worked at the Palace Movie Theater in Jackson along with Friedrich. In 1961 he graduated from Southeast Missouri State University with a major in history and social science and took a job as a high school teacher in St. Louis County.

During his time teaching, Thomas edited a popular comic book fan magazine called "Alter Ego," which eventually caught the eye of DC Comics in New York City. DC, the creator of Superman, enticed Thomas to move east in 1965, but he stayed at their offices for only a week.

Thomas had found a sweeter deal at rival Marvel Comics working for Stan Lee, the creator of Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk.

The movie poster for "Ghost Rider," which grossed more than $50 million at the box office in its first weekend.

Thomas began by proofreading scripts but soon moved into editing and writing. In those days, he said, the industry was a free-for-all with the popularity of comics skyrocketing and Marvel just trying to keep pace with demand.

Thomas moved easily between lines of comics. He wrote 20 issues of the X-Men comic beginning in 1966 and launched the Conan the Barbarian comic several years later. In 1972 he took Stan Lee's position as editor-in-chief of Marvel. Lee became publisher.

Thomas was in the editing position in 1972 when the modern Ghost Rider was born. Ghost Rider was then a cowboy character dating back to 1950 who wore a white trench coat, rode a glowing white steer and traveled around the Old West saving people in distress.

"He dressed in white and sort of made people think he was a ghost," Thomas said, laughing.

Friedrich then was working as a freelancer for Marvel and was writing the comic Daredevil, which also was transferred to the big screen a few years ago. Thomas recalls Friedrich coming to him with an idea for a new villain in Daredevil, one who rode a motorcycle.

"I had made up a really bad motorcycle villain named Stuntmaster. Nobody ever really wanted to see him again," Thomas said.

Friedrich, though, thought this villain would work as "Ghost Rider" in the Daredevil series. Thomas listened and liked the idea. But he told Friedrich to set his sights higher -- why not make give the character its own comic?

"Gary looked at me like I was crazy, but back then we were starting a new line of supernatural comics with vampires and werewolves, so I thought this would work," Thomas said. "We went in to Stan and told him the idea of a motorcycle-riding Ghost Rider as a supernatural character and he liked it and said, 'Go do it.' That was pretty much all the direction we got."

When it came time to draw the character several days later, Thomas recalled, artist Michael Ploog came to him for direction.

"Michael was still thinking it was going to be a Western, so he was really confused," said Thomas, who added Friedrich was not in the office that day.

"I had this idea of what he should look like. I wanted him to have a skull for a head and a full-length black motorcycle suit," Thomas said. Ploog incorporated those ideas in the first drawing and added some of his own.

"When he started drawing this guy, he started drawing flames and he said, 'I thought he'd look better if his skull was on fire,' and I said, 'Yeah, you know, you're right,'" said Thomas.

Thomas said the first day was the end of his involvement with the character. After that, Friedrich took over and developed the story of Ghost Rider, which appeared for the first time in August 1972.

The character was later imagined as a stunt motorcycle rider who sells his soul to the devil in return for supernatural powers. It was popular and received top billing in a comic series for Marvel in 1973. The series ran for 10 years, and the character has been brought back several times in Marvel Comics in various forms in the 1990s and again in 2001.

Different stories

But Friedrich, who attended the 2006 Comic Convention in Cape Girardeau, remembers the genesis of the character differently. He signed autographs as the "creator" of Ghost Rider and gave an interview now available on the Web site YouTube.

"Somewhere along the line I began to think about doing a modern superhero and I immediately thought that he should ride a motorcycle," he said in 2006. "As I thought about it more I got the idea that he would wear a black leather outfit as motorcycle riders are inclined to do and that his head should be a flaming skull and perhaps the motorcycle itself would be involved in flames too."

Thomas, though, said he came up with the leather jacket as an homage to Elvis' 1968 comeback special. In the interview Friedrich takes credit for the flames of the character that Thomas attributes to Ploog. For his part, Ploog has claimed in interviews that his main inspiration was Evel Knievel.

But there are still other lineages. Friedrich's claim of creatorship is somewhat bolstered by a 1971 comic, "Hell Rider," of Skywald Publication for which he is credited as "script editor." The character is a Vietnam veteran who rides a motorcycle that shoots flames. The character resembles Ghost Rider.

Thomas acknowledged the disagreement over the creation of the character but says he supports his friend Friedrich's suit to get money. He said he has no plans of his own, however.

"I always accepted that I was doing it as work for hire and really had no rights. I accept the fact that that's the way the business was done," he said. "We used to have to sign a long paragraph on the back of all our checks. We used to kid each other that it was like giving away the right of our first-born."

Friedrich, who worked as a freelancer, may not have signed that contract, said Thomas.

"I think [Marvel] ought to be generous when they use somebody's ideas," he said. "I think Gary probably wouldn't be upset at all if they just paid him something. It's a matter of principle. You know, there's this idea that it's a sign of weakness that out of these millions of dollars to give a couple of thousand to the creators."

Ghost Rider's legacy

Comic fans say the character is a good one, in large part because of its dark side.

Ken Murphy owns Marvels and Legends comic shop on Broadway and began collecting comics in the mid-1970s. Both Thomas and Friedrich will appear at Murphy's second annual Cape Girardeau comic convention, scheduled for April 21 and 22.

"Hollywood is now banking on darker heroes, and you can't get any darker than this," Murphy said.

"This kind of character is so conflicted within himself and with the deal he made. He does heroic things and still has to battle his doubt. So I think all good heroes have inner turmoil."

Andrew Johnson, owner of The Comix Strip on Broadway, said the character is representative of a 1970s affinity for the horror genre, a genre he believes is coming back in popularity.

"You've got to remember back in the 1970s before that there were not a lot of regular horror comics. But then you started getting zombie movies and "The Night of the Living Dead" and "Exorcist" comes out, and these have sort of a cult following," Johnson said.

Despite such followings, both Johnson and Murphy are surprised a character they consider "second-tier" in popularity is now a movie.

Even Thomas was impressed when he heard it. "I guess eventually they'll dredge up everything from everywhere," he said.

Thomas takes pride in one aspect of the Ghost Rider feature film. Indirectly, he had a hand in naming the film's star, Nicolas Cage. Cage, born Coppola, wanted to obscure ties to his famous uncle, the director Francis Ford Coppola, when he arrived in Hollywood. So he fell back on his passion for comic books to find a new last name. He has said in interviews that he chose Cage because Luke Cage was one of his favorite superheroes.

Luke Cage, the first black superhero to have his own comic, was named by ... Roy Thomas in 1972.

"It's funny the guy I helped name is playing a character I helped create," Thomas said. "There's nothing new under the sun."

tgreaney@semissourian.com

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