A magnificently balanced collision of horror, the west and the supernatural, Ghost Rider has managed to stay alive in one form or another since he first saw print in 1949. Today another character with the same name rides a massive motorcycle and has a flaming skull, while the original is called Phantom Rider (after a brief time as Night Rider)… But when he first rode into comics history he rode a horse from beyond. Just like one of the main sources of inspiration for his creation, the great western song “Riders in the Sky.”

Most fans remember the late Dick Ayers for his work as an inker during Marvel’s Silver Age. He was especially good on many of Jack Kirby’s classic stories, including the timeless Fin Fang Foom from Strange Tales #89 (October 1961), but the artist made his early name by penciling some wonderful work for a company named Magazine Enterprises.

It was while at ME that Dick Ayers got together with a writer named Roy Krank and created the character of Ghost Rider. A modest man who was known for his honesty, Ayers never took more credit for the character than he felt that he deserved.

In interviews he would stress that he did create the costume, but that most of the heavy lifting on the concept was done by writer Roy Krank and Editor Vin Sullivan. One of the main inspirations for the strip was the Disney Studio’s cartoon adaptation of the Washington Irving story “The Headless Horseman.” Krank may have pointed Ayers in a certain direction, but the artist made the idea into something of his own.

The initial covers for the series, as well as the consistent high quality of Ayers’ interior work make this series (and his run on it) one of the greatest of hidden gems in the world of comics. 

Over the title’s fourteen issue run, Ayers did approximately half of them. Frank Frazetta handled the covers for #2- 5 and one or two issues are hard to verify, but it is the signature appearance of the character on issue #1 that sets the stage for all that follows.

Against a jet black sky with ribbons of blue, yellow and pink slipping across the deep, dirt red hills of a background mountain range, The Ghost Rider’s horse rears back on his hind legs as the ghostly pale image of the hero pulls back on the reins.

Below them, bathed in the blue moonlight of the moon, several Indians flee in terror. The portrayal of the Native Americans is clichéd and typical of the times, but they get lost in the power of what Ayers has created in the center of the cover.

Over the Rider’s head the shaky script that gives the book its title matches the curve of the hills behind him. At his feet, a cloud of mostly yellow dirt rises from the dark sands below. The light color of the smoke makes it seem as if the very shoes of the horse are burning as the horseman tries to stop in time to break up the action.

The cover is pure comic shorthand for adventure. In the language of comic book covers Ayers has laid out a simple declaration of what the book contains: a western and a ghost. The reader may be able to fill in the blanks, but they are spurred on by one of the best western-horror covers ever.

It may in fact be a simple declaration, but it really raises far more questions. Who is he? Where did he come from? What brought him to this earth? As a pre-code comic title the book promises a lot.

And it does it without hyperbole. There is no big blurb announcing his arrival, only the smoke from those shoes as he tries to stop fast enough to take action.

Marvel picked the character up when ME let the character rights lapse. Over the years The Ghost Rider would morph into several other characters as the years passed.

Keeping the character in the western genre, he was at one point known as Night Rider. For a short while he was also called as The Phantom Rider. In his most famous incarnation he was taken from the world of the west and thrown into modern times as a motorcycle riding wild man with a flaming skull

All incarnations have their own validity and Ayers contributed to several of them. But nothing strikes home as much as what he created for that initial cover back in 1950.