Mephisto Vs. 4 Famous Co-Stars

 

Continued from yesterday's cover, we see that Ghost Rider has joined the fray. This crew has some history together.  Johnny Blaze first met Evel Knievel  way back in STF #74, they joined forces again to battle Mephisto in STF #376, and later both joined the team Rolling Thunder in STF #1115.  Batman and Ghost Rider confronted Mephisto back on one of my very first covers,  a lost B&B Tale from 2010.

Here's a peek behind the making of this cover, I needed a lot more flames before I could add the heroes in: 

Silver Surfer, Batman and Evel Knievel

 

Presenting Part One of a Two-Part Epic!  Will this trio of heroes be enough to take on Mephisto?   They'll need to call in another recruit for tomorrow's confrontation, and longtime STF visitors may have an idea as to who...

Batman and the Silver Surfer crossed paths on this blog a couple of times in the past over a decade ago - they first met in 2010 and then starred in a retro tale in 2011...

Make sure you come back tomorrow for the exciting conclusion!

Rolling Thunder

My brother Eric (you may know his robots), suggested the idea of a superhero biker team, and even though I thought it would be tough to get multiple characters with motorcycles to fit on one cover, the idea rattled around in my brain until I finally decided to give it a shot.  STF has already established the partnership of Ghost Rider and Evel Knievel in more than one adventure, so I figured that they would be a good duo to start assembling the team with. I had been wanting to use Kaneda from Akira on a cover for ages and I was happy to also feature the star of one of my favorite childhood books, The Mouse and The Motorcycle.  Black Canary is a biker babe who can more than hold her own in a fight, so she fit right in, and the team was complete!

Ghost Rider and Evel Knievel in: "Hell on Wheels!"

This was one of my favorite offbeat pairings back in issue #74, so I thought I would give them another go 'round.  The last time I had a painted cover, so for this one I went for a more traditional Bronze Age comic vibe.  I used to love playing with the Evel Knievel wind-up stunt cycle (the ad from which this Knievel image came) when I was a kid - how cool would a Ghost Rider version of that toy have been?

Ghost Rider and Evel Knievel

I haven't seen Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance yet but I think I will get out of it what I did from the first Ghost Rider flick - a thin plot and hokey performances with some cool looking Ghost Rider effects to make things a bit more palatable.  Hopefully the second film has a better villain, that's what really did the first one in for me.  Evel Knievel held a special  fascination for me as a kid.  I remember watching his jumps on TV and thinking he was about the closest thing to a real-life superhero that there was.  I also used to love the Evel Knievel toy bike that you could crank up and perform stunts with.