A stunt rider who sold his soul at seventeen to save his father, and who is collected on the debt years later with a skull on fire.
Johnny Blaze is a motorcycle stuntman. In 1986, at seventeen, Mephistopheles offers to cure his father’s cancer in exchange for his soul; the next morning the cancer is gone, and his father dies that day in a stunt accident. Mephistopheles considers the contract fulfilled. Nicolas Cage plays the adult Johnny in both films, with Matt Long and then Ionut Cristian Lefter as the boy who signed.
Ghost Rider picks him up as a famous stuntman who survives a jump over a field of trucks and runs into Roxanne, the girl he left behind, now a reporter. Mephistopheles comes to collect: he makes Johnny the new Ghost Rider and offers his soul back if he defeats Blackheart, the Devil’s own son, who is looking for a contract worth a thousand souls. Johnny burns down to the skeleton, learns the Penance Stare, meets a caretaker who knows more than he says, is jailed for murders he did not commit, and gets out.
Minor spoiler
He beats Blackheart, and when Mephistopheles offers to take the curse back he declines, so that nobody else can be made to sign: he will use the power against the demon and against anything that harms the innocent. Mephistopheles vows to make him pay.
Spirit of Vengeance finds him hiding in Eastern Europe to keep the Rider contained. A monk, Moreau, offers to restore his soul if he finds a boy, Danny, whom the Devil, now calling himself Roarke, means to take over. At a monastery Johnny confesses the thing the first film never asked him: the deal was selfish, because his father had accepted dying and Johnny could not. The Rider is exorcised and he is human, until Danny gives it back and lets it stay lit in daylight. He throws Roarke back to Hell with the chain, and the spirit inside him, Zarathos, comes back to itself. The flames turn blue.
Show detailsThe other Johnny Blaze
This catalogue has two. This one is the Nicolas Cage films, in their own continuity, which the Marvel Database calls Earth-121347. The other is the one who appears for a scene in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and whom Ryan Gosling is announced to play next, and he has his own entry.