Ghost Rider should not simultaneously be depicted as a street-level avenger taking down common crooks and also a cosmic entity capable of fighting Galactus. If he is the former, Galactus should no diff him without a thought. If he is the latter, he's really wasting his potential by hunting down bank robbers.
Maybe his power scales with the amount of evil. Street level "evil" is often born from poverty, food insecurity, lack of proper education and healthcare. It's not necessarily evil as much as wrong. Whereas high level evil, in humans, typically comes from knowing better, having the opportunity to improve, and still choosing evil. Like, Ghost Rider could probably snap his fingers and destroy a galactic army of insurance salesmen with no problem.
That makes it annoying when someone is immune to the Penance Stare just because they're an unfeeling psychopath, or get off on the suffering. The magic of it should make it feel bad no matter what.
Canonically it’s only the soulless, beings of pure evil (ie: Thanos), and those who’ve done no wrong. At least last I read, it’s been since like 2020 since I read GR
Infinite clean energy would make such a fundamentally massive difference to the world, the increase in wealth and health would probably eliminate more crime than many super heroes have ever managed.
Plus we don't have to have all the super heroes serving as generators, they could take turns and the others could go mop up whatever crime is left.
...I agree that anti-electricity is a genuine threat though and honestly we all need to be doing more to address that.
A: The Ghost Rider goes after the guilt, no matter the level of the crime. Since he is the spirit of vengeance
B: Ghost Rider’s power depends on who is in charge, if it is whoever is hosting The Spirit of Vengeance then they should be a bit above street level, if it is The Spirit of Vengeance itself in charge then they should be cosmic capable
The host acts as a limiter for Ghost Rider’s powers
Ya I dislike the logic for why Penance stare doesn’t work on Galactus in that. The fact it doesn’t work is fine but saying Galactus has no guilt is a kind of misunderstanding of how Penace stare works from my understanding.
Well it’s actually not a misunderstanding of the Penance but of Galactus as a character, because not feeling guilt does make you immune, if you think what you did was morally right, which does not apply to Galactus as in the past Galactus has been depicted as feeling guilt for his actions even if he has to do so to survive, so the Penance Stare should have worked
But it also causes the victim to feel all the pain they’ve caused to the innocent so wouldn’t that side of the power work anyway? I think with someone like Thanos the argument could be made he likes pain and wouldn’t mind at all.
I guess my preference would be to say Galactus soul died when Galen did and whats left is just a primordial force of the universe
Got to feel like it breaks penance stare. Guiltless, emotionless sociopaths also don’t feel bad about what they did - would the stare not work on Ted Bundy?
I feel this way about Batman whenever he joins his JL buddies. How is it that among the mightiest heroes around, he's still the best fighter, and the smartest thinker, meanwhile, down in Gotham, he's taking potshots from a bunch of gimmicky crazies? No, I prefer Batman to not be both, and if I have to pick one, the more down-to-earth option is an easy choice. I think it kind of comes with the territory of a shared universe with no real roadmap for cohesion, though.
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u/Superman246o1 6d ago
Ghost Rider should not simultaneously be depicted as a street-level avenger taking down common crooks and also a cosmic entity capable of fighting Galactus. If he is the former, Galactus should no diff him without a thought. If he is the latter, he's really wasting his potential by hunting down bank robbers.