Ghost Rider (Jones)

Origin

Alejandra was raised by a mysterious man named Adam in a South American tomb until she was 18, when she was forcibly bonded to the Spirit of Vengeance by an undead man referring to himself as the Seeker under Adam's employ. Alejandra was part of Adam's plan to undo sin on Earth, which would leave every human as a mindless drone, but she was stopped and later tutored by Johnny Blaze, the original Ghost Rider.

Creation

Alejandra was created by Rob Williams and Matthew Clark and first appeared in Ghost Rider #1 - Give Up The Ghost in 2011.

Surname - Alejandra's last name has been a source of debate amongst fans of the character. During the entirety of her 2011 ongoing series, not once is she referred to by her last name. It is revealed during her run, in the Ghost Rider #5, that her birth father's name is Jones, wether this is his first or last name is unclear. It is later, in Venom #14, displayed in a narrators text box as Alejandra Blaze, however this is believed to have been a mistake. In 2015 during the Secret Wars Tie-In Ghost Racers, she is addressed by Arcade as both Alejandra "Nicaraguan Hellfire" Jones and Alejandra Blaze, but since this is a mini-series that takes place outside the main 616 Marvel Universe, these names may not apply to her 616 counterpart. As an adoptee since birth under Adam, Alejandra may not have a last name at all. Most recently, in Secret Wars: Official Guide To the Marvel Multiverse #1, Marvel Comics officially states that her last name is in fact Jones, and not Blaze despite any previous errors.

Major Story Arcs

Fear Itself

In an ancient temple in Nicaragua, Alejandra waits with others while Adam and the Seeker choose which of them will be the next host of the Spirit of Vengeance and Alejandra is chosen. An hour later, Alejandra then appears in Dayton, Ohio during Fear Itself when the city is under attack by Sin, Blackout, and Deathwatch. After killing both Blackout and Deathwatch, Sin and several mechs attack her, Alejandra manages to knock the hammer out of Sin’s hands but when she tries to pick it up it reverts her back to human form. Alejandra wakens and is beaten by Sin as Adam watches and does nothing.

Alejandra returns to the temple with Adam who then commands her to judge the men and women to she had trained with as potential hosts for the Spirit of Vengeance. Alejandra does not agree with this and turns on Adam who proceeds to fight her and regain control. Johnny Blaze then storms the temple with help from a demon sent by Mephisto. As Johnny attempts to rescue Alejandra, she uses a swarm of locusts to destroy the demon. When Johnny offers to get her out she turns on him and threatens to burn him for his sins. Before she can do, this her attack is intercepted by the Seeker, who is now helping Johnny, and the Seeker tells her she is being used by Adam before Adam blows him away. Adam forcefully unleashes Alejandra’s power and causes the temple to start to collapse. Alejandra uses her powers to cleanse the sin from nearly the entire population of Nicaragua, turning them into mindless beings that can’t do anything so then they cannot sin.

Adam brings Alejandra to Cape Canaveral where they commandeer a rocket to go to a space station where she cleanses the astronauts. Adam places Alejandra in front of a giant lens that will amplify the scope of Alejandra’s cleansing ability to affect the entire Earth. When she refuses Adam forces her to unleash the power like in Nicaragua. Johnny Blaze intercepts them and tries to convince Alejandra not to do it. After Adam mentions that he was the one who created sin, she directs her power at him, killing him and destroying the space station and goes back to Earth with Johnny before speaking to him and leaving.

Fear Itself Aftermath

After Fear Itself and her manipulation by Adam, Alejandra goes off on her own to destroy evil. In Mexico, she saves an orphan from human traffickers and follows directions from Zarathos to try and do penance for her actions in Nicaragua. Alejandra then assaults a compound where a human trafficking ring is getting ready to deliver a truck full of women and children. She finds most of the men and kills them for doing this to the people before seeing one truck full of people escaping and driven by the leader if the ring. She chases the man who steers towards a cliff before jumping out, making Alejandra choose between saving the people in the back of the truck or punishing him. She chooses to save the people, using her powers to guide them through a portal of fire she creates. Once they are safe she goes back to the top of the cliff to meet the man who drove the truck. She learns that this man is her father and finds out that he sold any potential brothers and sisters she might have. She then punishes him for his sins, leaving him like a zombie at the top of the cliff before leaving.

Alejandra then heads to Louisiana, on Zarathos’ suggestion as a hurricane is about to make landfall where she meets a voodoo priestess. She tries to talk to the priestess but her powers are locked as she crosses a border the priestess made because she sensed great sin on the other side. She is rescued from an alligator by a man named Earle who takes her to a small town with only men. Earle explains that all of the men there are killers who are trying to reform. The other men in the town conspire to kill Alejandra in an attempt for freedom and combine into one big monster that attacks. Alejandra is forced to fight without her Ghost Rider powers. As she is running she accepts that the “old” Alejandra is dead after Nicaragua and this enables her to overpower the priestess’ magic and become the Ghost Rider and destroy the monster. Earle finds her and thanks her for freeing him but she kills him because it was revealed he murdered his family. Alejandra leaves as the hurricane moves in destroying the town the men built.

Alejandra meets the Seeker in a movie theater to find out how to make fix all of the people in Nicaragua. He tells her that Mephisto has them in Hell and she will need Johnny Blaze’s help to get them back. She finds Blaze in the middle of a fight with Hawkeye, who is determined to take the Ghost Rider to jail for the Nicaragua incident, mistakenly thinking it was Johnny who was responsible. Before Alejandra can take Blaze, she is sucked into a portal and followed by the two men. She and Blaze come through first and are assaulted by Steel Wind and Steel Vengeance. They start to fight, as Alejandra is distracted while trying to save Blaze, Hawkeye attacks her with an arrow that has a magic amulet that causes beings from Hell to be completely paralyzed. Hawkeye then ties her up and ties her to his hover-bike. The Bike is hit by bullets from Steel Wind and starts to go down, Hawkeye jumps off but leaves Alejandra there on accident. Right before the hover-bike hits a passing bullet train, Alejandra is able to overpower the amulet with anger and jump to safety. Steel Wind and Steel Vengeance tie Blaze and Hawkeye to the back of their bikes and use a portal to travel to Tokyo during rush hour to drag the two men to death but they are saved by Alejandra, who turned the passing bullet train into a demonic bullet train (like her bike) and she brings them back to the flatlands they were previously fighting in. Alejandra proceeds to beat Steel Wind and Steel Vengeance in a fight. She destroys Steel Vengeance’s cybernetics, turning her back into a corpse and prepares to kill Steel Wind but is stopped by Blaze. She brings the two men back to Tokyo and Blaze takes the amulet from Hawkeye, agreeing to train Alejandra to become better at using the Ghost rider powers before they teleport away.

Circle of Four

Alejandra and Johnny Blaze travel to a diner outside of Las Vegas when she hears the souls of the men Blackheart sacrificed and is drawn to Vegas. When she encounters Blackheart, she unknowingly activates a center fugue that serves as a portal to hell and is told if she keeps going it will bring hell on earth but if she stops riding she will cause the whole Earth to be dragged to hell. Johnny blaze then drives up and takes her place so that she can go confront Blackheart. Once there she meets up with Venom, Red Hulk, and X-23 who are also after Blackheart. Blackheart then summons their opposites, Alejandra’s being a man called Ichor. Alejandra tries to outrun Ichor so she can fight Blackheart but Blackheart distracts her by offering to give the souls of the people from Nicaragua back and Ichor catches up and they fight. Ichor proceeds to tell her that he will punish Alejandra for her sins but she responds by telling him that Alejandra is dead and all that is left is the Ghost Rider before running Ichor over with her bike, returning the man to a human form before leaving to look for Blackheart.She finds Gari Oyle, Blackheart’s lover, instead and threatens to kill her if he doesn’t stop talking in her head. The other three antitheses show up to stop her but they are stopped through the timely intervention of Red Hulk and Venom. After a short fight during which Alejandra has the chest ripped open and Red Hulk is killed and Venom tries to hold of the other Antitheses so Alejandra can beat Gari Oyle to the amulet that is holding back Hell. On the way Blackheart offers to give the souls of the Nicaraguans to her if she destroys the amulet. Dying she staggers to it and destroys it, apologizing to Doctor Strange and Damon Hellstorm, who are trying to figure out what is going on, and dies.

Alejandra wakes up and sees Blackheart and Adam asking her about her recent choices before her mother arrives and asks her to be Mexico’s protector. On a mission her mother is killed and she is captured by an unknown force. Suddenly Alejandra meets X-23, Red Hulk, and Venom and they realize that what they just experienced was a dream and they are really in Mephisto’s realm. Mephisto offers them all a deal to send Alejandra and the others back if the agree to help Mephisto in the future with an important task, she and the others agree. When they are sent back to Las Vegas, which is overrun with demons and hell spawn, Alejandra is in human form and claims that quitting is the best option because Blackheart has the Spirit of Vengeance. As the group makes its way toward Blackheart, Alejandra constantly laments that their cause is hopeless. Eventually she helps Venom and Red Hulk assault Blackheart, during the fight it is taken by Venom and he and Red Hulk are eventually thrown from the building and Alejandra tells Blackheart their plan when he offers her to be his personally ghost rider but pushes her out of a hole in the wall before she answers, but before she hits the ground and dies she is rescued by Red Hulk, who is in possession of both the venom symbiote and the spirit of vengeance. After being saved, she drives a cab and rescues Flash Thompson from oncoming demons and is angry that she was kept out of the loop involving giving the spirit of vengeance to Red Hulk. They find X-23 fighting Gari Oyle and as Flash is leaning out of the car, trying to help X-23, Alejandra pushes him out and drives off. She finds Red Hulk just after Blackheart is defeated and Vegas returns to normal and demands the spirit of vengeance back, he gives it to her and she leaves before the Avengers show up.

Assault on Hell

Alejandra bursts into a strip club, in Rider form, to find the Seeker, who she decapitates and questions about how she can gain enough power to directly assault Mephisto’s realm. He tells her to find Adam, but he might not help her because she left him in an exploding space station. She finds Adam in the wilderness but instantly brings him to the top of Burj Khalifa in Dubai and threatens to throw him off of the top if he doesn’t supply her with enough power. Adam readily agrees, claiming this is the holy battle her raised her for and she rides off to Mephisto’s realm. She kills the guards at the gates and proceeds to fight Mephisto, who gains the upper, and an extra, hand in the fight. Mephisto taunts Alejandra by telling her the only reason he involves himself with the ghost riders is because it is fun. He pins her and right before he is about to kill her, she reaches out and tears his heart from his chest and uses it as leverage to get the souls of the Nicaraguans. Mephisto tells her that if she destroys the heart and kills him, reality will tear apart; she calls it as a bluff and squeezes. Mephisto relents and gives her the souls in a box and tells her to leave but she instead tries to kill him by destroying the heart. She is stopped when Johnny Blaze, who had been watching the whole time, shoots her in the head with a magic bullet. Alejandra turns back into a human and drops the box into a lake of lava. She grabs onto a ledge and Johnny tries to save her but she lets go claiming her death would be vengeance for the Nicaraguans and anyone else she hurt. She falls into the lake but Johnny goes after her and they both emerge, Alejandra being carried by Johnny who is now the Ghost Rider again.

Back in Nicaragua she and Johnny convers about what happened and whether or not the Ghost Rider is a curse. Alejandra is clad only in the tattered remains of her old clothes and a cloak while her skin is severely burned and her head is on fire Ghost Rider style even though she is not the Rider, Johnny is. She claims she is a monster but Johnny disagrees because she was able to rescue the souls and the Nicaraguans are back to normal. Johnny offers to ride with her but she declines saying that he made her the rider, then took the rider away and shot her and that he deserves vengeance. Alejandra and Johnny go their separate ways and Johnny wonders if she would be the one to punish the Ghost Rider as she drives the other way.

Powers

Spirit of Vengeance?

While Alejandra may have lost Zarathos, and the full power of the Ghost Rider, it is still important to note she has retained a fraction of Zarathos' power and may still exhibit most if not all of her previously displayed abilities. By the end of her 2011 ongoing, she states the deeds of Johnny Blaze deserves vengeance, she may consider herself a self-proclaimed Spirit of Vengeance.

Hellfire

A supernatural and very versatile flame mostly associated with the Ghost Rider. This flame is known to burn the soul of its victims, but has been used to melt away the physical, and even heal the body of its host. Alejandra particularly has used Hellfire to hit her victims with all the suffering they've given others in their lifetime, similar to a Penance Stare effect. She has also used Hellfire in conjunction with a bike handle to summon/construct a ride, summon/construct her signature Kama/scythe weapon as seen in Ghost Rider #1 - Give Up The Ghost, and manifest blazing chain links between two nunchucks (Ghost Rider #5).

Chains

While she does not generally use chains, on the occasion she does, the links appear to manifest completely out of constructed Hellfire. Once she is done with the chains purpose, they seemingly dissipate just as quickly in the same manner as her scythe, nunchucks, and bike. Like most, the chains she constructs follow her innate intentions as she wields them.

Teleportation

Alejandra depends on the Spirit of Vengeance, Zarathos, to guide her through a series of Hellfire generated portals to the places on Earth most worthy of retribution, of vengeance.

Lightning

In a fit of rage, Alejandra has summoned, held, and cast lightning from the sky (Ghost Rider #6).

Eight Plague

A signature of Alejandra's Ghost Rider, is the ability to conjure and project Hellfire imbued locusts from her gaped jaws. These locusts burn and consume all in their path (Ghost Rider #2, Ghost Rider #3, Ghost Rider #5, Ghost Racers #3).

The Ride

The Ghost Rider can possess any mode of transportation into her own personal ride, into the ride of the Ghost Rider. Whatever mode of transportation she possesses generally takes on an equally demonic appearance to her own and obeys her every whim (Ghost Rider #8).

Adam's Empowerment

While not a solitary ability, it should be noted that Alejandra has accomplished massive feats with the aid of Adam, whom apparently has the ability to temporarily enhance Alejandra's power levels to a great degree. Under Adam's empowerment, Alejandra summoned a giant motorbike, and brought about such devastation, her actions were mistaken for a nuke, and burnt away the sin of an entire country north of Colombia. Most of the humans remained alive, but with the sin burnt from their souls, they were husks of their former selves (Ghost Rider #3). Adam was able to give Alejandra enough power to fight Mephisto in his own realm and win, if but momentarily.

Other Media

Games

Marvel Heroes

Alejandra is aplayable character in the game as Enhanced Costume for Ghost Rider.

Marvel: War of Heroes

Alejandra Blaze appears in several cards in the mobile card game Marvel: War of Heroes. Her cards are:

• [Spirit of Vengeance] Alejandra Blaze