GHOST RIDER #26

Cover shows strong gloss and sharp corners with no visible creasing or color breaks. There is a small stress line near the top left edge of the cover and minor edge wear at the top right corner. The book is in a protective sleeve, and the back cover and interior pages were not assessed. Overall the front cover presents as a high-grade copy with only trivial handling wear.

Ghost Rider (vol. 2) #26, cover dated June 1992, arrived during the height of the early-1990s Ghost Rider boom under writer Howard Mackie and artist Mark Texeira. The issue introduces Vengeance, the vigilante alter ego of disgraced FBI agent Michael Badilino, who was created as a darker foil to Danny Ketch's Ghost Rider and would go on to headline his own miniseries and recurring appearances through the Midnight Sons era. Texeira's moody, high-contrast rendering of the supernatural bike-and-chain iconography was a signature of the title's most collected run, and this issue is frequently cited in character-debut checklists for the period.

Market data shows a large, well-populated CGC census (over 220 universal copies, more than 60 recorded 9.8 sales) typical of a book that was speculated on and preserved in bulk during the early-1990s collector boom. Pricing is concentrated almost entirely at the top of the grading scale: the spread between a 9.6 and a 9.8 is proportionally steep even though absolute dollar values remain modest, reflecting a character-key book whose demand is driven by high-grade completists and Ghost Rider specialists rather than broad crossover collecting. Recent short-term averages above the longer 1-year average suggest a modest uptick in 9.8 demand, though the book remains an affordable key relative to its Bronze and Golden Age counterparts.

This is a book collected mainly by Ghost Rider and Marvel horror-line completists, character-key hunters tracking Midnight Sons debuts, and buyers assembling a run of the Mackie/Texeira era. Lower and mid-grade raw copies are inexpensive and plentiful, making the book accessible as a reading or filler copy, while the real premium sits almost exclusively in 9.8 slabs given the thin population above that grade. It is not a blue-chip investment vehicle but remains a steady, in-demand pickup for character-first-appearance collectors.