VQ rating: Ghost

B-list Iron man baddie, Ghost, makes a big move up the villain ranks in the pages of Thunderbolts #132.

He’d been toiling in obscurity since making his first appearance in Iron Man # 219 (June ’87). His bio is a virtual blank slate.

According to his Wikipedia entry: “He claims to have been a business executive at one time, and that businessmen made him what he is. The Ghost works as a freelance industrial saboteur and seeks to destroy various corporations through sabotage, and is apparently most interested in attacking those dealing in electronics and high technology. He is willing to do this without financial re-compensation, but often hires himself out to corporations that wish to destroy rival companies, having developed a pathological hatred for high technology businesses and business executives.“

According to his fellow T’bolters in the mess hall:

Headsman: “Ghost’s a whadddayacallit. ‘Anti-corporate terrorist.’ He don’t give a rat’s ass about money.”

Paladin: “I guess since Stark went down the tubes, Osborn’s the only game in town — and he’d rather have Ghost inside the tent… Either that or Ghost knows something we don’t.”

Ghost has become a card-carrying member of the tin-foil-hat club, welding himself into quarerts that only he, with his intagibility powers, can enter and exit. He eats only military MREs and sees conspiracy all around him.

Granted, that last one isn’t so hard on Thunderbolt Mountain.

But he’s got his eyes on a lot of what Osborn is orchestrating in the Marvel U right now. And we know that in a world where being able to benchpress schoolbusses and leap buildings is the norm, being able to think is the real super-power.

Which brings us to Ghost’s elevated VQ this week. Ghost knows that Norman Osborn sabotaged some of Headsman’s equipment during a recent mission. If Ghost hadn’t corrected the problem, Headsman would have fallen to certain death. And if he knows that, you can bet he knows more.

And that makes him powerful enough to make the respectable rise to 5 on our VQ scale.

Hopefully Osborne lets him live long enough to see 6.

Thunderbolts #132
Writer: Andy Diggle
Artist: Roberto De La Torre
Colors: Frank Martin
Letters: Albert Deschense