Ghost Rider #32 (Aaron, Huat, Villarrubia)

One of the most challenging things about a comic property that's owned by one of the major companies is that this character will pass through the hands of writer after writer, editor after editor, all of whom will have different ideas about who the character is.  Sometimes a new writer or editor will want to take the comic in a radically different direction; as part of this, previously established facts will be deliberately changed.  New powers can be added, existing powers changed or removed, memories shown to be false or new facts emerge, changing the interpretation of previous events.  This is known as “retconning” (from retrospective continuity) and it's almost always a mistake.  Spider-fans are evenly divided on the whether the double-retcon of Clone Saga is worse than the arguably-not-a-retcon of One More Day (personally I feel it's too early to tell which is the stinkier), but “it's almost as bad as the Clone Saga” is often used to insult a recent change in a comic's direction.  If a character's powers, history and personality change then casual readers lose their connection to that character and become intimidated by how much they've lost track of the story.  For example, when did Archangel lose his healing powers? Don't tell me – I don't care any more.
The reason why writers continue to try it is a) Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing begins with a retcon so deft that people often forget that Swampie was anything other than a plant elemental and b) every up-and-coming writer is privately convinced that they are the next Alan Moore.  It's the editor's job to whack them over the nose with a rolled-up newspaper when a writer tries to have Bobby Ewing come out of the shower.  Daniel Way (the previous writer) has made a mess all over Ghost Rider, and it's left to Jason Aaron to try to clean it up.
It's not entirely Daniel's fault – Ghost Rider has been through at lot.  Johnny Blaze, the original and the best, was originally cursed by Satan for welching on a deal and forced to turn into a demonic motorcyclist every night and destroy sinners.  Over time, and writers, Satan is retconned into Mephisto, Blaze is now sharing his body with a demon called Zarathos (the source of his powers) and can now transform at any time, but with the risk that Zarathos could take control.  Eventually he almost meets Jesus, achieves redemption anyway and goes off to have babies with his half-sister.
In the early nineties, the property is revived.  Daniel Ketch becomes a “spirit of vengeance”, that can also transform into a demonic motorcyclist in order to protect innocent blood.  He dies twice (but gets better), finds out Johnny Blaze is his long-lost brother, that there are multiple “spirits of vengeance” at any one time and the whole thing was set in motion, not by Mephisto, but by a rogue angel of vengeance called Zadkiel (a name that Way doesn't appear to have researched properly – the Gustav Davidson's definitive Dictionary of Angels has Zadkiel as the angel of mercy; Ariel/Uriel would have been a much better choice).
Zadkiel convinces Ketch to break the cycle of vengeance by tracking down and draining the powers of all the spirits of vengeance while Johnny Blaze tries to stop him.
This particular issue begins at a last stand; Ketch, Zadkiel and a pile of other rogue angels on one side; Blaze, the other remaining vengean