In their recent arc of Thanos, Donny Cates and Geoff Shaw took readers to a possible and very dystopian far future, where the title character had wiped out almost all life in the universe. One of the biggest surprises of this reality was that one of the Marvel Universe's most violent and mortal beings, Frank Castle, aka the Punisher, was still alive. It turns out, Castle's nigh-superhuman tenacity led him to pledge his soul to three very different and powerful devils: Mephisto, who transformed him into Ghost Rider; Galactus, who added to Castle's power by transforming him into a Herald; and Thanos, who made the now cosmic Ghost Rider his servant.

The end of that story saw Castle finally perish, but in the recent Thanos Annual he was given a shot at redemption and forgiveness when Odin welcomed him to Valhalla. In the first issue of Cosmic Ghost Rider, on sale now, Cates and artist Dylan Burnett have begun chronicling how their thrice-damned future version of Frank Castle will make the most of that shot.

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CBR spoke with Cates about getting the chance to spin more Cosmic Ghost Rider tales, the characters his protagonist will cross paths with, and what the future holds for this far future version of Frank Castle.

CBR: When we talked about your recent Thanos run, we discussed the origin of the Cosmic Ghost Rider character and how he started out as an idea that you would like to do if you found work at Marvel. Now we're well into your career as a Marvel writer, and you get a chance to fully flesh out and write that character as the protagonist of his own miniseries. How does it feel to get a chance to do that?

Donny Cates: It feels so weird, man. [Laughs] I'm looking at the proofs for issue #1 right now, and I feel so fortunate that I've been able to come into my favorite publishing house on the planet, bring all my weird friends, and kind of do whatever the hell I want. That might sound flippant, but you hear all these horror stories about how you're not going to be able to do the things you want to do there, and dealing with Editorial and big corporations. Knock on wood, but that's not been my experience at all!

Jordan D White was my editor on Thanos and is now my editor on Cosmic Ghost Rider. He's just down for fun stuff. It's so nice to be able to walk into the company and be like, “Hey, these are all the really weird things I want to do.” And then to have him go. “Yeah, all right!” It's almost like they give me my own rope to hang myself. [Laughs]

Essentially, Cosmic Ghost Rider is a creator-owned book that I'm doing at Marvel. It's a character who I created that's kind of a hodgepodge of other stuff. I created it with Geoff Shaw, one of my best friends. And now I'm doing the mini-series with Dylan Burnett, who I've worked with in the past and is also one of my really good friends. So this book is really me; more so than Venom, Thanos, or Doctor Strange. This is my book; me and my friends. [Laughs] So if it fails and everyone hates it there's no standing behind, “You just don't like that character.” This is people's first interactions with that character. Marvel has been very happy to let me take that flag into battle and see what happens.

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I think Cosmic Ghost Rider has resonated with me for the same reasons I've found Greg Pak's Weapon H series so enjoyable. You're taking huge character ideas that are so over the top, it feels like they shouldn't gel, but you glue them together with a very believable human protagonist. Which aspects of Frank Castle's character are you especially interested in exploring in this story?

Frank is a very interesting and layered character. This entire thing began with me thinking that no one loves vengeance more than Frank Castle. So making him the Ghost Rider was a cool thing to play with. Then you get to “Thanos Wins,” and If you read the Thanos Annual we did after that you saw that Frank seemingly found some kind of rest or reward. At that end of that story, the flames on Frank's head were extinguished and he was lead into the gates of Valhalla by Odin. So this is a man at peace now, and perhaps even a man who got his sanity back. He's now in Valhalla surrounded by all these other noble warriors.

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So when you look back at this story that I've charted for Frank, this is a man who sold his soul three times. He sold it once to the devil, once to Galactus, and once to Thanos. So the main element I'm playing with in Cosmic Ghost Rider is Frank wrestling with the idea of forgiveness and penance. There's always two sides to the Ghost Rider: vengeance and penance. That's what we're going to find here.

EXCLUSIVE: An epic 2-page spread from Cosmic Ghost Rider #2 by Dylan Burnett and Antonio Fabela

This is a Frank who's woken up from a billion year nightmare and is reevaluating things. He's like, “I ran with Thanos? I hung out with Galactus? What have I become?” This book is going to be wild as hell, out there, and hilarious, but I definitely set my sites on trying to make the Cosmic Ghost Rider as layered as Frank is himself. Those are things I couldn't really dwell on when I was doing “Thanos Wins” because, as much as Frank ended up stealing the show in that story, I couldn't take too much time away from our two Titans to wallow in the ideas surrounding him. That's kind of what this will be for.

When people get to the end of the first issue they'll see that Frank has made an enormous gesture to try and prove to himself, the galaxy, the gods, and whoever that forgiveness is possible for even the worst of his sins.

The Thanos Annual ended with Frank headed into the afterlife, and in the physical world most if not all life appeared to have been extinguished. So what can you tell us about where Cosmic Ghost Rider takes place?

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That's a really good question that I'm going to have to opt out of answering. [Laughs] You're going to have to pick the book up and read it.

We know Odin welcomed Frank to Valhalla in the Thanos Annual, but is he a supporting character throughout Cosmic Ghost Rider?

It's phenomenal. Yes, Odin does play a part.

I've been given a chance to write what you'd call, “Frank's normal voice.” I love it. I've never actually written Frank. So, getting to write Frank butted up against Odin is a joy. Anyone who's read my work on God Country knows that one of the things I adore is having these very high speaking gods bump up against these rough and tumble people. Right before we got on the phone I was reading over the PDF for issue #1 and there's a conversation between Odin and Frank that's just a delight.

You might think that Odin and Frank have a great deal in common. They're both warriors on true paths, at least in their hearts. So you would think there would be some sort of respect there, at least from the jump, for being who they are. There isn't though. [Laughs] Frank doesn't seem to really give that much of a shit about Odin. He calls him out on it.

Yeah, putting those two very stubborn guys together means there's bound to be a collision.

Oh, yes! Odin may be the most stubborn being who ever lived. And in close second place is Frank Castle.

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Who are some other supporting characters that Frank will run into and afoul of over the course of the series?

In “Thanos Wins,” I got to create one new character, the Cosmic Ghost Rider. In the course of this five issue miniseries I created 20-30 new characters. So there are going to be a lot of new characters.

If you read “Thanos Wins” and you read the Cosmic Ghost Rider's origin issue, which was Thanos #16, you saw there was one person who he spent a lot of time with on his journey to becoming this Cosmic Ghost Rider; a certain world devouring dude named Galactus. We got the impression that they were friends. They were buddy space cops roaming the galaxy. So I'd be remiss if I didn't give that unlikely pair a reunion of sorts.

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So a lot of new faces and some familiar ones. But are some of the new characters like the Cosmic Ghost Rider in that they're familiar faces getting new takes?

[Laughs] Yes! Please make sure to include that I laughed evilly before I said yes.

[Laughs] Nice. You mentioned your artist Dylan Burnett was a friend and a past collaborator. I'm not super familiar with his work, but when I look over the projects he has worked on it's clear the two of you have similar story sensibilities.

Absolutely. Dylan and I have done two books together, Interceptor and its sequel Reactor. Both of those books are very Metal. They're really hardcore and bad-ass with a lot of action scenes. And Dylan is just the sweetest human being who has ever lived. I love him. He's Canadian, but I forgive him that. [Laughs] He's a drummer like I am. He's just dynamite.

He's got kind of a James Harren thing going on, but his style is so much his own. It doesn't really look like anyone else. I think James is the closest point of comparison, but it's like a James Harren-Daniel Warren Johnson mixture. I just adore him.

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Like Geoff Shaw, Dylan is a good friend. But with Geoff, Marvel invited both of us at the same time because of God Country. I didn't suggest Dylan for Cosmic Ghost Rider, though. He was supposed to be busy doing some other book, and then my friend and Marvel talent coordinator, Ricky Purdin, suggested him to me. I know everyone assumes I have some magic power to hire all my friends. Believe, me I would definitely be that asshole if I could. [Laughs] It just happens very naturally, though.

Finally, if readers respond to Cosmic Ghost Rider would you be up for telling more adventures of this incarnation of Frank Castle?

Absolutely! I have about a billion years worth of Cosmic Ghost Rider stories So the potential to see more of these tales is in the hands of fans who dictate these things. I can reveal though that there are concrete plans for him after this miniseries.