So I’m watching the trailer for the new Ghost Rider movie, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance with Nic (”I’ll do anything!”) Cage and it dawns on me.

Nowhere in the trailer is there a mention of Marvel Comics. No attempt to tie it into the Marvel Universe.

No mention that it’s from the company that brought you Captain America, Iron Man and Fantastic Four. There’s a Marvel Knights logo that flashes oh-so-briefly onscreen at the beginning but that’s hardly the same.

Even the homepage for the Sony release doesn’t play up the Marvel connection.

It’s just a movie about a biker with a flaming head. Trying to help a woman and her little boy.

The same plot as Jean-Claude Van Damme's Nowhere To Run and dozens of other movies.

Since the Marvel Comics name denotes a super-hero movie hit factory these days, leaving it off the promotional material for a Marvel Comics-based movie seems like either very bad marketing...

...or the usual corporate pissing contest where the other Marvel movies are coming from Paramount (Captain America: The First Avenger; Iron Man) and Disney (The Avengers), which owns Marvel, and they don't want to help their competitor Sony to succeed too much.

Or that Marvel really wants to keep its distance and just pocket the available cash.

The movie opens on February 17.

[Artwork: The Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance movie poster, also with nary a mention of Marvel Comics and the other Marvel movies]