Number 1458: “It’s a G-G-G-GHOST!”

Even before I was old enough for school Mom used to buy me comic books because I always went to them when we visited the drugstore. I demanded them. Mom was aware of criticisms of comic books and steered me away from the crime and horror. She looked over the racks, carefully, before picking out comics like Donald Duck, Little Lulu, Popeye, Felix the Cat, or even, as today, Casper the Friendly Ghost. I remember it because Mom worried it might scare me. Ha! My guess is that Mom picked out comics with characters she was familiar with from the animated cartoons shown in theaters.

The early Casper comic book was more like the one-gag animated cartoons, with their “It’s a G-G-G-GHOST!” I don’t know who drew it, but the first story has the initials TAM in the splash panel.

These two stories are from Casper the Friendly Ghost #4 (1951), published by St. John.