Ghosts #1

Ghosts #1 (On Sale: July 1, 1971), has a cover by Nick Cardy.

I guess I was one of the few readers who were bored by just about every book Murray Boltioff was editor of except the Brave and the Bold. Since it was mainstream DC, I bought this series but never cared for it at all, and the gimmick of "true" stories just made it even worse. Despite how I felt about it, this title would last for over eleven years.

Interesting tidbit: The indicia reads just Ghost, with a lot of white space on both sides of the word. The cover and later issues read as Ghosts. It appears that the book was at first to be titled True Ghost Stories, thus the white space in the indicia, but then it was changed to just Ghosts. When they updated the indicia they whited out "True" and "Stories," but they forgot to add the "s."

We begin with a one-page introduction to ghosts drawn by Tony DeZuniga.

Our first take is "Death's Bridegroom" by Leo Dorfman and Jim Aparo. The police discover the body of a young woman who committed suicide, with a note saying she took her own life because the man she was engaged to only courted her to steal her life savings and leave her penniless in a tenement. The swindler who stole from her ends up lost in a fog as he skips town, and comes across a mansion owned by a strange beautiful woman who claims to be waiting for her long-lost fiance. She seems the perfect new target to him, but little does he know she and her home have long rotted away and with his proposal, he joins her in the fog. Reprinted in Limited Collectors' Edition C-32 (1974).

That is followed by "Ghost in the Iron Coffin" by Leo Dorfman and Sam Glanzman. A resistance fighter is caught and executed while trying to sabotage a Nazi U-Boat but haunts the vessel killing its crew until he's able to use his spiritual powers to turn the U-Boat's own torpedoes against it and destroy it.

Next up is our first reprint: "The Tattooed Terror" by John Broome, Carmine Infantino, and Sy Barry and reprinted from Sensation Mystery #112 (1952).

We have another reprint up next in "The Last Dream" by John Broome, Carmine Infantino, and Frank Giacoia and reprinted from Sensation Comics #107 (1952). Tybalt Fletcher, the last of his line, dies in a feud with the Beaumont clan. His ghost then spends the next 400 years killing Beaumonts with the pistol he requested to be buried with.

We end with "The Spectral Coachman" by Leo Dorfman and Tony DeZuniga. Tombstone, Arizona, draws its name from the town graveyard where the greatest badmen of the west are buried. But tonight one of them lives again when a young modern prospector is rescued from a pack of wolves by the ghost of a long-dead stagecoach driver. Reprinted in Limited Collectors' Edition C-32 (1974).

All of the new material was reprinted in Showcase Presents Ghosts Vol. 1 TPB (2012).

Edited by Murray Boltinoff.