What do you think?
Rate this book
Ghosts: Classic Monsters of Pre-Code Horror Comics
There's an eerie moan on the midnight wind from just beyond the cemetery gate. A crypt door slowly creaks open, and a strange shape emerges from the darkness within.
It flitters across the cold, foggy night, eyes ablaze with hate-- and now glaring in your direction! You're too paralyzed to move. It's coming towards you... closer... closer... closer...
From the terror team that curdled your blood with Haunted Horror, Zombies, Return of the Zombies, Haunted Love , and Mummies , GHOSTS is the latest and ghastly greatest in the Chilling Archives of Horror Comics collections. Over 240 pages of appalling apparitions, formidable phantoms, shuddery seances, shivery spooks 'n specters, and evil wraiths with much more than just revenge on their murdered minds!
Featuring hair-raising precode '50s horror gems from Alex Toth, John Blummer, Sid Check, Lin Streeter, Ross Andru, Lou Cameron, King Ward, and many more. And be sure to cover your own head while gazing over a ghostly gallery of classic cover creeps!
It flitters across the cold, foggy night, eyes ablaze with hate-- and now glaring in your direction! You're too paralyzed to move. It's coming towards you... closer... closer... closer...
From the terror team that curdled your blood with Haunted Horror, Zombies, Return of the Zombies, Haunted Love , and Mummies , GHOSTS is the latest and ghastly greatest in the Chilling Archives of Horror Comics collections. Over 240 pages of appalling apparitions, formidable phantoms, shuddery seances, shivery spooks 'n specters, and evil wraiths with much more than just revenge on their murdered minds!
Featuring hair-raising precode '50s horror gems from Alex Toth, John Blummer, Sid Check, Lin Streeter, Ross Andru, Lou Cameron, King Ward, and many more. And be sure to cover your own head while gazing over a ghostly gallery of classic cover creeps!
128 pages, Paperback
Published October 8, 2019
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 26, 2022
I liked this but I've already forgotten most of it apart from Ross Andru supplying the art on a story in the early 1950s. Ghost stories tend to veer toward the hokey side for me. There's a reason the EC guys rarely did ghosts. The art was good and the stories were decent, though. Not sure if this one is getting converted to store credit or not. It was on par with the Mummies collection but not nearly as good as Swamp Monsters by a long chalk.
August 4, 2021
Much to my surprise, this collection of ghost-story comics from the early 1950s was almost uniformly phenomenal. The stories mostly had twists and turns that kept them engaging, some of premises were fascinating, the sensibility and language was interesting, and I loved the artwork. The book has about 20 stories averaging about 6 pages per story, I would say 5 were truly outstanding, 13 were excellent, and only 2 were clunkers. It also has about a dozen covers of classic comic books which are also amusing.
The public started to get bored of superhero comics in the post-World War II years and a new strain of horror comics started to emerge. It flourished in the early 1950s but was abruptly ended when public controversy and Congressional hearings led to the 1954 comic book code which, among other things, banned titles that included the words "crime," "terror," or "horror" and also comics that depicted vampires, zombies, or other monsters. This episode is well told in the overall excellent Comic Book History of Comics by Fred Van Lente.
I had never actually read any of these "scandalous" comics but now that I have it is impossible to understand what the fuss was about. First, these comics are all morality plays with villains who commit murder, robbery, adultery or other sins being punished (perhaps overly punished). And they don't have any blood or much genuine horror.
Instead they are genuinely clever ghost stories, often told more from the ghosts perspective in a sympathetic manner than traditional written ghost stories. Also unlike traditional ghost stories (think M.R. James), these ghosts don't dwell in ambiguity, uncertainty and the psychological--they are real and active agents acting in a clear manner.
Perhaps my favorite story was "Smoke Spirit" which begins with a ghostly woman appearing out of a man's pipe, we eventually learn that she was murdered on a tobacco plantation and appears whenever its tobacco is smoked. In the end the man tricks the killers into burning all of their tobacco, leading the ghost to grow so large she can consume them in the fires.
Another great story was "Me, Ghost" about a man who sacrifices a woman's life in an effort to protect himself but ends up shunned and ignored by everyone, leading him to think he also died and is a ghost--and to prove it he steps in front of a truck and actually kills himself.
Yes, pretty much all of the stories end with the villain killing him or herself--except the one about a "hanging judge" who is punished with the inability to die but instead has to live with a painful, untreatable, unamelioratable illness.
Then there is the ghost from the fifth dimension coming to haunt the one from the forth dimension and they both end up in our dimension.
OK, you get the idea. Read them, they're really fun!
The public started to get bored of superhero comics in the post-World War II years and a new strain of horror comics started to emerge. It flourished in the early 1950s but was abruptly ended when public controversy and Congressional hearings led to the 1954 comic book code which, among other things, banned titles that included the words "crime," "terror," or "horror" and also comics that depicted vampires, zombies, or other monsters. This episode is well told in the overall excellent Comic Book History of Comics by Fred Van Lente.
I had never actually read any of these "scandalous" comics but now that I have it is impossible to understand what the fuss was about. First, these comics are all morality plays with villains who commit murder, robbery, adultery or other sins being punished (perhaps overly punished). And they don't have any blood or much genuine horror.
Instead they are genuinely clever ghost stories, often told more from the ghosts perspective in a sympathetic manner than traditional written ghost stories. Also unlike traditional ghost stories (think M.R. James), these ghosts don't dwell in ambiguity, uncertainty and the psychological--they are real and active agents acting in a clear manner.
Perhaps my favorite story was "Smoke Spirit" which begins with a ghostly woman appearing out of a man's pipe, we eventually learn that she was murdered on a tobacco plantation and appears whenever its tobacco is smoked. In the end the man tricks the killers into burning all of their tobacco, leading the ghost to grow so large she can consume them in the fires.
Another great story was "Me, Ghost" about a man who sacrifices a woman's life in an effort to protect himself but ends up shunned and ignored by everyone, leading him to think he also died and is a ghost--and to prove it he steps in front of a truck and actually kills himself.
Yes, pretty much all of the stories end with the villain killing him or herself--except the one about a "hanging judge" who is punished with the inability to die but instead has to live with a painful, untreatable, unamelioratable illness.
Then there is the ghost from the fifth dimension coming to haunt the one from the forth dimension and they both end up in our dimension.
OK, you get the idea. Read them, they're really fun!
March 19, 2023
Not a bad little collection here. It’s interesting reading these old comics, especially from the pre-code era as it’s nice to see how things were run back then. For instance the use of colours to pop people in the shade so specific characters stand out. It’s interesting seeing how the printing process would have worked back then.
Some of the language is very old fashioned, and some of the stories I felt suffered a bit by a confusing way of speaking. But over all this was very enjoyable, and I look forward to reading others in this series.
Some of the language is very old fashioned, and some of the stories I felt suffered a bit by a confusing way of speaking. But over all this was very enjoyable, and I look forward to reading others in this series.
June 4, 2020
GHOSTS: Classic Monsters of Pre-Code Horror Comics
Comical fun as a retro view of comics 70 years ago! ****
Reference to the ghost-filled gothic tale ‘Castle of Otranto’ (1764)
Adventures into Darkness #10
“Me, Ghost” ***
“The forlorn figure wanders on then, through the strange mists, a lost soul ..”
Mysterious Adventures #19
“Revenge” ***
“I love funerals! The way some people love weddings, that’s the way I love funerals..”
The Hand of Fate #16
“Specters Stalk the Bloody Tower”
“The ghost of Anne Boleyn!”
Adventures into the Unknown #26
“The Haunted Ghost”
“TWELVE THOUSAND DOLLARS—YIPPEEE!”
Journey Into Fear #14: Golden Age Horror-Suspense Classic Comic 1953 by Kari A. Therrian - Superior Publishers Ltd.
“Jury of the Undead”
“.. in a minute you’ll be dead! Then I have plans for YOUR ghost!”
Weird Horrors #5 The Smiling Woman (St John)
“.. I bet you wouldn’t spend an evening in the manor house.”
….
Baffling Mysteries 19
“My revenge is complete”
…
“This Magazine is Haunted #4”
“Séance of Terror”
“We must never mention this to anyone .. Never! They wouldn’t believe us!”
…
“Horrific #5”
“Smoke Spirits”
“Well, she said something about avenging her death, and …”
…
“Fantastic Fears #9”
“If a Body Kill a Body..”
“At last the ghostly reunion!”
…
“The Unseen #13”
“Death Wish”
“I can’t figure it out!”
…
“The Thing #8”
“The Ghost of Abbey Playhouse”
“The play is about a bat man …”
…
“Beware! Terror Tales #3”
“The Haunting White Shadow”
“That white shadow! Jocko, LOOK!”
…
“Beware #15”
“Never Call a Ghost”
“What got him? Was it the devi…”
…
“Adventures in the Unknown #13”
“A Night in Black Knoll”
“With voices dry as the midnight scurry of dead leaves…”
…
“Hand of Fate #21”
“Phantoms of the Forgotten”
“YAAGGGH!”
…
“Diary of Horror #1”
“The Ghost’s Curse”
“Can’t stand it! AAAAIIIEEEE!”
…
Comical fun as a retro view of comics 70 years ago! ****
Reference to the ghost-filled gothic tale ‘Castle of Otranto’ (1764)
Adventures into Darkness #10
“Me, Ghost” ***
“The forlorn figure wanders on then, through the strange mists, a lost soul ..”
Mysterious Adventures #19
“Revenge” ***
“I love funerals! The way some people love weddings, that’s the way I love funerals..”
The Hand of Fate #16
“Specters Stalk the Bloody Tower”
“The ghost of Anne Boleyn!”
Adventures into the Unknown #26
“The Haunted Ghost”
“TWELVE THOUSAND DOLLARS—YIPPEEE!”
Journey Into Fear #14: Golden Age Horror-Suspense Classic Comic 1953 by Kari A. Therrian - Superior Publishers Ltd.
“Jury of the Undead”
“.. in a minute you’ll be dead! Then I have plans for YOUR ghost!”
Weird Horrors #5 The Smiling Woman (St John)
“.. I bet you wouldn’t spend an evening in the manor house.”
….
Baffling Mysteries 19
“My revenge is complete”
…
“This Magazine is Haunted #4”
“Séance of Terror”
“We must never mention this to anyone .. Never! They wouldn’t believe us!”
…
“Horrific #5”
“Smoke Spirits”
“Well, she said something about avenging her death, and …”
…
“Fantastic Fears #9”
“If a Body Kill a Body..”
“At last the ghostly reunion!”
…
“The Unseen #13”
“Death Wish”
“I can’t figure it out!”
…
“The Thing #8”
“The Ghost of Abbey Playhouse”
“The play is about a bat man …”
…
“Beware! Terror Tales #3”
“The Haunting White Shadow”
“That white shadow! Jocko, LOOK!”
…
“Beware #15”
“Never Call a Ghost”
“What got him? Was it the devi…”
…
“Adventures in the Unknown #13”
“A Night in Black Knoll”
“With voices dry as the midnight scurry of dead leaves…”
…
“Hand of Fate #21”
“Phantoms of the Forgotten”
“YAAGGGH!”
…
“Diary of Horror #1”
“The Ghost’s Curse”
“Can’t stand it! AAAAIIIEEEE!”
…
November 24, 2019
A look back at early, pre-code horror comic books of the 1950s...featuring the shades of departed human beings..ghosts....
For anyone interested in the history of horror in comics around the time of the EC comic books...
For anyone interested in the history of horror in comics around the time of the EC comic books...
April 18, 2020
Sorry but kinda dumb and repetitive. Art didn't win me over either. DNF.
April 22, 2021
Silly, fun stuff: stories so bad they’re good.
August 4, 2022
Great collection of pre code horror comics - sometimes a little difficult to read which is not the publisher's fault, but there are some really unforgettable tales there. Highly recommend!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews