Tuesday 15 November 2011

Sheffield's Most Wanted. Part 12: Ghosts Limited Collectors' Edition.

Ghosts DC Comics Limited Collectors Edition, two children enter a haunted house as a skeleton watches from behind the door
As I roam the amusement parks of Sheffield, going, "Wooooooooooo," and pretending to be a monster so I can scare away the locals and help myself to the pirate's treasure that rumour has it is buried beneath them, people often say to me, "Steve, as Sheffield's acknowledged master of fear, which was your favourite 1970s' DC horror mag?"

And I say, "Much as I loved the likes of House of Mystery/Secrets, Weird War Tales and the Witching Hour, there's one that stands out head and shoulders above them all."

That comic is Ghosts.

I think the reason it stands out is obvious.

You see, reader, as its cover blurb told us, every single tale in it was true.

Yes, all of them - even the ones that only involved one character who ended up dead at the end, with no witnesses, meaning there's no way anyone could ever have known what had happened in order to recount the tale. The fact that such events still managed to make it into print shows you just how thorough the DC writers were in their research.

And that meant I always wanted the Ghosts Limited Collectors' Edition.

As far as I'm concerned, a comic can never go wrong with a skeleton on the front of it, nor with a haunted house on the front of it, nor with curious but imprudent youngsters on the front of it. I assume this cover's drawn by Nick Cardy, and it gives us all three of those features.

Not only that but it promises ten Halloween spine-chillers, four tense tales of haunted houses, a midnight maze puzzle and a 3-D Trick-or-Treat cut-out. Obviously, as an Englishman, I have no idea what this Trick-or-Treat thing is of which they speak but it certainly sounds exciting and I can't wait for it to catch on in this country.

3 comments:

Kid said...

I want that Collectors' Edition myself now. Must look out for it.

R. W. Watkins said...

I hate to admit it, but Ghosts was my least favourite of the old DC horror, er, mystery titles. I have a few issues, but I'm afraid not even the great E R Cruz's occasional art can save them. (Mr Cruz, in my opinion, was always better suited to horror and suspense tales with contemporary settings--a rarity on the pages of Ghosts, where period pieces seemed to have been the order of the day.)

As you've so thoughtfully pointed out, however, the writers' and editors' abilities at recording and verifying the most singular and concealed of supernatural episodes is highly commendable. The same must be said for the fearless and indefatigable folk at Ripley's Believe or Not--Gold Key's home of not only true ghost stories, but also true demons and monsters yet! Why these people did not all receive Pulitzers is completely beyond me.

Ed Callais said...

I have a copy that I found buried in a pile of old comics I have