Alex Toth was born on this date in 1922. Toth is one of the true masters of the comic form. He was a famously difficult personality, but he constantly worked to tell his stories with as effectively and efficiently as possible. Overshadowing his comics work though is his definitive work for Hanna-Barbera where he designed such heroes as Birdman, the Herculoids, Shazzan, and many, many more. Today's focus is his finest effort -- Space Ghost.
(Steve Rude)
Space Ghost might well have started it all for me and my love of heroes and comics and such. I was ideally ripe for the picking when Space Ghost burst onto the TV screens in the 60's and heralded a surge of superheroes on television and a revival of the same in comics and elsewhere. The burst was relatively brief, but I was woke in its wake and never have gotten over the thrill of the adventures.
Space Ghost was designed by Alex Toth and in comics no one ever drew him better than the great Steve Rude, a talent who seemed to have imbibed the same elixers that I did back in the heyday. Space Ghost is enigmatic, assisted by two upbeat teenagers named Jan and Jace and an improbable monkey named Bleep. They sail across the deeps of darkest space in the Phantom Cruiser helping those they find and finding those they help all the while defeating weird menaces from across the void.
Here are a gaggle of sketches showing a somewhat different Space Ghost, a more wan figure with some distinctive styling differences.
Apparently, they were going to show his face too.
Here the design is in color.
But these designs didn't do the trick, and Toth went back to the drawing board. He came up with this look.
And the rest as they say is history.
I'm not much collecting particular back issues anymore. I've gotten most of the comics that I've really hankered for over the decades. That doesn't mean there aren't others I'd get if I found them, especially nice-priced Charlton books from time to time. But I'm not really casting about for special books.
Save for one.
1967's Space Ghost #1 from Gold Key has been my grail comic for a few years now, the one I always look for. And yesterday I got hold of one. It's not an ideal issue, but then I rarely get those, preferring a solid reading sample of a classic bit of history.
As luck had it, I'm visiting my girls and took the opportunity to check out a local comic shop,
The Great Escape which just happened to be having a 30% off sale. I was looking for a particular trade, which they didn't have, when I spotted the Space Ghost comic on the wall. I don't see them very often, if at all, and always at a price that brings tears to my eyes. This one was priced nicely and after confirming 30% was coming off I knew I had to act. I snapped it up and I'm eager to get it home where in a controlled environment I can break out the book and give it a good reading. The artwork by Dan Spiegle is lush as usual for the overlooked veteran. He did the artwork in the Big Little Book adaptation of Alex Toth's Space Ghost, a book I've cherished since my boyhood. (More on that tomorrow.) And it was very nice indeed to add his other great Space Ghost contribution at long last.
Now what do I look for?
Archie Comics had the Hanna-Barbera brand for a bit when the Cartoon Network was up and running. Space Ghost got in on the action. I am purposely ignoring Space Ghost to Coast. I am not a huge fan.
DC Comics got the franchise and for the first time offered up a six-part origin story by Joe Kelly and Ariel Olivetti for Hanna-Barbera's classic animated superhero Space Ghost. Reading it for the first time in trade, I tried to let go of my preconceptions of this tale, and of my previous opinions and give the story a fresh tumble.
It proved worthwhile. Ariel Olivetti is still not my first choice to illustrate this tale. Both Alex Ross (who does provide covers) and Steve Rude are better suited, especially the latter. But I don't want a desire for the perfect to become an enemy of the good in this case. Olivetti is far from the worst choice, in fact given the seemingly endless drones who sketch comics in the modern day, his lush images at the very least have real character and a boldness.
His Space Ghost is overly muscled, a bit too thick for my tastes, but I suggest this is a work in progress. He will become sleeker over time, less a body builder and more a spaceman.
Space Ghost's face and name are revealed. He is a cop named Thadeus Bach, a married man who aspires to be the best cop he can and the best husband and father. His dreams are at once fulfilled and dashed when he gets invited to join "The Wrath", an elite special ops team for the interplanetary police force. He quickly discovers they are corrupt, especially their leader Temple, but before he can report what he's discovered they take action, killing his wife and their unborn child. They left Bach for dead on a distant planet ravaged by an ancient plague. Bach does survive, nurtured by the last living resident of the "Ghost Planet", an engineer who specializes in weapons, the plague which wiped out the planet was violence and war. Bach rejects a lifetime of penance and reflection, choosing instead revenge using the equipment the planet provides. Armed this new Bach seeks out and destroys the Wrath, but the leader escapes. Bach's vengeance is forestalled by the arrival of the Bugs on a slave world the Wrath operate. The Bugs, led by the hive-mind named "Zorak" exterminate humans and anything else living they chance upon. Bach rescues two orphans named Jan and Jace who dub him "Space Ghost" after a faceless myth from their culture. He eventually realizes his quest for vengeance is inferior to his original search for justice and takes the orphans with him back to the Ghost Planet to begin his work.
It's not a bad tale at all. Full of classic tropes from scores, if not hundreds of similar tales from practically all adventures genres. A single man seeking vengeance is the classic tale, but often he is demolished by his quest. Space Ghost survives and is transformed into something greater and more hopeful. Straightforward and not what I've imagined all these years, but noteworthy.
They could've done much worse.
Below are Alex Ross's outstanding covers for this series.
Some years later DC again took a stab at adding Hanna-Barbera icons to their universe.
Space Ghost for his part teamed up with Green Lantern. That made sense. We were treated to a lot of great Space Ghost action as part of Future Quest, a comic which teamed up many of the Saturday Day morning favorites. Out of that we got a short-lived Space Ghost comic, a very good one.
The first three-issue story arc in the
Future Quest Presents series is a nifty three-part tale starring Space Ghost, Jan and Jace and of course Blip. Along for the ride this time are the Herculoids, though only Igoo the Rock Ape gets a major role. The writer Rich Parker continues to develop the Hanna-Barbera continuity begun in the pages of the maxi-series
Future Quest in which we have a universe of heroes who are forced to confront a genocidal menace called Omnikron. The "Ghost Planet" we learn is the remnants of a world Omnikron has descended upon and the Space Force of which Space Ghost was once a part was destroyed attempting to stop Omnikron's advance.
Now Space Ghost is working alone to police the spaceways and at the same time trying to rebuild that force by getting more ore from the neighboring planet Amzot (home of the Herculoids) which can be used to create more power bands. He hopes that Jan and Jace, two orphans he rescued from a black hole event will mature to become the nucleus for a new Space Force. To that end they go to Amzot and employ Igoo who is made of the ore they need and they enter a mine closed for many years since the arrival of Omnikron.
Inside they find a deadly menace and we learn the secret origin of longtime Space Ghost foe Metallus. I won't spoil it anymore, but this is a humdinger of an adventure by Parker and Ariel Olivetti, the artist who drew Space Ghost's origin many years ago for DC Comics. The comic looks outstanding and reads with the deftness of understanding that Parker brings without fail to his projects. Get this series.
Here are the alternate covers. The Steve Rude one is stellar! No artist gets Space Ghost better than Rude.
For me this has been the most properly developed and interpretation in comics, second only to the 1987 Evanier and Rude collaboration for Comico.
Today the brand is being published by Dynamite Comics and it's not bad. Not as good as DC's Future Quest version, but still pretty decent. As with all things Dynamite you can have over one hundred and forty covers for a dozen issues if you wish.
But nothing beats the original cartoons with those magical Alex Toth designs.
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