If you missed the last one…
This post is brought to you by Strange Detectives, a collection of ghostbreaker mysteries by G. W. Thomas. Meet Dr. Drayk who solves a weird mystery from Canada. Here are Richard Delamare and his Watson, Bainbridge in four occult tales filled with terror and laughter. We also get The Athenodorians, a secret organization of sleuths led by Baron von Klanstein, who lives in Wellman House in New England. His daughter Orestia is not so housebound, flying around the United States in a bi-plane to wield her sword in the interests of the human race. They solve “The Case of Phantom Legion” as well as “The Case of the Blue Man”. This collection is guaranteed to thrill Horror and Mystery fans alike. Check out the companion volume, Strange Adventures.
George Chance, aka the Green Ghost, got his start in the Pulps. But Ned Pines who owned his magazines also owned Better Comics aka Nedor/Standard/Pines Comics. Ned liked to bring characters (as well as personnel) from his Pulps to become comics fodder. The Green Ghost was one of these, making his comic book debut in Thrilling Comics #3, April 1940 as “The Ghost”. (Chance would have forty-eight adventures from #3 to #52, six years later.) But comic characters rarely clung to their Pulp outlines. Chance is a very good example of this. In the Pulps, he was a detective/magician who took on the guise of phantom to bear the crooks. In the comics, this lasted or one issue. For the rest of the run, the Ghost would travel through time and meet Columbus, George Washington and other famous figures as well as travel the globe from India to the Old West to Atlantis. The creators of comic books had bigger fish to fry!
The young George is raised by mystic yogis when his father dies in Tibet. By the time Chance is grown he has all the amazing magical powers of the sect. He is called to go “to the land of his Fathers” to fight evil. He does this by sinking enemy vessels and stopping charging vehicles. He receives warnings from the yogis of impending danger so he can act before people are killed. To find the man who murdered Leonard Van he adopts his classic ghost costume. By the second episode he encounters the master criminal and scientist, Professor Fenton. The Ghost and friends are sent to a Stone Age that has both cavemen and dinosaurs. Each time he ventures through time and returns, he poses the same logic: that Fenton must not know that the Ghost is wise to him, or the Professor might destroy the machine before law enforcement can grab it… Fenton’s last appearance is Thrilling Comics #47, April 1945, but the madman escapes and never shows up again.
Borrowing from other comics, like the over-powerful Ibis, the Big Red Cheese, Captain Marvel, as well as the comic strip superstar Mandrake the Magician, George Chance had Magic and Science at his command. The ancient Yogi master gave him supernatural powers while Professor Fenton’s time machine sent George and his female sidekick, Betty Morris (she never changes but her hair color does), to the past and future. It seems like a weird mix but Mandrake was doing the same thing in the newspapers, like putting down alien invasions.
Most authors of the stories are not known but Richard Hughes worked on the early ones, with two guests spots by Pulpster Norman A. Daniels. The artist line-up was more consistent with August Froehlich doing the lion’s share but with spats by George Mandel, Elmer Wexler, Jack Spranger and Dan Berry. (Berry was just twenty years old, long before his days of writing and drawing Flash Gordon for the newspapers.) The quality of the art over-all was strong, which was good because the artists had to depict various eras of history with some accuracy. Some of these titles are my own.
All these issues are available free at DCM and Comic Book Plus.
1940
“The Origin of the Ghost” (Thrilling Comics #3, April 1940)
“The Ghost Strikes Again” (Thrilling Comics #4, May 1940) has time travel beginning.
“Battle in Camelot” (Thrilling Comics #5, June 1940)
“The Time Exiles” (Thrilling Comics #6, July 1940)
“A Meeting With Columbus” (Thrilling Comics #7, August 1940)
“Fenton and the Electrical Machine” (Thrilling Comics #8, September 1940) Written by Norman A. Daniels
“The Ghost Meets George Washington” (Thrilling Comics #9, October 1940)
“The Egyptian Death Notice” (Thrilling Comics #10, November 1940)
“Grant From the King” (Thrilling Comics #11, December 1940)
1941
“The Civil War Formula” (Thrilling Comics #12, January 1941)
“Return to the Revolution” (Thrilling Comics #13, February 1941)
“The Stone Age Terror” (Thrilling Comics #14, March 1941)
“Back to the Gold Rush” (Thrilling Comics #15, April 1941)
“Blackbeard’s Treasure” (Thrilling Comics #16, May 1941)
“Mission to Mars” (Thrilling Comics #17, June 1941)
“Terrorists in the 12th Century” (Thrilling Comics #18, July 1941)
“The Magic Grail of Gwyllyn” (Thrilling Comics #19, August 1941)
“Professor Fenton Hatches a New Scheme” (Thrilling Comics #20, September 1941)
“The Alchemist’s Secret” (Thrilling Comics #21, October 1941)
“Demons of the Depths” (Thrilling Comics #22, November 1941)
“The Mystery of Angkor” (Thrilling Comics #23, December 1941)
1942
“Adventure in India” (Thrilling Comics #24, January 1942)
“Episode in Kapore” (Thrilling Comics #25, February 1942) was written by Norman A. Daniels
“The Hand From the Sea” (Thrilling Comics #26, March 1942) has a journey to Atlantis, a lost world.
“In the 30th Century” (Thrilling Comics #27, May 1942) features creatures of the far future.
“Time Stops” (Thrilling Comics #28, June 1942)
“The Emerald of Ikhnaton” (Thrilling Comics #29, August 1942)
“Encounter With Genghis Khan” (Thrilling Comics #30, October 1942)
“The Oracle of Delphi” (Thrilling Comics #31, November 1942)
1943
“The Prophecies of Nostradamus” (Thrilling Comics #32, January 1943) has miniaturization.
“Journey to the Fifth Century” (Thrilling Comics #33, February 1943)
“King’s Ransom” (Thrilling Comics #34, March 1943)
“The Year 10,000” (Thrilling Comics #35, May 1943)
“Excalibur Missing” (Thrilling Comics #36, July 1943)
“The Spear of Diana” (Thrilling Comics #37, August 1943)
“The Ghost Vs. The Nazis” (Thrilling Comics #38, October 1943) begins more wartime adventures versus the Nazis.
“The Steel Killer” (Thrilling Comics #39, December 1943) features a good ol’ tin robot.
1944
“Inside the Pyramid” (Thrilling Comics #40, February 1944)
“Satan Himself” (Thrilling Comics #42, June 1944)
“The Nazi Plot” (Thrilling Comics #43, August 1944)
“The Haunted House” (Thrilling Comics #44, October 1944)
1945
“The Idol of Venga” (Thrilling Comics #46, February 1945)
“The Legions of Evil” (Thrilling Comics #47, April 1945) has Professor Fenton’s last appearance.
“The Firing Squad” (Thrilling Comics #48, June 1945)
“Menace of the Yeast Creature” (Thrilling Comics #49, August 1945) …yeast creature seems kinda random but it has appeared before in the Pulps.
“Sea Voyage to Italy” (Thrilling Comics #50, October 1945)
“The Magic Key” (Thrilling Comics #51, December 1945)
1946
“The Ghost Goes West” (Thrilling Comics #52, February 1946)
Conclusion
The comic book version of the Green Ghost evolved into a wartime comic, punching out Nazis month after month at the end. The strip that had been about time travel became more of a propaganda vehicle in 1943. Even with the end of the War, the story-lines continued the good fight against Hitler. That being said, the Ghost also passed with the war era. By 1946, he didn’t really belong in a comic that was about to become a Jungle book with Princess Pantha. In the arena of weird mysteries, he was replaced by the Phantom Detective, another Pulp hero with more street cred.
This was George Chance’s last hurrah. Unlike The Shadow, Doc Savage or The Avenger, The Green Ghost did not get a run of paperback in the 1960-1980s. In the world of the Hero Pulps, George was just an also ran. In the comics he had a better CV but, again, just one more strip in a comic filled with different characters. No 1970s revival by DC here. No Moonstone series in the 1990s. In the Pulps, he was less fantastic than most but in the comics, maybe a little more Sci-Fi. Thanks for the fun, George.
Check out the Wild Inc. Super-saga…
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