World Famous Comics: The Ultimate Casper: Comics Collection!
The Ultimate Casper: Comics Collection!
By: Sid Jacobson Publisher: IBooks Graphic Novel Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 176 Publication Date: November 01, 2005 Studio: IBooks Graphic Novel
Product Description: Long before Jeff Smith's award-winning fantasy series Bone set the comics world on fire, Casper the Friendly Ghost and his friendsWendy the Good Little Witch, Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost, and the Ghostly Triowere having adventures in The Haunted Forest. In The Ultimate Casper, the world's favorite ghost and his friends can be found in a full color collection of their best all-time adventures!
Brings back memories!! ^ I loved these comics as a kid and this was a walk down memory lane. I was thrilled to get this book!
Great book for little kids...! ^ It's a shame this book isn't still in print, or that more books like it are not also available. My little kid loves comics, but most of what's out there is inappropriate for a really young reader, and other than the classic Disney reprints from Gladstone publishers, there's really very little out there for this audience.
I wanted to try some of the old Harvey books, but was surprised to find that they'd stopped publishing, and that back issues of the original books were hard to find and rather pricey. I bought the 2007 Dark Horse "Casper" collection, but was disappointed. It's mostly in black-and-white, and doesn't have much of the side characters (like Wendy the Good Little Witch) that made the Casper series so much fun.
This slender older volume is great, though! It's all in color, beautifully reproduced, and has some of the most imaginative, engaging Casper stories I've ever read... and LOTS of Wendy! What a shame there aren't several more books just like it, so that littler kids can get into comics, too.
(PS - If you like this, the 2007 "Little Lulu" color special from Dark Horse is great fun as well. Maybe --pleasepleaseplease -- they would consider doing color specials for Wendy and Little Dot as well??)(ReadThatAgain children's book reviews)
CLASSICS FROM THE PAST ^ My fondest memories of Harvey Comics were back in the early 1970's when we were returning home from vacation in the family station wagon. My dad stopped off at a Rexall drug store and bought me a stack of about two dozen Harvey comics. There were Richie Rich comics, Sad Sack, Baby Huey, Hot Stuff, but my favorites were Casper and the rest of his cast. Now today, people talk about character like Batman or Superman being overexposed and in too many titles, but they have NOTHING on some of the Harvey characters. Richie Rich had some three dozen comic titles over the years and Casper had nearly two dozen. Harvey knew a good thing when they had it, that's for sure. This collection from IBooks is dubbed the "Ultimate Casper Collection" and while that may be a bit of a stretch considering his longevity, it's certainly a collection that Casper fans will treasure.
The book begins with an introduction by Sid Jacobson, the long-time editor of Casper at Harvey, who provides some insight into the early development of the character, and particularly the art of Warren Kremer who was a vastly underrated talent. The book reprints in full, including covers, seven issues of the original Casper comic from the late 50's and early 60's I believe, although no dates are reprinted unfortunately. The art and colors have been reproduced boldly and colorfully and the stories include all of the usual cast including Wendy the good little witch, Spook and "Poil", The Ghostly Trio, and Nightmare the ghostly horse. Each issue is similar in content in that it includes one lengthy Casper story, a Spooky Story, and then a couple of shorter features.
My favorite was perhaps the very first as Harvey takes a bit of zaniness from the pages of Looney Tunes with a story featuring Casper literally coming off the drawing board and into the real world. Seems that a new cartoonist named Pete is messing with Casper's world and causing all sorts of chaos...characters are missing half their bodies and Pete is having a good old time. When Casper fails to reason with Pete, he goes off the page to find Harvey himself who is on vacation to have him set things right. It's a marvelously wacky tale where we see Casper on one of those rare occasions where he loses his temper.
In other stories, Casper has to enlist the aid of Wendy to stop the evil Ali Boo Boo who has bewitched Nightmare into being his loyal steed and then Casper has to help an old sorcerer who is causing time to move backwards so he can return to the simpler days of his childhood. It's great stuff and brings back those wonderful memories of sitting in the back of the station wagon for hours on the long drive home. Great value at $14.95 to boot!
Reviewed by Tim Janson
Finally, a Proper Treatment for Underrated Casper ^ The "Ultimate Casper Comics Collection" is here! The "Ultimate Casper Comics Collection" is here! After a false start availability date of September 1, 2005, I finally received the collection in the mail yesterday and it is beautiful. The original black and white artwork was scanned and newly colored, giving the stories a better look than they did when they appeared originally. The era of the reprints are from "Friendly Ghost Casper" #11 through #48 or roughly 1959-1962, which is when the transition from the "It's a g-g-g-ghost!" Casper to the Enchanted Forest and his friends Casper was complete. It's a very good collection and kudos go to Sid Jacobson for actually choosing some worthy tales instead of the same over-reprinted stories from 1972-1973. Not that those later tales are bad, it's just that they have been printed over and over and over, while these earlier tales have virtually been ignored.
Looking forward to the "Ultimate Hot Stuff" and possible "Richie Rich" collections.
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Trevor
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