Number 819

The Living Ghost!

Following up a Smokey Stover posting is a daunting task. What could be as crazy as Smokey? Well, this comes close.

"The Living Ghost" is from Adventures Into the Unknown #1, 1948. It was written in an apparent fit of delirium by Frank Belknap Long, Weird Tales writer, and one-time pal of H. P. Lovecraft. Long wrote all the stories in this issue, as well as #2. After that, and for the next few years there are a lot of screwball stories that read something like "The Living Ghost" in the ACG supernatural comics, but I don't know if they were by Long. As we've mentioned in this blog a time or two, many writers worked in the comic book field for extra $$$. It would seem a natural--or in Long's case, a supernatural, yuk-yuk--way to supplement his income.

It's drawn by Fred Guardineer, who lent his exacting drafting style to a most unlikely subject. His artwork, which seems so wrong for horror, produced one of the greatest horror comics pages ever, page 8. I'm not sure if Guardineer ever drew another horror story; this is the first of two Living Ghost stories (the second is found in issue #2), but the only one he drew. His precise drawing style worked better in crime comics, and even the Westerns he drew in the 1950s.

Guardineer quit comics in the mid-'50s and went to work for the Post Office. Long went on to a long and productive writing career.