One of the charms of a collection of old comics (like Dark Horse’s upcoming Casper the Friendly Ghost 60^th Anniversary Special hardcover, available on November 18) is the establishing stories. These days, it’s just kind of assumed that you know who most mainstream characters are. Even characters like Magog—whose promotion from Justice Society of America also-ran to titular anti-hero had fans and critics scratching their heads earlier this year—had a pretty healthy amount of development and exposition prior to Magog #1.

The reprinted first story of Casper the Friendly Ghost, however, needs to balance giving us an establishing tale with avoiding an origin story (cherubic children dropping dead to make cute, cherubic ghosts wasn’t really in the Harvey Comics style).

That said, almost immediately in the first story, Casper befriends a Richie Rich-looking prince, who is being sought by a huge and axe-wielding executioner. In the employ of the king’s brother, he has already slain the boy’s father when he enters the story looking to kill Casper’s new friend. It’s a little dark for today’s trauma-conscious kids’ publishing market, even if it does end happily and see citizens in the streets cheering the boy’s ascension to kinghood.

A downside to collectors looking for “a Casper collection” but a boon to Golden Age purists, this book reprints the first and sixth issues of Casper’s original, ongoing comic at Harvey. So, in keeping with what was common in comics at the time, this book is full of other characters printed in Casper’s original title, like the Huey, Dewey and Louie-like mice facing off against a menacing cat in “Herman” and Paddy the Leprechaun, whose villain Gambeen could have been a template for The Smurfs’ Gargamel. Baby Huey, one of the best known Harvey backup characters, also makes an appearance in the collection.

Each of Casper’s early appearances acts as though you’re totally unfamiliar with the character or the concept, giving him a page of three dedicated to an establishing beat that tells the reader why and how he came to be leaving ghosting school in favor of seeking friends among the living.

It’s interesting to see that by the sixth issue of his series, Casper had already become an animation phenomenon (as the cover reads “Paramount Pictures’ famous star” above Casper’s name). It’s a merchandising tie-in worthy of G.I. Joe or Transformers. By then, the whole issue was Casper’s, although they still retained the original format of short, barely-longer-than-strip stories. That’s something that, by and large, Casper’s publishers would continue to do for years—although writer Todd Dezago’s upcoming Casper & the Spectrals miniseries for Ardden Entertainment will actually see the character (along with Wendy and Hot Stuff, a couple of Harvey’s other most popular properties) translated into a format that comic book readers are a little more familiar with.

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