The Grim Ghost

Matthew Dunbar was a notorious highwayman in colonial America who, after being hanged for his crimes, struck a deal with the devil to return as a ghost — tasked with collecting damned souls in exchange for his second chance at existence.

Few characters capture the eerie romanticism of Bronze Age horror-adventure quite like The Grim Ghost, who burst onto the scene in 1975 courtesy of the sharp imagination of writer Michael Fleisher and artist Ernie Colón. Born from that wonderfully dark, anything-goes era of comics, this spectral figure has proven surprisingly durable — a 1975 debut stretching across nearly four decades of publication is no small feat for a character outside the Big Two. Throughout those pages, The Grim Ghost keeps vivid company with the likes of Matthew Dunsinane, Phoenix, and Wulf, lending an atmospheric, otherworldly presence to every corner of the stories he haunts. If you have a soft spot for Bronze Age gems with genuine staying power and a name that delivers exactly what it promises, The Grim Ghost is absolutely worth tracking down.