Casper the Friendly Ghost #70
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeCasper the Friendly Ghost #70 (July 1958) holds a quiet but real place in Harvey history as the closing chapter of the publisher's original Casper series, which had run continuously since 1952. Its publication immediately preceded a deliberate editorial restructuring that relaunched the title under a transposed name — The Friendly Ghost, Casper — signaling a period of transition for the character just as Harvey was negotiating to acquire him outright from Paramount/Famous Studios. As the swan song of a six-year run that had turned a Paramount cartoon mascot into one of the best-selling children's comics in America, this issue marks the end of Casper's first sustained comic-book era. The cover artwork by Warren Kremer, Harvey's defining house artist, was later selected for inclusion in the Dark Horse Harvey Comics Classics anthology (2007), underscoring its representative status within the larger Casper canon.
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By mid-1958 Harvey Comics had been publishing Casper under a licensing arrangement with Paramount Pictures' Famous Studios for six years, but had not yet secured full ownership of the character. Interior stories and art were produced by the core Harvey bullpen — Stan Kay, Warren Kremer, and Howie Post — with Kremer supplying the cover. Kremer, who had joined Harvey as a freelancer in 1948 at the urging of colleague Steve Muffati, had become the publisher's chief art editor and the visual architect of its animated-style house look; his influence on panel layout and character construction was felt industry-wide. The 1958 series reset — quietly dropping the 'Casper the Friendly Ghost' banner in favor of 'The Friendly Ghost, Casper' — has never been fully explained in surviving editorial records, though it coincided with the period in which Harvey was actively moving toward outright ownership of the character, completed in 1959.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published July 1958 by Harvey Comics; cover-dated the same month and produced in full color across 36 pages.
- Final issue of Harvey's original 'Casper the Friendly Ghost' comic series (the 1952–1958 run, sometimes catalogued as the 2nd Harvey series), which had begun after Casper's debut as a backup feature in Harvey's Little Audrey in 1952.
- The very next issue launched a new series under the transposed title 'The Friendly Ghost, Casper' (August 1958), sometimes listed in collector databases as The Friendly Ghost Casper #1.
- Cover art and interior pencils supplied by Warren Kremer, Harvey's preeminent house artist and art editor, who shaped the visual identity of Casper comics for more than two decades.
- Interior stories also carry credits for Stan Kay and Howie Post, two other key members of the Harvey bullpen responsible for the series throughout the 1950s.
- At the time of publication, Harvey was still operating under a licensing arrangement with Paramount/Famous Studios — the company did not purchase the Casper rights outright until 1959.
- The cover of Casper the Friendly Ghost #70 was later selected as one of the representative covers reprinted in the Dark Horse Harvey Comics Classics Vol. 1 anthology (2007), alongside covers from #41 and #50.
- The issue falls within the Silver Age of comics (1956–1969) and is one of the scarcer early Harvey Casper issues due to the natural attrition of periodicals aimed at young readers during this era.
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Reprints
↩ Reprints Family Funnies #7 (1951)
Reprinted in Casper's Ghostland #21 (1964), Harvey Comics Classics #1 (2007)
Key issues in Casper the Friendly Ghost
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