Well, let me rephrase that. I love horror comics when they're done right.
Sadly, Ghosts number 51 does not fit into that category.
Published in late 1976 (officially dated January-February 1977), this issue of DC Comics' long-running horror anthology has a great cover that promises some excellent Bicentennial comics action. The cover by Ernie Chua advertises a story about the "Haunting Spirits of '76" -- so this is bound to be a great Revolutionary War-themed ghost story, right?
Not so fast. That title actually belongs to a little three-page story in the middle of this comic. Heck, calling this a "story" is being overly generous. It's actually just a laundry list of supposedly haunted sites in Brooklyn dating back to the era of the late Eighteenth Century.
Oh, sure, it starts well, mentioning (and showing) the ghost of General William Howe, who led the British forces during the War of Independence and who supposedly still haunts a house on 33rd Street. Here he is, in all his spooky glory:
A story starring a ghostly General Howe would have been great, right? Nah, that's dropped almost immediately. The second half of this page switches quickly to a discussion of someone else seeing a couple of sea serpents.
Yes, sea serpents. In Brooklyn. Again, that would have made a hell of a story. Again, it's recounted in two simple panels and then forgotten.
After the ghost and sea serpents, page two of this little travelogue switches to a tale of a mean sea captain, followed by a couple of details about a British Navy vessel that supposedly locked some rebels up in its hold. Finally, the comic resolves with a four-panel recounting of a guy named William Axtell, a Tory sympathizer who (the comic claims) locked up a bunch of patriotic revolutionary women to starve in the basement of his house. (There really is a supposed Axtell haunting, but what we know about the true story is actually much creepier than this little blurb would lead you to believe.)
Ghosts doesn't credit the creators of this weak little three-pager. The Grand Comics Database identifies the art as being by John Calnan and Tex Blaisdell, but the writer remains a mystery. Perhaps he's a ghost as well.
The rest of this particular issue is a little bit better. It opens with a tale of Pancho Villa (whose ghost seeks his disembodied head) and closes with a third story about a dead scientists, a typewriter and an atomic bomb. Not bad, but hardly classics.
Horror comics of the 1970s were pretty toothless beasts, de-fanged by the Comics Code Authority, which wouldn't let them do anything remotely interesting. Ghosts issue 51 is a pretty sad example of how that history of self-censorship haunted the comic-book field for decades.
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