Ghosting The Waves with The Phantom Surfer!

Howdy from the not-so-Great White North! 

Aside from the usual extreme temperature advisory (we're supposed to have wind chills at or around -35 degrees Farenheit over the next 48 hours), we're also currently under siege by our own government. This isn't a political blog in any way, shape or form – if anything this is my one surcease from the constant barrage of all of that – but I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention it. 

The current luau status: unlikely.

Long story short, there's a lot of reasons folks here in Minnesota are staying inside right now. And, of course, what so often happens here during the most brutal depths of the winter months, at least for me, is that I start romanticizing and longing for the warmer days of summer. 

Well, I can't move May closer to January, so the next best thing (I guess) is to try to invoke a sense of the warmer climes with a bit of summer-related ephemera. And today's comes in the form of a haunting surfer story from Ghostly Tales #71, published in January of 1969 by Charlton Comics.

Aside from the obvious signature on the Jim Aparo cover above, there are no credits to be found in this comic. The story in question, " The Phantom Surfer", is clearly illustrated by Steve Ditko. Whether he wrote the script for it as well, I have no idea. 

The story is ok for what it is. It has characters making odd choices and the ending has sort of a fun conclusion (I almost said "twist") that you can predict the second Larry decides to surf out to impersonate the mythical phantom surfer. Ditko's art here is fine. It's not my favorite period of his. I enjoy a lot of his early pre-Marvel work for horror and dark fantasy titles like The Thing and This Magazine Is Haunted, and of course the initial runs of Spider-Man (whom he co-created) and Dr. Strange (whom he created). In my opinion much of his work that followed appears sloppy and amateurish and the characters he created for DC Comics like Hawk & Dove, The Creeper, The Question and Shade, The Changing Man are silly half-baked embodiments of Ditko's worldview or oddly complicated notions rather than competent or interesting comic book characters. 

You can see that my copy is in pretty rough shape. Some of the pages couldn't be scanned straight on because of how deteriorated the spine is, but please do enjoy this spooky, summery surf tale via Steve Ditko and magazine host Mr. L. Dedd. I've included the ads from this particular issue because I thought they might be enjoyed as part of the nostalgia of the reading experience.

Surf's up!