If you’d like some proof that comics now are quite sugarcoated compared to those of decades past, take a gander at page four, panel four of the first Casper the Friendly Ghost story, in which an evil, unnamed man has killed his brother and aims to do the same to his nephew. The look on his face and this little snippet of nefarious dialogue sum it up best: “Your father, the king, is dead. The executioner shall finish you, too!”
 
Luckily, Casper the Friendly Ghost doesn’t get much darker than that. For the most part, it’s simple, innocent fun, the kind you could regularly find in the pages of comic books 60 years ago, when issues regularly sold in the millions of copies month after month. That Dark Horse has recognized Casper’s 60th anniversary with this collection is delightful. They’ve done it by collecting two full issues, ads, backup stories, and all, from 1949 and 1952.
 
Kids today probably won’t recognize Margaret O’Brien or care why they should buy the candy kitchen she endorses (I’m guessing most adults would be hard-pressed to name a movie this “M.G.M. star” appeared in either), but seeing these old ads is half the fun (my personal favorite is the Chevalier, a girdle for “men in their 30s, 40s, 50s who want to look slimmer and feel younger”—the copy is particularly brilliant when it brags about how “the Chevalier lifts and flattens your bulging ‘bay window’”).
 
There are more than a dozen short stories in this book, including two prose ones. Not all star Casper, and some are better than others, of course. But they remind us of a time when comics had several shorts all in one issue.
 

This 60th-anniversary collection will probably be more suited to nostalgic adults who will get a big kick out of seeing Casper again, but perhaps young readers of today will also enjoy these simpler—and sometimes darker—comics from times long past.