Tales From The Quarter Bin--Jumping The Space Shark

There comes a time when you've got to retool your concept a little bit. A time when, as the society around you evolves and grows, a comic company has to act to make its intellectual property seem more modern, more in touch with the zeitgeist.

Of course, sometimes that can make you look fairly silly:

Yes, for a few brief, shining moments in 1972-1973, Harvey Comics actually gave us Casper In Space.

For the first five issues, the book was known by the odd title of:

But then, for issues #6-8, they switched it to the Casper IN SPACE title.

How could this idea NOT win? I mean, you've got a child ghost with another child ghost for a girlfriend and other ghosts and a witch as friends, and the hero can pretty much go anywhere and do anything. Boring, right?

So, with amazing intuition on a par shown by DC with the nu52, the Harvey braintrust recognized that the only way to make Casper interesting was...to put him IN SPACE.

(No, he did not become Space Ghost. Shut up.)

Sadly, after 8 issues of increasingly convoluted ways of getting Casper into space adventures (IN SPACE!), the plug was pulled on this fine endeavor.

The good news, we still had 8 issues of interesting cosmology:

And, the only recorded meeting between Casper and Ambush Bug (IN SPACE!!):


OK, it's probably not him. Then again, prove that it isn't Ambush Bug (IN SPACE!!)!!

Just for the record, I'm predicting that 10 of the nu52 comics will add IN SPACE to their titles before too long...