In 1967 the gates of iconic Chicago amusement park
Riverview closed forever, and in 1967 the last titles of the
American Comics Group appeared on newsstands;
Riverview had been thrilling roller coaster riders since 1904 and
ACG had been entertaining comic book readers since 1943. I did get to visit
Riverview a few times but I never once bought an
ACG comic off the stands. (I went on, however, to purchase a sizable number of issues of
Forbidden Worlds and
Adventures into the Unknown from back issue bins, drawn to the titles by the fact that their stable of artistic talent included
Kurt Schaffenberger and
Steve Ditko.)
Last weekend the
Hope X convention for computer hackers convened in New York City, and one of the speakers was
Edward Snowden (although
Mr. Snowden did not appear in person, of course).
Bill Degnan was another of the speakers and
Mr. Degnan projected slides of an
ACG cover and splash page, as shown above and below (from February 1964's
Adventures into the Unknown #146; a clearer view of the cover is available over
here).
Mr. Degnan is a professor of computer history and runs the site
http://vintagecomputer.net/ . The gentleman spoke at
Hope X about some of the historical items he is currently investigating. He opened up with how the calculator industry became the computer industry, and then his focus shifted to the comic book shown above. "The Ghost-Killer Who Vanished" was written by
ACG editor
Richard E. Hughes (as "
Kurato Osaki," just one of that gentleman's eleven (!) pseudonyms) and drawn by
Chic Stone (who was making a name for himself as a great inker for some
Jack Kirby stories at
Marvel around this same time). The Ghost-Killer story featured a company that was ridiculed for hunting ghosts and it featured ectoplasm/slime and it featured a vintage
Cadillac hearse/ambulance. The milieu sounds a bit familiar, doesn't it? That's correct,
Mr. Degnan has traced the origins of 1984's blockbuster film
Ghostbusters to this unassuming little comic book story. Writer and star
Dan Aykroyd is credited with "
coming up with" the story for
Ghostbusters in spite of the fact that the gist of his story had been published in this
ACG comic book twenty years prior.
You never can tell what you'll uncover when you start looking into the history of things around you. Ups, downs, ins, outs. Research can be every bit as thrilling as a ride on
The Bobs. At
Riverview!