Gary Owens as Space Ghost: “I’m combining the Stun Ray with the Force Energy Power!”
Tim Matheson as Jace: “I get it! You’re making a Force Hammer!”
Space Ghost: “Right!”
His Power Bands. His Inviso-Power. His Phantom Cruiser. Whoever he was, he certainly looked like fun.
Hanna-Barbera’s Space Ghost premiered Sept. 10, 1966, bringing fresh and welcome superheroics to the Saturday morning network cartoon lineup.
“Although obviously created for children, he had a lot of potential as a mainstream superhero in the ‘space-bound’ traditions of Adam Strange, the Space Ranger, Nova, Green Lantern, etc.,” observed comics historian Johnny Williams. “His adventures had a pretty good blend of outer space sci/fi thrills and superhero-type action.”
Williams noted that Space Ghost was “…sleek, mysterious and easy to draw. Also his wrist power bands, what a great idea. He may not have been the first ever to have such, but he used them in such a dynamic manner that one came to associate that particular sf trope with ‘Space Ghost.’ He achieved so much popularity and acceptance without a discernible origin, back story or normal human identity.”
“(CBS daytime programming director) Fred Silverman fully realized that superhero/adventure cartoons were the next big phase of children’s programming,” noted Scott Shaw. “Therefore he loaded CBS’s 1966 Saturday morning schedule with the theme, with Hanna-Barbera creating most of the new series.”
At the time, CBS also offered The New Adventures of Superman, Frankenstein Jr., The Lone Ranger, Mighty Mouse and Underdog. NBC had The Super Six and The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show in its second season.
“Despite having a masked monkey for a sidekick and some inherently goofy villains, Hanna-Barbera’s Space Ghost (initially broadcast 1966-68) played it straight, more or less,” observed Mark Voger in his book Zowie: The TV Superhero Craze in ‘60s Pop Culture.
“Space Ghost has often been called, in elevator-pitch fashion, ‘Batman in space.’ He certainly looks as cool as Batman. Much credit for this goes to Alexander “Alex” Toth (1928- 2006), a comic book artist with a resumé dating back to the 1940s.
“Toth pulled a mid-career switch beginning in 1960 by honing a specialty in character design and storyboarding for animation. Drawing on his extensive background in superhero comics — Toth had drawn Green Lantern, Flash and the Justice Society of America during the Golden Age of Comics — he created sleek animation designs that were instantly classic. Toth rendered Space Ghost as a mysterious figure in a black hood (with white eyes), a gold cape, white tights and red armbands.”
In March 1967, Space Ghost was spotlighted in a Gold Key Comics one-shot that provided us with some background on this cosmic mystery man. We learned that his “old teacher” was apparently some kind of energy being from “Out There” and that he was capable of projecting himself millions of miles in the form of “pure thought energy.”
Space Ghost also proved to have surprising durability, launching a successful second career as a talk-show host in 1994.
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