The O.G. Ghostbuster

Starting off in Charlton Comics' Ghostly Tales, the specter specialist Dr. Graves got his own series in 1967. The Many Ghosts Of Doctor Graves won that year's Alley Award for Best Fantasy/SF/Supernatural Title, even though Issue #1 gives an explosion of exposition right on its front cover. Peacemaker creator Pat Boyette did the artwork for this shot of the Doctor giving out an elocuted quick shot of his resume. "Graves...Dr. M.T. Graves," is how he introduces himself, as if he was a certain MI6 secret agent, showing front and center how much of an ego this guy has. He claims that you might have seen him on TV, even though he never did, and that you might have read his books despite the fact that this is the first issue of his own comic. Graves stated that he has a reputation as a ghost buster which is over a decade before the popular Saturday Morning tv series of the same name, and two decades before the first Ghostbusters movie came out. It's unknown if the term ghost buster was used any time prior to Dr. Graves' premiere, even though there were numerous similar examples like Bob Hope in the 1940's Ghost Breakers film. Graves being the first Ghostbuster would be a heck of a claim at least to future historians of pop culture, but for the sensational Sixties it might not have registered as deep as it would during the Reagan era. Graves' cover narration states that he's proven many of his supernatural capers to be not so supernatural but merely hoaxes, usually to scare some nervous rich people out of their money. The rest of M.T.'s cases were real brushes with the paranormal, which in this first issue included spooks, voodoo, and a cursed statue, even though Graves hints that the really haunted jobs were ones that he wasn't able to solve in spite of his background as a professional spiritualist. He didn't have a proton pack, but since he pimps himself as the world's original ghost buster, Dr. Graves' credentials do exactly what it says on the tin with no doubt in his delivery that he was the genuine article.