1966 WEEK! Spaaaaaace Ghoooost! — UPDATED 9/10/26: It’s 1966 WEEK! Space Ghost debuted 60 years ago, on Sept. 10, 1966. Perfect time to reprint this piece from March 2021! For more 1966 WEEK festivities — including a special Space Ghost column — click here. Right on! — Dan — Our buddy, pal and columnist Fred Van Lente and groovy illustrator Ryan Dunlavey have a new issue of The Comic Book History of Animation out March 24 from IDW — and one look at the cover above will tell you what it’s about: SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS! Yes! With that in mind, Fred has put together THE TOP 13 SPACE GHOST VILLAINS — RANKED. Because why not? Dig it. — By FRED VAN LENTE One of the great joys of doing The Comic Book History of Animation with my frequent partner-in-crime, Ryan Dunlavey, has been going back and revisiting old toon favorites of the past, including one I was absolutely obsessed with as a kid — Hanna-Barbera’s Space Ghost, which premiered in the fall of 1966, the year when Adam West’s Batman became a ratings juggernaut for ABC in prime time. Fred Silverman, head of daytime programming at CBS, wanted as many cape shows on his revamped Saturday morning block as possible. In his autobiography My Life in Toons, Joe Barbera explained that he didn’t trust his own funny-animal artists to create a heroic human, so: “I hired Alex Toth, a great comic book artist, to produce some designs for an as-yet nameless superhero. He produced about forty variations on a character, and, when Fred was in L.A., he came to the studio to look at them. I spread the drawings—all painted in vivid colors on cels—across the floor. With a cigarette between his lips and a Tanqueray martini in hand, Fred tiptoed among them, agonizing over just the right combination of costume and color. “With Fred on the verge of buying the show—whatever it would be—we had yet to come up with a name. He had chosen a central superhero clad in white, with black hooded mask, and a flowing yellow cape. Talking to Fred on the phone, the name hit me: Space Ghost.” Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, who’d go on to be the showrunners for Scooby Doo, Where Are You?, as well as create a legendary animation studio...