Ghoul Tales #1: Some answers, and yet more questions...

Following on from musings and promises in my previous post on Page, Portman, Stanley and Ghoul Tales #1/NN...

Page Publications’ Ghoul Tales #1 exists (above), and it is a reprint of Stanley Publications’ Ghoul Tales #2.

Page Publications’ Ghoul Tales #5 (above) is a reprint of Ghoul Tales #1 – except for the cover, which was contrived by cutting and pasting (and touching up/redrawing) a couple of panels from the first two stories (below).

Portman also put out a Ghoul Tales #2, which also appears to be a reprint of the Stanley Publications’ Ghoul Tales #2 – which doesn’t help me at all in my musing over which came first, the Portman or the Page.

Nor does it really help in placing the Ghoul Tales NN issue (below). 

The $0.50 cover price is the spanner in the works. If it had a $0.60 cover price it would appear as another in a long line of Page issues reprinting previously published issues as unnumbered editions, sometimes retitled, sometimes not, typically at the end of their licence. As it is, it’s a reprint of #6, which does suggest it came out after #6.

And yet, it’s quite possible that it predates Ghoul Tales #1. As unlikely as it sounds, given this is contrary to any established pattern by Yaffa/Page that I’m aware of, it would explain the lower cover price compared to the last issue. Unless it came out between #6 and #7 – also quite possible, even if it meant the same issues was published twice in succession in the same series, and then #7 was published with the higher cover price and a resumption of the series numbering.

I don’t know. It’s quite the anomaly. And it doesn’t quite fit at the beginning of the series, the middle, or the end.