There is a fantasy realm that was important to my formative years, and it existed in an unusual place. I call it the Land of Harvey. “Harvey Comics?” you wonder. Isn’t that Casper and Richie Rich? Yes, indeed, we are talking about the company that gave us the Poor Little Rich Boy and the Friendly Ghost who couldn’t find a friend. These comics were very much a part of my youth as they were for millions back in the 1950s to 1980s. Like Archie Comics they are one of those phases you went through, eventually abandoning them for bulging superheroes or Catcher in the Rye.
In our world of The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, World of Warcraft video games and fat George RR Martin bestsellers, it is easy to forget that in the past we saw fantasy just a little bit differently. That mythos that doesn’t get any recognition at all, the Land of Harvey, was a fantastical realm where Casper, Spooky, Wendy, Stumbo the Giant, Nightmare, and other characters dwelled. It was a fairly consistent vision of a pastoral and wooded realm with a medieval flavour, though it transcended dimensions as well, like Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, lying only a step away from demons and horrors or our comfortable suburban backyards. There aren’t any maps or Tolkienesque guidebooks but the Land of Harvey existed all the same in those back issues of old comics for four decades.
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