JOEY

As a child of 7 or 8, I remember reading a comic book that absolutely terrified me. On the cover was a skull with the name "Joey" written on it in blood, and the story inside was about a group of kids that are playing at being pirates, and one of them (the Joey of the cover) wears a broken skull on his face as a mask, and is possessed by the ghost of a pirate. I didn't remember much more than that but the image of the kid with the skull mask, and that cover, was indelibly imprinted on my brain.

At this weekend's Fan Expo my friend Brian McLachlan was going through bins of cheap old comics and actually found this comic, which turned out to be issue 112 of DC Comics' "Ghosts", and bought it for me.



Reading the story again, it was fascinating to see how many drawings I remembered, but how little of the story I'd retained. Written by Jack C. Harris (who?) and drawn by Mark Texiera, "Pirate's Skull" is about an American boy from a wealthy family on vacation in Central America, who finds himself bullied and rejected by the local kids when they are playing pirates. Angry and vengeful, Joey finds the other boys' clubhouse and vandalizes it, in the process smashing an old skull they keep as a totem. Finding himself compelled to pick up the broken skull, Joey binds it to his face with a bandanna and is possessed by the ghost of a pirate from centuries earlier. He defeats the other boys in a (wooden toy) swordfight and becomes their leader, and takes them to a secret cave where he claims treasure is buried. At the cave, the boys are attacked by the ghost pirate's skeleton, who takes the skull mask from Joey and re-attaches it to his body. Fleeing from the skeleton, Joey hurls his oil lantern at some barrels of gunpowder and blows up the cave, burying the skeleton and saving the boys. The end.

Reading it now as an adult, it's not a particularly scary story, the climax in the pirate cave is pretty goofy, but the drawings of that kid with the skull on his face I still found suitably spooky, and there's a bit where the possessed Joey fingers a new hoop earring dangling from his earlobe, suggesting that he pierced his own ear, which I thought was a creepy little detail.

It's not a great comic but it's interesting to compare potent childhood memories with the actual article.