Debuted in
1966 in the Saturday morning
Hanna-Barbera cartoon series "Space Ghost and Dino Boy", with each title hero taking a half hour of the one-hour show. The character design was by legendary
comics artist
Alex Toth while the voice was provided by actor
Gary Owens.
Space Ghost, a sort of interstellar police officer based on the Ghost Planet, patrolled the galaxy in his Phantom Cruiser with his teenaged pals Jan and Jayce and their pet monkey Blip. His power bands fired a variety of useful rays, he could turn invisible and erect a powerful force field around his person with the inviso-button on his belt, and he could both fly and (rarely) teleport.
The original series lasted two years, with twenty-two episodes. Twenty-two new episodes were made in 1981 and shown with the old episodes under the title Space Stars.
Space Ghost has appeared in a few comic books, the most notable perhaps being a Comico one-shot by Mark Evanier and Steve Rude (Nexus).
In 1994 the Cartoon Network "sampled" clips from the older cartoon series to create its Ghost-hosted talk show series Space Ghost: Coast to Coast as well as Cartoon Planet.