Grant Gordon, a sick young boy living in the city of New York one Christmas, was given something he initially believed to be medicine bya strange man who called himself the Doctor. In a manner of speaking, it was medicine, inasmuch as it cured Grant's ailment; it also shielded him from any other ailments...plus giving him the abilities of all his favorite comic book superheroes. And that, it transpired, was the origin of the individual known as 'the Ghost.'
Flight. Super-speed. Super-strength. Enhanced vision, enhanced hearing. Everything Grant had read about in comics was now his. The Doctor, in his visits to Grant over the years, assured him that his powers would leave him as soon as the alien stone he had swallowed did. Eventually, the 'medicine' did leave his body...but the power did not, being now fully integrated into his body, as the Doctor explained. So his life as the Ghost went on. But his other life, his ordinary life, went on too: Marrying Lucy, the two of them having children together, with him continuing his existence as a superhero, for years...and years...and years...
"I never imagined it would go this far, Grant," the Doctor said to the man with the lined face, rheumy eyes and grey hair and beard sitting across from him.
"Neither did I," Grant said. "But here I am, Doctor, one hundred and seventy years old, and looking just seventy. Still got my powers, but they're weaker now, of course...Not got Lucy anymore, though. Or the kids. Watched them all grow old and slip away...long, long ago."
"I'm sorry," the Doctor said.
"Not your fault," Grant responded. "I was the comic book-reading kid who wanted to be a superhero, and was too dumb to ask what it was you gave me that night on the rooftop. And it was worth it. I fought so many bad guys, prevented so many disasters. After a while, though, I started feeling pain more, it got more difficult. So, I've been retired for some time now." Placing his hands on the arms of the chair he sat in, he slowly got to his feet before the Doctor. "But we both know what's happening out there now. These creatures that have invaded this planet, these Daleks...They have to be fought, after all the pain and death they've brought, whatever the cost. Tonight, after sitting so long in the shadows, the Ghost will fight for justice once again...Even if it's for the very last time." The Doctor started to speak, to protest, but Grant held up a hand to silence him. "I won't be talked out of this, Doctor, old friend. I want this. I need this. Understand that, please."
And the Doctor watched as Grant Gordon, so old and yet still so powerful, soared out of the window of his home and went to confront the monsters now gliding through the devastated streets. Grant, wincing slightly, set down on the road in front of a Dalek squad, the leader instantly screeching "HALT! IDENTIFY YOURSELF!"
Grant chuckled, and replied "Me? I'm just an old, old Ghost...who is going to whip you." Saying that, he resisted the agony he felt as beams of destructive energy lanced from his eyes, struck the lead Dalek and shattered its metallic shell into flaming fragments. Before the others in the squad even had time to fire their weapons, he was among them, punching, smashing, flattening, kicking. The creatures screamed and died...But there were more. And more...and more...
People who had hidden in terror soon crept out to gather round the corpse of the old man in the middle of the field of shattered Daleks. In the end their death rays had caught him, even as he continued breaking them. Another old man slowly approached, and said to the crowd "His name was Grant Gordon. A boy who loved heroes...and as a man, was one."