Howard Purcell (November 10, 1918 - April 24, 1981) was an American comic-book artist and writer active from the 1940s Golden Age of comics through the 1960s Silver Age. A longtime penciler and cover artist for DC Comics, one of the field's two largest firms, he co-created the Golden Age characters Sargon the Sorcerer and the Gay Ghost (renamed in the 1970s the Grim Ghost) for All-American Publications, one of the companies, with National Comics and Detective Comics, that merged to form DC.