Do You Dare Enter? Part Sixty-Seven: January/February 1976

The DC Mystery Anthologies 1968-1976

by Peter Enfantino and
Jack Seabrook

Luis Dominguez

House of Mystery 238 (January 1976)

"A Touch of Evil"
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by Jess Jodloman

"Headlines of Doom"
Story by David Michelinie
Art by E.R. Cruz

Peter: 1976 begins pretty much the way '75 ended as far as the DC Mystery Line goes: lousy scripts partially redeemed by decent, sometimes outstanding art. "A Touch of Evil" is built upon another cliched gigolo plot, this one taking place in a amusement park. The entire story can best be summed up by Luis Dominguez's cover. A bit better (if not any less cliched) is "Headlines of Doom," in which newspaper editor Luke Blesset learns he can affect the future based on his headlines. When his publisher pressures Blesset to up the circulation, the editor shows his boss by killing him in a fiery car crash. Unfortunately for Blesset, his typesetter seems to have a problem with proofreading and, after a well-intentioned office party for Blesset goes wrong, the evil genius gets a dose of his own medicine. A funny finale makes it worth getting through the first seven pages but this is just another take on EC's "Drawn and Quartered" (from Tales from the Crypt #26, Nov. 1951).

Jack: Jess Jodloman's art can be hard to take. He draws Cain like our host is having a really bad hair day. The first story reminded me of "What You Need" from The Twilight Zone in that an object gives people what they need, even if they don't realize it. Of course, the TZ script was much better than Oleck's story. The second story was good but the climax with the "20 happy ears" instead of "years" made me go "ewww." One notable thing about this issue is the violence, which is more graphic than we're used to. There are crane accidents in both stories and, when a woman in the first story is run over by a roller coaster car, there is a big, red splotch. I guess it's good to get used to gruesome violence as we head toward our new series on EC.

Peter: I had forgotten about the red splotch, Jack. You're right, very uncharacteristic for these mild DC mystery titles. The highlight of that bad story.

Bernie Wrightson

The House of Secrets 139 (January 1976)

"The Devil's Daughter"
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by Steve Ditko and Mike Royer

"A Real Crazy Kid"
Story by Steve Skeates
Art by Nestor Redondo

"Instant Rebirth!"
Story by George Kashdan
Art by Bill Draut

Peter: Each one of the three stories in this issue is a flaming pile. I expect that from George Kashdan but Oleck and Skeates contribute such awful stories, it makes you wonder if they'd forgotten how to spin a good horror yarn. Of the three, the least offensive is probably "The Devil's Daughter," wherein lovely little brat, Marianne, convinces her stepfather that she can talk to the show animals... and that they can talk back to her. He's convinced his stepdaughter is a witch but no one will believe him. The madman goes after her with a knife but Marianne is saved by the circus's gorilla. When the police question the girl, she confesses that she's been studying ventriloquism in order to win her daddy's favor. When the cops tell the girl they'll have to put the gorilla down, she says her goodbyes and the ape begs her to save him. She refuses, citing the need to keep from the world her real identity as a witch. It's no coincidence that "The Devil's Daughter" looks like something Charlton would run since Charlton's most famous artist, Steve Ditko, handles the penciling chores here. Jack will disagree but "Devil's..." just adds fuel to my assessment that Ditko was slipping quality-wise by this rung of his career. Marianne alternately looks like she's a pre-teen and a young woman from panel to panel (in the image reprinted below, the girl could be two feet tall) but, I must admit, Ditko's intelligent gorilla makes me nostalgic for the artist's run on Konga. Bernie Wrightson got a lot of mileage out of pumpkins this month.

Jack: I'm sure there's some long study of this topic somewhere, but doesn't it seem like Mike Royer brings out the Ditko in Ditko and the Kirby in Kirby? I don't see any real Royer influence when he inks these artists who have such individual styles. The twist where we learn the girl is a ventriloquist was pretty good, but then Oleck takes it away by having it turn out she's really a witch. Ditko's art reminds me of the early days at Marvel more than anything else. By the way, this issue's letter column says that Abel and the House of Secrets will no longer be around as of next issue. I'm not sure if that just means that they won't be arguing about who hosts the letters column or if it is a ban on appearances in the whole comic. I'm intrigued by the idea of a new, continuing series.

The Skeates story is terrible and it's a shame to waste Nestor Redondo on it. It's mostly characters talking to each other, which doesn't give the artist much to do.

Luis Dominguez

The Witching Hour 61 (January 1976)

"What Can You Get for a Ghoul Who Has Everything?"
Story by Carl Wessler
Art by Jess Jodloman

"Marked for Death"
Story Uncredited
Art by Buddy Gernale

"May I Spill Your Guts?"
Story by George Kashdan
Art by E.R. Cruz

Jack: How do I choose among three bad stories? The art of E.R. Cruz makes "May I Spill Your Guts?" slightly better than the other two, but "What Do You Get for a Ghoul Who Has Everything?" is the most ridiculous. The police in London are mystified by the Ghoul-Girl, who has been seen about the city ransacking graves. Little do they know that the girl is actually rich Nettie Hayton, who is being wooed by the assistant curator of the London Historical Museum. When the museum gets a new exhibit from Egypt, Nettie breaks in and steals the crown and jewels from an ancient Egyptian queen and then takes her place in the mummy case.

As is often the case with stories by Carl Wessler, this makes no sense. The Girl-Ghoul goes from graveyard to graveyard in London, looking for something but never finding it. Finally, she finds what she's looking for in the mummy exhibit. If she was Nefertiti all along, what's she doing in modern-day London, and why would she think her crown jewels would be located in random graves?

Peter: If I didn't know any better, I'd say George, Carl, and Uncredited (who's probably either George or Carl based on the evidence) went out of their way to craft inane scripts, almost like an art form. The sheer amount of ludicrosity packed in these pages threatens to spill out like water from a cracked toilet but I'd have to nominate "May I Spill Your Guts" as the worst of the issue since it not only suffers from a cliched, silly story but is also saddled with an abrupt finale (a happy ending!) that makes no sense at all, a trait it shares with the equally vapid "A Plague of Panic" in Unexpected #171 (reviewed below). An O. Henry twist is just too much for George Kashdan so he slams the brakes and ends "May I Spill..." with a convoluted expository. The bright side is you'll have forgotten the whole mess five minutes after you've finished it.

Bernie Wrightson

Secrets of Haunted House 5 (January 1976)

"Gunslinger!"
Story by Bill Reilly and Guy Lillian
Art by John Albano and Vince Colletta

"What Am I Bid?"
Story by Arnold Drake
Art by Tenny Henson

"The Stars, Like Pallbearers"
Story by David Michelinie
Art by Ernie Chan and Bill Draut

Peter: Gorgeous estate agent Peggy Marlowe loves the big sell; she's also not above sneaking in the occasional forgery to sweeten her pot. At one of her auctions, Peggy passes off a hunk of junk as a priceless vase and the fraud causes a bidding war. Afterwards, the losing bidder, Mr. Nadaj, approaches Marlowe and confesses he knew the vase to be nothing more than a Blue Light Special but Peggy's cojones impressed him and he offers her a job. Marlowe flies to Sakdar for the Sultan's auction but quickly finds out she's been duped; the bidding is for pretty young girls and Nadaj has stolen a page from Peggy's book and slipped her into the bidding. "What Am I Bid?" is an original tale with a sly twist in its behind that also benefits from nice Tenny Henson art. Writer Arnold Drake, of course, is no stranger to DC Comics, having created the Doom Patrol before moving on to destroy both Captain Marvel and the X-Men over at the other guys. Mention begs to be made of the looney tunes (or should that be Looney Tunes?) art of Bill Draut in the closer, "The Stars, Like Pallbearers" (a pretentious title if there ever was one), but I promised Jack I'd make this entry a positive one. By the way, this will be the last issue of Secrets of Haunted House we cover on our journey as DC's implosion of 1976 is underway and SoHH will be placed on hiatus until its return in July 1977. Amazingly, it will then chug on for another 40 issues before the axe completely severs the head in March 1982.

Jack: I liked "The Stars, Like Pallbearers" best of the tales in this issue. A man is trapped on a spaceship with a vampire and must try to figure out how to kill the fiend before it reaches another planet and begins to spread its vampirism. Though the art throughout seems much more Draut than Chua/Chan to me, the final twist reminded me of Horror of Dracula for some reason--this time, a blast in space outside the ship causes a shadow of a cross to fall on the vampire and turn him to dust. The panel of the vampire after his destruction is very nicely done and, since it looks so good, I mentally assigned it to Chua and not Draut.

Bill's talent Drought continues

Luis Dominguez

Unexpected 171 (February 1976)

"I.O.U. One Corpse"
Story by George Kashdan
Art by Ruben Yandoc

"Feast for Slaughter"
Story Uncredited
Art by Buddy Gernale

"A Plague of Panic"
Story by George Kashdan
Art by E.R. Cruz

Jack: Rich Mr. Gorman tells his daughter's suitor to beat it, but young Mr. Chase is a bad guy, so he thinks about murdering the older man. He finds a note in his car telling him that, if he wants to get rid of Gorman, he should go to a certain address. He follows his instructions and becomes part of a group who trade murders in order to avoid being caught because their crimes lack a motive. Someone else murders Gorman and pours acid on his body, leaving only a skeleton. When Chase goes to commit his assigned murder, the cops are waiting and the victim turns out to be Gorman! The entire thing was planned by the older man to frame the younger, who goes bonkers as he's led off the the pokey.

It's a dummy and a plastic skeleton. Don't ask.

A typical Kashdan festival of confusion. "I.O.U. One Corpse" takes its central gimmick from Highsmith's Strangers On a Train but then twists it in so many UNEXPECTED directions that it ends up making little sense. Why does Gorman go to such great lengths to frame Chase? Since there were no murders and Chase doesn't kill Gorman, what's the charge--attempted murder? Chase goes koo-koo in any case and ends up in an asylum. There is no way Gorman could have known that would happen.

Nope, not Man-Bat!

Peter: If I didn't know any better (and many would say I don't), I could mistake "A Plague of Panic" for a half-assed Man-Bat origin; like "I.O.U.," this one is meandering and has no real climax (but at least has some nice E.R. Cruz art). Almost as though the editors of the DC Mystery line had thrown up their hands by this time and accepted outlines rather than fleshed-out scripts, knowing they'd be handed drivel anyway. Ideas seem to be randomly thrown into the mix and then go nowhere. Climaxes are tacked on whether they bring the previous pages to a satisfying conclusion or leave the reader scratching his/her scalp. Of the eighteen stories reviewed this week, only two were assigned higher than a mediocre (**) or poor (*) rating in my notes.

Luis Dominguez

Ghosts 45 (February 1976)

"Bray of the Phantom Beast"
Story Uncredited
Art by E.R. Cruz

"The Headless Ghost"
Story Uncredited
Art by Frank Redondo

"The Spirit in the Ring"
Story Uncredited
Art by Buddy Gernale

"The Glowing Specters of the Swamp"
Story Uncredited
Art by Tenny Henson

Jack: Young Ned Wescott is lost in a Florida swamp in October 1859. The evening shadows gather round him as his parents search for him by boat with an Indian named Joe Panter as their guide. Panter decides to lighten the mood by telling a story about Tom Davis, an American Army captain who eloped with a Seminole woman named Lily Tiger 35 years before. Her father, the chief, had them both killed and their son was left to perish along in the Everglades. In a similar vein, young Ned is being menaced by hungry alligators! Happily, "The Glowing Specters of the Swamp" help the search party locate the boy and Panter shoots an alligator and a giant snake. Only when they are safely inside does Panter reveal that the ghosts were those of Tom and Lily, and that he was their lost child.

Though the art is not as good as that in "What Am I Bid?" (see above), perhaps because Henson excels at drawing beautiful women and there isn't much call for them in a swamp at night, "Glowing Specters" is a decent story with one big flaw: the reveal at the end. Joe Panter's eyes should be bright blue but, as the panel reproduced here shows, the colorist did not get the message.

More blue, please!

Peter: You're being entirely too kind to this snoozer, Jack. Tenny Henson's art on "Glowing Specters" is the one shining light in this entire issue. The four awful scripts (and some really bad art on "The Spirit in the Ring") provide more proof that this title really is the pits.

Next Week:
The Haunted Tank Returns in our
68th Flak-filled Issue!
On Sale December 14th!