The DC Mystery Line 1968-1976
by Peter Enfantino,
Jack Seabrook,
&
John Scoleri
 |
| Tony DeZuniga |
The House of Mystery 196
"A Girl and Her Dog!"
Story by Gerry Conway
Art by Gray Morrow
"The Alien Within Me"
Story Uncredited
Art by Alex Toth
(reprinted from
My Greatest Adventure #60, October 1961)
"Child of the Dead!"
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by Wayne Howard
"Dark Journey"
Story Uncredited
Art by Nick Cardy
(reprinted from
House of Mystery #72, March 1958)
"The Little People"
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia
 |
| "A Girl and Her Dog!" |
Peter: Poor little Lissa is shipped to an orphanage when her father dies in war-torn London. Another orphan, Michael, befriends the girl and gives her a pup. When the dog gets loose, the pair follow the animal down into the orphanage's basement where they find that the caretakers are Satan worshippers. Michael listens in horror as the cultists explain that Lissa's body is holding the spirit of their Princess of Darkness, Lissa, the Queen of Hell. "A Girl and Her Dog" is a very bleak tale with a downer of an ending (we're left to imagine that Michael and the dog are dispatched fairly quickly after Lissa's soul rises from the girl's lifeless body) but a really big question mark: why would Lissa's father entrap a demon in the body of his daughter? Or am I missing the point and Lissa was actually "created" as a vessel? This would make more sense but still raises the question: who is Lissa's mother? Regardless. this is the best story I've come across in the DC mystery line in months, a knockout combo of gorgeous art by Gray Morrow (who's completely dropped out of that "look at me, I'm an artist" impressionistic phase he was trapped in not too long ago) and a dynamite, near-flawless script by Gerry Conway. Could have used a better title, of course, since the dog didn't really play that important a role in the narrative.
Jack: Good art, good story, weak ending--like so much of what we're reading lately in 1971 DC mystery comics. The red double-decker bus in 1941 London appears to be an anachronism, since I don't think they appeared till the '50s. Conway gets off to a shaky start with some overdone cockney dialect, including "All those H'expiditions 'e was always takin'." I agree with you, though, that this is very good overall.
John: I agree it's nice art and an okay story, but I don't see what Peter saw in this one to rate it so highly.
 |
| "The Alien Within Me" |
Peter: It's amazing, when you read stories like "The Alien Within Me," to see how far Alex Toth's art had evolved (or, as John would say,
devolved) in just the handful of years between the first appearance of this story in 1961 and Toth's later work in the mystery line. It's also amazing to think how much better Lee and Kirby's "giant monster" stories were. This nonsensical bit of fluff is a perfect example. A giant alien comes to earth and must enlist the help of a human to track his stolen spaceship. Well, we assume it's a spaceship until the monster draws an elaborate diagram in the dirt for our hero and he somehow surmises that the sphere is actually an artificial sun that may detonate at any moment and destroy earth. How he figures all that out (and more) is known only to the writer (and he ain't tellin'). A simple insertion of mind-reading powers would have made the whole story run a bit smoother but who am I to criticize? The reason Lee and Kirby did these so well is because when they laid down an epic of giant turtles in Fiji, they didn't
over explain. They just told the story and, no matter that they constantly retold that story, it always seemed to work.
John: This one is no better or worse than I've come to expect from Toth.
Jack: I'm with John for once. This is unexciting art from Alex Toth, who is usually so much better. The story is more sci-fi than horror, despite the presence of the monster.
 |
| "Child of the Dead!" |
Peter: "Child of the Dead" is an unnecessary "Cain's True Fact File" story about a woman believed dead and later buried, only to be resuscitated when dug up by grave robbers. I thought it was pretty unfair of the night watchman to gun down the grave robbers. If it hadn't been for their special brand of greed, this girl would have woken up in a coffin six feet under.
Jack: Wayne Howard's art is even more wooden than usual, but the real story behind this quickie is even better than what we get here. Legend has it that the grave robber was trying to cut a ring off the poor woman's finger when she woke up from the pain and "came back to life." This story was also told by Kirby in "Birth After Death," featured in the January 1953 issue of
Black Magic (#20).
John: Let me just say that Lore Shoberg is no Sergio Aragones. Whereas every panel of the latter brings a smile to my face, there is nothing in the former's Cain's Room 13 worth recommending.
 |
| "Dark Journey" |
Peter: A con man who takes money from a starving African village is cursed by a medicine man to be followed by light. All during the shyster's "Dark Journey," he's chased by a gang of hoodlums who get wind he's carrying a sack of loot. At the eleventh hour, in the best DC tradition, our man has an epiphany and decides to give the money back to the village, thus ending the curse. Most abrupt life change ever.
 |
| "The Little People" |
Jack: Weren't we just saying how good the reprints have been? And how did Nick Cardy get so much better in the 10 years between 1958 and 1968?
Peter: When his wife dies during child birth and leaves him with a screaming daughter to feed, Michael O'Bannion makes a pact with "The Little People" to replace the girl with a son. The munchkins keep their word but in keeping with their "sense of humor," they give O'Bannion a boy who resembles an ape. The boy grows strong and labors hard on his father's farm but his freakish appearance weighs on Michael, who finally goes back to the little guys and demands his daughter back. Being the generous people they are, they grant his wish. A variation on
The Monkey's Paw, "The Little People" is entertaining enough, nothing challenging, but I can't get over the feeling that it's a "vault" story. It looks like something that would have made one of the 1960s issues of
HoM.
Jack: A forgettable story with sub-par art by Gil Kane. You know you're in trouble when even Gil Kane's art isn't exciting. This was a pretty bad issue of
House of Mystery, despite another great cover. No wonder DC's 25 cent experiment failed. They
padded the page count with reprints that should have stayed in the archives.
John: I had to double check the credits on this one, hoping Peter had incorrectly attributed the art to Gil Kane.
 |
| Nick Cardy |
Unexpected 129
"Farewell to a Fading Star"
Story Uncredited
Art by John Calnan and Vince Colletta
"The Brain Thief"
Story Uncredited
Art by Nick Cardy
(reprinted from
House of Secrets #2, February 1957)
"Beyond the Shadows"
Story by Carl Wessler
Art by Jerry Grandenetti
"The Menace of the Maze"
Story Uncredited
Art by Mort Meskin and George Roussos
(reprinted from
House of Mystery #70, January 1958)
"The Deadly Widow's Web!"
Story Uncredited
Art by George Tuska
 |
| "Farewell to a Fading Star" |
Jack: Norma Deering, once Hollywood's sweetheart of the silver screen, can't face the fact that she's getting old and that the public has already said "Farewell to a Fading Star." When her daughter unexpectedly comes home from college with a new fiance and starts talking about grandchildren, it's more than old Norma can take. She shoots and kills her daughter and the police later find her, insane, in a maze of mirrors at an amusement park. The unknown writer of this story ripped off
Sunset Boulevard and then ended the story with a twist that makes no sense. At least the art by Calnan & Colletta is pleasant.
Peter: We've read some unreadable junk before but this is near the top of the heap. There's no flow to speak of and the climax shifts locale without alerting us to several essential facts, chief among them being whether Norma was being sought for murder and how the heck did she get to the hall of mirrors? Teleportation chamber? "Farewell" reads as though it was written by three writers who had no idea what the others were writing.
John: The sad thing is, this is the caliber of work I have come to expect from
Unexpected.
 |
It's fun to try to pick the
most awkward panel! |
Jack: Vincent and Laura Harrow moved out to the English countryside but Vincent's job brought him back to London, where he spends his nights alone in a hotel room, tortured by nightmares of his wife in danger and his inability to reach her in time. Only when he finally ventures "Beyond the Shadows" and reaches her does he realize that he is already dead and lying in a coffin in the country house. I thought I had this one figured out on page four and that the maniac arriving at the house to attack Laura would be Vincent himself, but I have to say this took an unexpected turn into the most cliched ending known to horror comics readers--the narrator was dead all along! I am now past the point of being disappointed by Jerry Grandenetti's art. I have moved on to looking forward to seeing what nutty things he'll do this time. And he never lets me down!
Peter: I actually thought Grandenetti's art was the highlight of this waste of time. Not saying much, I know, but when you're dealing with a story that's been done a zillion times before, you have to latch on to something to get you through the pages, right? At this point, should we be retitling this comic
The Unspectacular?
The Unoriginal? No one reading a DC mystery comic should be fooled by this one.
John: I'm trying to figure out how Grandenetti's art could be the highlight. I wouldn't say it's so bad that it's good. Although I think you're on to something with the 'most awkward panel' award.
 |
"The Deadly
Widow's Web!" |
Jack: Gustave Rausch, a brutish and violent man, talks his way into free bed and board for himself, his long-suffering wife and her pretty daughter at the large and lonely home of widow Lydia Arachne. It's not too long before his behavior results in his becoming the victim of a black widow spider's bite. I guess it was foolish of me to hope that the last story in this issue would redeem the ones that came before it. When I saw the trademark Tuska faces I knew I was doomed.
John: Oh, silly me. I actually thought, going into this tale, how could one go wrong with a spider-story? Well, now I know.
Unexpected.
Peter: Tuska's patented "crazed faces with arms akimbo" art is just as abysmal here as over at the Marvel University. I thought it kind of extra creepy that the little girl was wearing a dress decidedly too small for her. I love how, even though the story's title is "The Deadly Widow's Web" and the old lady's name is Arachne, we're supposed to be shocked by the finale! I laughed out loud when Gustave's wife, Laura, sobbed to his doctor that she should have told her husband he had a weak heart. How does Laura find this out without Gustave's knowledge? Some secret heart testing while the man is snoring away? Then the doctor says they couldn't tell Gustave, as he would have died of fright!
Jack: This issue's reprints include "The Brain Thief," with early art by Nick Cardy, and "The Menace of the Maze," with art by Mort Meskin that is pretty sketchy and looks like it could have come from the Simon & Kirby studio, where he worked till 1956. The stories are sub-par 1950s DC mystery fare. Too bad this issue was such a letdown after that terrific Cardy cover!
Peter: "The Brain Thief" provides a few laughs, chief among them the x-ray machine
inside the doctor's office that gets struck by lightning, and did hospitals in the 1950s really refer to their mental patients as "imbeciles"? It's harmless fun with a nice Nick Cardy art job. A much more pleasant surprise is our other reprint, "The Menace of the Maze," which is not too taxing, very entertaining, and climaxes with an honest to goodness
unexpected twist! Who'da thunk one of the reprints would end up taking "Story of the Issue" honors? Me.
 |
| "The Menace of the Maze" |
 |
| Bernie Wrightson |
House of Secrets 94
"The Man with My Face"
Story Uncredited
Art by Jack Sparling
"Hyde--and Go Seek!"
Story by Len Wein
Art by Tony DeZuniga
"The Day Nobody Died"
Story Uncredited
Art by George Roussos
(reprinted from
Tales of the Unexpected #9, January 1957)
"Track of the Invisible Beast"
Story Uncredited
Art by Alex Toth
(reprinted from
House of Mystery #109, April 1961)
"A Bottle of Incense.. A Whiff of the Past!"
Story by Francis Bushmaster (Gerry Conway)
Art by Alan Weiss and Bernie Wrightson
 |
| The rich, nuanced artistry of one Jack Sparling |
Peter: Having embezzled and lost $120,000, Albert Gibson has no idea what to do until he meets a mysterious stranger who guarantees he'll put Albert back on the winning track if he'll only switch bodies with him. Albert agrees in an instant, the stranger (now with Albert Gibson's body) gives him a lucky coin and tells him as long as he uses it, he can't lose. Trouble is, Albert is hit by a speeding car and loses his coin. When he approaches the "new" Albert at work, he's accused of being insane and carted away. End of story. A bit abrupt, you say? I would too. A perfect example of the kind of stupidity that editor Joe Orlando must have gotten across his desk daily. Problem is, you'd think wretched nonsense like this would get
DISCARD stamped across it. Never mind we're not told who the stranger is (even Abel in his outré remarks on this), how the heck did the "new" Albert Gibson show up to work after embezzling the $120,000? I suppose if he could switch bodies, he could make money appear just as easily but why does he want this body and that job? Why not Rock Hudson or President Nixon? Just idiocy. The Sparling art is equally abysmal, barely rising above grade school. This could be #1 contender for worst story of the year.
John: You have to be really hard up to want to change places with a Fred Gwynne-looking dude. Of course, Sparling's rendition of Albert isn't much to look at, either.
Jack: This is one of those instances where Jack Sparling's art works for me. The story looked like it might be good but it ends suddenly with no explanation. Even poor Abel doesn't know what happened. Too bad!
 |
| "Hyde--and Go Seek!" |
Peter: There's a strangler in San Francisco and the detective in charge of putting an end to his reign of terror is Lt. Homer Plumm. Homer finds himself stressed out not only by the wave of murder but by his shrew of a wife, Hazel. To escape her constant nagging, the Lt. visits his best friend, Paul Jacobs, a professor whose wife disappeared under strange circumstances months before and is now feared to be a victim of the strangler. Homer sets a trap for the murderer and, while fleeing, the monster is shot fatally. As he lays dying, the creature transforms back into Paul Jacobs (!), who tells Homer his friend must destroy the remaining elixir back in his lab. The good Lt. has other ideas, however. Len Wein's a great writer but "Hyde--and Go Seek!" is not one of his better stories. A lot of the logic is a bit hazy (what exactly is Homer experimenting on down in
his basement?) and there's no question from the git-go who the strangler is, but it does have a nice, nasty finale.
John: I think this is the best of the bunch this month. I've seen no better art than the night scenes by de Zuniga. And a twist that is actually effective for a change! Go figure.
Jack: I thought that this was going to be a perfect example of "great art, bad script," but it did take me by surprise. Wein steals from Bloch and moves the scene from London to San Francisco. The art is beautiful and de Zuniga makes great use of grays and blues for the night scenes. I wish the story were a little more coherent, but overall I enjoyed it.
 |
| "The Day Nobody Died" |
Peter: Our reprints this issue are a decidedly mixed-bag. In "The Day Nobody Died" (translation:
Death Takes a Holiday), surgeon Tom Morgan is especially nervous about a life-or-death operation he's to perform until he takes a walk and encounters several catastrophes on the street. At each melee, Morgan meets up with a strange man who assures Tom that no one will die. Sure enough, there are no fatalities. With this in mind, Morgan rushes back to perform the surgery. I would think this particular story line was one you'd see a great deal in DC's mystery/horror/sf comics of the 1950s. The art's not bad but the familiarity of the story makes this one a waste of reading time.
 |
| "Track of the Invisible Beast" |
The same can be said, sadly, for "Track of the Invisible Beast," whose title at least gave me hope. Scientist Charles Riggs is working on a new chartreuse dye in his lab when an accident creates an invisible monster, which wastes no time escaping and laying waste to the city. Riggs is able to convince the military that the crumbling buildings are actually the work of an invisible being and, with the aid of the army and his new chartreuse dye, the scientist makes the monster visible and blasts it back to hell. Cut right from the cloth of the Kirby/Lee monster stories (just as "The Alien Within Me" was), "Track" is a pretty dull story that relies on several leaps of faith on behalf of the reader to keep it chugging along. Why in the world would the military listen to this raving lunatic about an invisible monster and then agree to drop bombs on the city? How in the world did one small vial of dye cover that entire giant monster? Could one puny scientist survive a direct hit from the military's missiles?
Jack: "The Day Nobody Died" was already an old story by 1957 (see, for example, the 1939 film,
On Borrowed Time) and it wasn't any fresher in 1971. "Track of the Invisible Beast" is a forgettable story that recalls any number of '50s monster movies. The art by Alex Toth is above-average, as usual.
John:
On Borrowed Time is a personal favorite of mine. This particular take on Death taking some time off, however, is forgettable.
Peter: Cecilia Graves was once a beautiful girl who collected lovers and discarded them at the drop of a hat, but now she's old and alone and only wants to relive some of those bygone days. She recalls Osmodeus, the only man she might have truly been interested in, a man who tried to involve her in the black arts but was tragically killed at a very young age. Now, through satanic spells, she hopes to raise him from the dead and stave off the aching loneliness she feels. Cecilia succeeds but not according to her plan. Osmodeus comes back as a very hungry demon. "A Bottle of Incense... A Whiff of the Past" is just what the doctor ordered after so many awful Jerry Grandenetti and Jack Sparling stories: a nicely written, beautifully penciled cautionary tale. Jack notes that it's tough to figure out how much is Weiss and how much Wrightson and he's right on the money. It's not classic Wrightson but glimpses peek through. All the same, the two combine to deliver gorgeously detailed panels. Conway's dialogue and narrative are filled with lots and lots of words but none of them are wasted space. There's a layered back story being told here and we can almost forget that there's some supernatural shenanigans going on as well. "A Bottle..." and "A Girl and Her Dog" give me hope that the really good, consistently good, material is right around the corner.
Jack: The second highlight of the issue is this mixture of
Sunset Boulevard and H.P. Lovecraft by Conway, Weiss & Wrightson. I am not familiar enough with Weiss's art to know how much of this is his and how much is Wrightson's, but there are panels that look very Wrightsonesque. I don't know why Conway wrote this under his goofy pseudonym but it's better than the reprints and better than this issue's lead story. Why put it in the back of the book?
John: I thought the Wrightson bits were very few and far between. I probably would have missed them had I not known he was involved. Overall, I was less impressed by this than my colleagues.
 |
| Nick Cardy |
The Witching Hour 17
"This Little Witch Went to College"
Story by George Kashdan
Art by Don Heck
"Fingers of Fear!"
Story Uncredited
Art by Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella
(reprinted from
Sensation Comics #109, June 1952)
"The Second Life of Simon Steele"
Story Uncredited
Art by Howard Sherman
(reprinted from
House of Secrets #46, July 1961)
"The Corpse Who Carried Cash!"
Story by Bill Dennehy (Murray Boltinoff)
Art by John Calnan and Vince Colletta
"The Man in the Cellar"
Story by Carl Wessler
Art by Jerry Grandenetti
 |
| "This Little Witch Went to College" |
Jack: After a funny introductory page where our favorite trio of witches find a new apartment in the city--they love the smog and the view of the polluted river--Cynthia tells a tale about Claire, a pretty co-ed, who discovers that "This Little Witch Went to College." She flirts with Frederick Stokes, her medieval history professor, and takes him to a remote cave where she injects him with something that puts him under her spell. It turns out that Claire is being initiated into a witches' coven and the head witch, Gina, wants to get rid of Stokes by framing him for the murder of Mary Welles, another co-ed who disappeared and died after overdosing on ritual brew. Claire has second thoughts and she and Stokes defeat Gina, who was a real witch after all. I really liked this story and thought it featured some of Don Heck's better art. If there's one thing Heck was good at, it was drawing pretty girls.
Peter: I thought Don's art was very good here as well but the story confused the hell out of me. I couldn't keep up with who was a witch and who wasn't!
John: Bless you Jack for accepting the witch-trio framing stories. I still cannot stomach them. Fortunately, it makes the transition to Heck's are all the more impressive.
 |
| "The Second Life of Simon Steele" |
Jack: The reprints this time around include a crazy little story called "Fingers of Fear!" After killing his five partners in the Brazilian jungle to keep the treasure they've found, Albert Tisdale wades through the River of Death on his way out. When he gets home, the fingertips on his left hand grow little heads of the men he's killed. The heads talk to him and make him try to kill himself in ways that mirror the ways he killed each of the men. My favorite line comes after he puts a glove on the hand: "Once the fingers of fear are screened from sight, Albert Tisdale resumes a normal life." Are you kidding? He has these five little guys on his left hand talking to him and trying to kill him, but once he puts a glove on all is forgotten? Priceless.
 |
| "Fingers of Fear!" |
Peter: Both reprints were wacky and fun this time out (a trend that doesn't really bode well since it's the new stuff we're supposed to be getting excited about). I kept hoping that the five little finger men would grow a little bit more since they were wearing their wife beaters and I wanted to see if they wore tighty whiteys. Couldn't get past that next knuckle though. There's a real sleazy feel to this story, one that I must admit to loving the heck out of. The other reprint, "The Second Life of Simon Steele" had the kind of storyline that only a 1961 DC editor would accept: a ghost comes back from the grave to avenge a 150-year old slight committed by a fellow lawyer. It's fairly forgettable if not for the gorgeous Howard Sherman art, who had a style that brings to mind Al Williamson.
 |
| "The Corpse Who Carried Cash!" |
Jack: Funeral home assistant Otis steals money from his boss and hides it in the coffin of a man who is set to be buried the next day. Otis plans to dig up "The Corpse Who Carried Cash!" and fly off to Mexico with his ill-gotten gains. He is crushed when he learns that the man's wife changed her mind at the last minute and had him cremated! This is a really dumb story. The plan is ridiculous--why not just run off with the money when he steals it? Why put it in a coffin he'd have to dig up? Do they even cremate corpses in expensive coffins? I'll bet the head of the funeral home found the money and didn't tell Otis!
Peter: This is a very silly story and I'd say it's predictable but that may because I've read the exact same story somewhere else before. Don't ask me where but perhaps a reader out there with a better memory than mine might chime in?
John: It's one of those stories that's so predictable that you don't have to have read it before.
Jack: Ephraim Dark is "The Man in the Cellar," a miser who hides with his money. One day, a well-dressed man comes and invites him to journey through a mirror to the man's home, where he and his family welcome Ephraim with kindness and food. Ephraim repays the man by sealing money from his safe and fleeing back through the mirror. Afraid of being caught, Ephraim burns the cash and smashes the mirror, only to discover that the other man is a representation of how he might have lived his life differently and he has burned his own greenbacks. This story is completely befuddling, but Jerry G's usual bizarre art makes it strangely satisfying in a perverse way.
 |
| "The Man in the Cellar" |
Peter: The climax, where we find out Ephraim has burned his own money from an alternate past (is that what he's done?) made my head hurt. I hate stories that, no matter how many scenarios you run through your brain, make less sense every time you think about them.
John: Funny. Grandenetti's artwork made my head hurt.
Jack: In this issue's letters column, we are told that they will continue to reduce the appearances of the three witches who have hosted
The Witching Hour since its inception. I think that's too bad, because I always enjoyed their little framing stories and thought they were good fun.
John: Hey! Something for me to look forward to.
Peter: With all the negativity regarding the new stories that are appearing in the "current" DC horror titles, I'm sure some readers are wondering why the three of us bother. Yes, we're coming across some really bad stuff but I believe the quality stories are just a few months away. Back in 1997, when John and I were co-editors of
The Scream Factory Magazine (
The Best Of which will be winging its way to bookstores hopefully in 2014), I commissioned DC expert Jim Kingman to select his favorite DC mystery/horror stories. Of the 25 he picked, not one was published before March 1972. Tellingly, only one story each originally appeared in
Unexpected and
The Witching Hour. I began my journey down the DC horror path in 1973 and, back then, everything seemed fresh, original, and scary. Hopefully, some of that aura will still be present when we get there.
Peter: We should also mention that November 1971 saw the publication of the first issue of
The Sinister House of Secret Love, a gothic romance title that, thankfully, falls out of the perimeters of our voyage . An expensive experiment (its premiere cover was painted by paperback artist Victor Kalin),
SSHoSL would see only bi-monthly issues before a title and format change. We'll be covering the book when it becomes
Secrets of Sinister House with #5 in July 1972. Those fearful of missing anything from that landmark first issue will be pleased to know the lead story, the 25-page "The Curse of the MacIntyres," complete with Don heck art, will be reprinted in
House of Mystery #225. I, for one, cannot wait.
John: Um, I can.
