Review: Showcase Presents House of Mystery Vol. 1



Sure, superheroes get all the attention. But study a little bit about comic book history and you learn that some of the medium's best work--both writing and art--was done for other genres.

Consider the stable of gifted creators responsible for EC Comics' war, horror, crime and science fiction comics--widely acknowledged as some of the best American comics ever published.

In humor, we see excellent work by Carl Barks on the Disney Duck comics and Mad magazine's array of talented writers and artists.

And how about Westerns? Alex Toth, John Severin and others turned in glorious work in the horse opera genre.

And that's just talking about mainstream comics--not getting into underground, alternative or "art" comics.

So, if you want to see a wider perspective of excellent comics work, it pays great dividends to look beyond the capes.

And an easy, cheap, place to start is this recently released Showcase compilation of DC Comics' "House of Mystery" title.

The book starts with HOM #174, published in May 1968, the first issue under the helm of editor Joe Orlando, a well-respected writer, penciler and vet of EC's glory days.

Right away, Orlando brought an EC-style edge and humor to the title, installing the creepy but comic narrator character Cain to provide intros for each issue's short stories, most of which ran anywhere from 6 to 12 pages. These were usually broken up by one- or two-page comic pieces by the great Sergio Aragones, whose hilarious cartoons-in-the-margin later became a key feature of Mad Magazine.

And, also in the tradition of EC, Orlando brought in a stellar cast of creators to craft the title's short'n'spooky stories. Highlights of this 500-page slab of fun include half a dozen stories by Toth plus a few nice ones by Neal Adams and the young Bernie Wrightson. There a few scattered stories, also, that appeared in 1950s issues of HOM, which Orlando chose to reprint, including one by Jack Kirby and a nice one with art by the great Mort Meskin.

I especially liked a few stories illustrated by Jerry Grandenetti--not a household name if you're mainly a superhero fan, but a guy who did loads and loads of war comics for DC back in the 1960s and 70s. His work here is excellent with lots of skewed, spooky angles and deep, deep shadows that really create a mood.

Scriptwise this stuff isn't exactly O. Henry or Poe, although it'd like to be. Many of the plots are just silly. A lot of the surprise twist endings aren't surprising at all. But some of them work quite nicely, particularly those written by Jack Oleck, another EC vet.

The Aragones' humor pieces also are blast. Many of his morbid scenarios easily stand comparison to the works of Charles Addams and suggest that Sergio was strolling the Far Side years before any of us ever heard of Gary Larson.

In terms of reprint quality: A nice thing about the horror genre is that the artwork does contain a lot of those deep, dark shadows and they translate very nicely into black and white. Toth's work, in particular, looks fabulous. Not any of the stories, really, suffers due to the lack of color.

My only complaint is the reproduction of the covers. They look like bad photocopies of the original comic covers. In fact, I'm certain they are bad photocopies. This is the kind of stuff Marvel has done a lot with its Essentials volumes. Generally, DC does a much better job on its reprintings, so it's a bit of a surprise to see such lack of care. As a result, some nice work by Nick Cardy and Adams, which should shine, just comes across looking murky and gray.

Still, it's only the covers and that's not enough for me to not recommend the book. Let's just hope DC does better next time around.

See a Complete List of DC Showcase Presents Books.

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