Lo! Another comic!
Last time we showed you an embarrassingly low-budget Charlton comic. The pages were as thin as the plots, and their adverts focused on the coveted 7-55 demographic. This time around, the Comic Scans Sans Inky Hands (CSSIH) project is doing a complete 180, bringing you a phenomenally awesome 1973 DC comic.
Wikipedia teaches us that House of Mystery was originally a horror anthology in the fifties which mutated into a scifi anthology in the sixties but reclaimed its terrifying roots just five years before this comic was printed. And it looks like they had walking around money, to boot. This comic has stories by John Albano and Steve Skeates, both of whom won the prestigious and short-lived Shazam Award for — get this — scripts they wrote for House of Mystery. You can almost taste the quality writing; “Back From the Realm of the Damned” is like Dig The Grave Deep done right, and “The Other Side!” has a mindbending intro before the title page. That just screams “class.”
One thing I love about this comic is Cain. A lot of anthologies from this era have some campy character pull the Rod Serling shtick, trying to build a cult of personality as they narrate. Mostly they end up coming off as some Great Gazoo knockoff. But Cain is like John Newland on steroids, smirking with mirthful foreknowledge of whatever horrors the main characters will encounter. He’s a sadist through and through, mocking the main characters’ self-destructive nature with false compliments as they slowly go insane. He’s also the star of a MAD-inspired 1-page comic!
Click picture for full cover# “Back From the Realm of the Damned”
# “The Other Side!”
# In His Own Image!
# Errata
- Do You Need Extra Money?
- Aroura A|FX
- Cain’s Game Room
- Cain’s Mail Room
- See Your Muscles Grow Day By Day!
- A True Story: why you should embezzle from your employer.
- Just Put An X Next To The Comics You Want!
- U.S. Labor Department Reports Serious Shortage of Draftsmen
- Batman & Superman — Together on 1 Extra Large 5” Patch
- Helen of Toy, Co.!
- Demand For Men-Women Accountants Continues High
- Get Win Power — Get Prize Power — Get Cash Power with J.S.C.A.
- Make Money With Fast Selling American Seeds
Labels: CSSIH
I love this melodramatic stuff. :)