Sergio Aragones

Plop #1 (Sep.-Oct., 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In the early 1970s, when DC Comics publisher Carmine Infantino surveyed the then-current comic book industry landscape, he saw traditional superheroes — long a mainstay for his company —  seemingly in decline, while other well-established genres, such as romance, war, and westerns, were managing to hold on at best.  About the only sector that could be said to be actually thriving was the mystery books — the label “mystery” in this case having next to nothing to do with conventional crime or detective fiction, but rather signifying supernatural horror — or, at least, what passed for it under a Comics Code Authority that didn’t allow the word “horror” to be used in the title of a comic or even an individual story, despite the 1971 revisions to the Code that allowed “literary” monsters such as vampires and werewolves to appear in the color comics of DC and most other publishers for the first time since 1954.  Read More

House of Mystery #202 (May, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In March, 1972, the format change that DC Comics editor Joe Orlando had brought to the company’s House of Mystery title at the beginning of his tenure had been in place for four years.  This format — which emulated the approach of the horror anthology comics of the early 1950s to the extent possible under the strictures of the Comics Code Authority — had proven very successful, leading to similar revamps of other DC titles (House of Secrets and Tales of the Unexpected) as well as the launch of brand new titles cut from the same rotting gravecloth (Witching Hour and Ghosts).  Even DC’s arch-rival Marvel had been moved to try its hand at the “mystery” anthology comics game (though so far without much success).

Through it all, House of Mystery had kept to the course charted by Orlando in 1968, centered on a mix of short stories of supernatural horror (generally featuring twist endings), interspersed with a page or two of macabre cartoons, all “hosted” by Cain the Caretaker.  To the extent that anything had changed in the last four years, it was largely in the makeup of the talent roster that produced the title’s content.  Even so, it was still possible to pick up an issue and be completely surprised — as was the case with the very comic we’re looking at today.  Read More

House of Mystery #188 (Sept.-Oct., 1970)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Fifty years ago, whenever I picked up an issue of one of DC Comics’ “mystery” (i.e., Comics Code-approved horror) anthology titles, I knew I would see work from multiple creators.  Any given issue would feature a mix of talents, most likely including some that I’d been a fan of for quite a while, others who were somewhat less well-known to me (but whom I was becoming more familiar with all the time, due mostly to their frequent appearances in these very titles), and probably at least one or two I’d never heard of before.

This was definitely the case with the comic that’s the subject of today’s post, House of Mystery #188, which started things off with another spooky cover by the very familiar (and always dependable) Neal Adams, and then launched into a story drawn by an artist whose work was altogether new to me (and probably new to most of this issue’s other original readers, as well), though I wouldn’t know this for sure until I got to the credits box on the story’s second page:  Read More

Mad #129 (September, 1969)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

This post wasn’t originally supposed to be a postmortem on Mad.  In fact, I’d originally planned to run it on July 1st — which, if I’d followed through, would have seen it beat the news of Mad‘s impending demise (at least as a purveyor of new material) by a couple of days.  That would have made for a timely, even prescient post, rather than one that may seem like it’s bringing up the rear, commentary-wise — and at some distance, at that.  Read More

House of Secrets #81 (Aug.-Sept., 1969)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As I’ve written in several previous posts, I was something of a wuss as a kid, at least when it came to my choices in entertainment.  (Oh, who do I think I’m kidding?  I was an all-around, all-purpose wuss.)  To put it plainly, I was scared of being scared.

So I pretty much eschewed all forms of scary media: horror movies, eerie TV shows, spooky comic books… you get the idea.*  That is, until a friend took me gently by the hand (metaphorically speaking) and showed me that a walk through the cemetery at midnight could actually be kind of fun.  Read More