Comic Review #61: House of Mystery #239 (1976)

 

Now here's the good shit! That's right it's finally time to discuss the horror comics put out by DC. They put out a damn lot of them too during the 1970s and 1980s. In fact I'll show you that by posting every series and one shot they put out that had scary monster shit in them! Black Magic (this one had Jack Kirby do work on it so you know it's some wild shit) Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love, Doorway to Nightmare, Elvira's House of Mystery, Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion, Ghosts, House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Secrets of Haunted House, Secrets of Sinister House, Sinister House of Secret Love, Strange Sports Stories, The Unexpected, The Witching Hour, Weird Mystery Tales, and Weird War Tales (sort of a mix of War comics and Horror comics. They are pretty wild. I will talk about one of them sometime during October.) 

I picked House of Mystery because it was usually the magazine that had the best stories. Most of these magazines had 3 or more stories in each comic. AT LEAST one of those stories was pretty good. Anyway, House of Mystery started in 1951 and was horror stories until the Comics Code made it hard to make horror stories for comics because people thought these comics made kids into delinquents because they are dopey like that. In the 1960s it became a revolving door comic for super heroes. For a few years it was Martian Manhunter's book. Then it became Dial H for Hero. I'm sure a few other heroes were in the book for some time. Then in 1968 they decided to go back to the horror stuff and boy howdy did they go all in.

House of Mystery #239 has two stories and we will discuss both of them because why not. The first story was written by Jack Oleck, who was the brother in law to Joe Simon. Jack Oleck wrote a bazillion and one comic books and horror novels and all kinds of stuff. The man I'm pretty sure was glued to a typewriter for his entire life. I've only read some of his horror comics but they have all been really good. He was good at coming up with unique concepts like this story here. The art is done by Abe Campo, a Filipino artist. His art, like all Filipino artists from this era at DC comics is absolutely amazing. I don't know what it is with Filipino artists but I've never seen one that I didn't go "damn thats some hot shit" when seeing their art. I'm also kinda weirded out that hot shit is somehow a good thing.

Anyway the first story was done by those two guys and was called "Day of the Witch". The issue actually starts out like the cover with a bunch of monsters and warlocks and gnomes and such all around a board room like table. Except ITS IN HELL!!!! or some other evil and dark place. We really aren't told where it is. So a Witch for the first time in history has FINALLY become the Grand Wizard of the Evil Monsters Society. However there's a problem. The prior Grand Wizard tells her that there can be NO EVIL for 20 years. Not a single drop of meanness. Just peace and love for 20 years. So these kinda pisses her off because she wants to meet Satan and the only way to do that is to be a big fucking jerk.

She finds out that he's raising a child. So that his child can become the next Grand Wizard and everyone will laugh at the failure of the Witch. She's not having any of that shit tho. She transforms herself into an old lady and tries to KILL this child. She fails the first time just to come back to the hospital and offer to baby sit. She turns into her original form and tries to kill the baby but the baby well fights back and totally obliterates the shit outta here. All that's left is a pendant and some dust. They realize that she was here and they show the audience the baby's horns and say that even the Devil can care about his kid. Damn son. I think the Witch lady shouldn't have gotten so angry so quickly and maybe she'd not be dust.

The final story of the book is called "Dog Food" and is written by Michael Fleisher and drawn by Ramona Fradon. Michael Fleisher wrote hundreds of comics, mostly Jonah Hex, Weird Western Tales and stuff like that. He was a really talented guy who's comics I always enjoyed. This is a fun little tale but I think what elevates it is the art by Ramona Fradon. She's been doing comic art since 1950! That's a long ass time people! She's worked on Aquaman and the comic strip Brenda Starr. She also helped to create Metamorpho one of my favorite more obscure DC heroes. This is a pretty simple story but effective and fun. It involves a woman who loves horses and a guy who literally captures wild horses so he can sell them to a dog food factory. The man is called Mustang Harry and he's shown to be the most deplorable bastard you can get. Enjoying every minute of the horses being turned into dog food. Yes, he goes in and WATCHES.

However all is not good because Annie Templeton and the Wild Horses Society has now gotten the governor to make it a law that you cannot kill any Wild Horses. So Mustang Harry is shit out of luck. However he's not taking this lying down, so during the last two weeks you can kill wild horses. He kidnaps Annie Templeton's horse Prince and calls her just in time for her to get there to see Prince's dead body. Annie knows the only mother fucker dirty enough to do that is Harry, so she calls him up and says she knows how he can make money he's just gotta go to the dog food factory. Yeah, I think you can tell what's about to happen to Mustang Harry. He's gonna become some Palpo Dog Food. The final page has a nice little dog getting all excited to eat a bit of ol' Harry.

FINAL VERDICT: This was a great comic book. If you enjoy horror stories you really need this one in your collection. Fun stories. Great art. It's totally worth the time and energy to get yourself a copy of it.