Some of you may have noticed we were suffering domain name issues yesterday. Of course this immediately motivated me to pathetically bleat for help from Jabootu’s resident superhero Carina Magyar, who quickly put things aright. Thanks for the thousandth time, C!
House of Mystery was DC’s main ‘weird tales’ comic. It started in 1951 (!) and ran for 349 (??) issues. At first it was bland tales of the supernatural–not for DC any of that trouble EC Comics would draw for itself–and after the Comics Code was created and sat hard on supernatural content, it because the house book for Martian Manhunter and more tepid tales of the slightly uncanny. Dial H for Hero and right before cancellation I, Vampire also took over the books for spells.
Finally the code relaxed and things got better (oddly pretty much exactly halfway through the run, with issue 174), and the book really finally went completely into the horror direction, hiring the superb Bernie Wrighton to do covers (including for the first appearance of Swamp Thing) and introducing damned immortal caretaker Cain, of Cain and Abel fame. From the covers the book feature a kiddie team of supernatural investigators, so I suspect the horror wasn’t all THAT hardcore for a while. Still, those covers!
