'Witching Hour' is a fun collection of horror shorts by great writers and artists

Showcase Presents: The Witching Hour, Vol. 1 (2011, DC Comics)
Writers: Steve Skeates, Mike Friedrich, Sergio Argones, Maury Boltinoff, and more 

Artists: Alex Toth, Nick Cardy, Don, Heck, Tony DeZuniga, Dick Giordano, and more

Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

"The Witching Hour" was one of DC Comics' long-running horror anthology titles. This massive, low-cost volume reprints more than 500 pages of content and covers from the first 21 issues, showcasing artwork from some of the comic book mediums true masters in glorious black-and-white.

As a kid, I loved DC Comics' horror anthologies, what few of them I ever gained access to. I'm not sure what my reaction would have been to "Witching Hour" if I had come across back in those days, but as an adult and a lover of anthology films, I thought the majority of this book was an exceptionally fun read. The early issues of this title should be counted among the best horror anthology comics ever published.

A standard for a comic book horror anthology has always been a host character giving a little introduction and epilogue to the stories, and some titles would take it further and start the issue with a page or two establishing the host with a couple of puns and a gag situation. It's also typical for the host to make some joke or ironic comment at the end of each story.

But with "The Witching Hour," editor Dick Giordano took this convention a little further and brought it in line with produced a title that followed the standard set by horror anthology films, placing the titles' hosts in a wrap-around story that sometimes tied all the stories together thematically, but that always provided a prologue, epilogue, and amusing interludes in each issue.

"The Witching Hour" was hosted by three witches, which appear to be loosely based on the Weird Sisters from "MacBeth" and which also had fun with the notion that the younger generation never has any respect for the older generation and visa-versa. Two of them are the stereotypical slovenly hags with warts and pointed hats while the third one is a sexy, swinging, college educated chick who keeps her wardrobe and rooms as fashionable and clean as her older sisters keep theirs tattered, run-down, and vermin infested. And while her sisters boil their witch's brew in the traditional large iron pot over a live flame with ingredients gathered from the swamp surrounding their home, their younger (adopted, they are quick to point out) sister happily lets hers simmer in a pan on an electric range using frozen ingredients from the grocery store.

The framing stories featuring the sisters often involve amusing arguments over modernity and tradition as it relates to witchcraft, and over what makes better stories... old school fairy tales and twist-ending chillers, or more modern and futuristic stories with sci-fi angles. The generation gap jokes are full of 1960s and 1970s slang and outdated technology, but they're still amusing, especially with the recently passed "Okay Boomer" craze.

Unfortunately, after Dick Giordano was replaced as the title's editor, the framing sequences are reduced and eventually phased out. The stories remain interesting--and a few of the best ones in the entire book can be found in the back half--but I still missed the side stories with the sisters, as well as the subplot involving their hideous servant. (The promise of readers getting to see his face, and the payoff of that promise, is one of the funnier running bits I have come across. It's too bad the editors at DC Comics didn't keep that approach going.)

Artwise, the quality is universally top-notch, with a virtual whos-who of comic book greats providing it. The black-and-white presentation and superior printing and paper quality makes it even easier to admire the line-work. Of particular note is the many pages by Alex Toth, who drew many of the framing sequences, and even the majority of the short tales in some issues as well. The art on those Nick Cardy covers especially benefit from being in black-and-white.

"DC Showcase Presents: The Witching Hour" is an anthology of anthologies, and it's a book I highly recommend if you like well-done comics and horror short stories. With Halloween coming up in a few weeks, it even be the book to get you in the proper mood.

Picture Perfect Wednesday: Conan the Pin-up!

Here's something to get you ready for the "Conan the Barbarian" movie that's coming to theaters this Friday, August 19: Great drawings of Conan from when Marvel Comics held the comics rights to the character during the 1970s into the 1990s.

By Alfredo Alcala

By John Buscema and Joe Sinnott

By Gil Kane

By John Busema and Ernie Chan

By Alex Toth

'Eclipso' make you wonder why

Showcase Presents: Eclipso (DC Comics, 2009)
Writer: Bob Haney
Artists: Jack Sparling, Alex Toth, Lee Elias, and Bernard Baily
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

There are some comic book ideas that should never be made into ongoing series. Eclipso is one those. Although the basic premise--brilliant scientist Bruce Gordon transforms into an evil being bent on destruction when there's an eclipse--has plenty of potential, the limitation of it should also have been evident to editors if not to creator Bob Haney.

The fundamental problem with "Eclipso" is that eclipses aren't exactly an every day occurrence, they're easily predictable, and a brilliant scientist like Bruce Gordon should easily be able to limit the menace of his alter-ego by locking himself away during those rare occurrences. Of course, being a genius, Bruce does try to lock himself away for a couple of the stories, but the attempts in each case because Someone Does Something Stupid.

And that's where the other problems with "Eclipso" some in, problems that amplified when one reads several of the stories back-to-back in this collected volume.

With eclipses being easily predictable, not exactly every day occurrences, writer Bob Haney has to go through some rather goofy gyrations to bring the title character of the strip into many of the stories. The most rediculous of these are the "artificial eclipse" that happens when a boulder rolls by the mouth of a gave Bruce Gordon finds himself in. If this was the only time such silly plot contrivance had to be deployed, it could be forgiven, but it is only one of many.

Another problem with the set-up is the fact that the Eclipso identity is a costumed character that also needs a magical black gem in order to function. Each time Elcipso appears, he needs to retrieve his outfit and his gem, something else that leads to some ridiculous moments in a couple of the early stories. The fix that Haney comes up--splitting Eclipso and Gordon into two separate beings--gets rid of the Jekyll and Hyde aspect of the set-up and allows Gordon to actively take part in attempts to eliminate this evil alter-ego. Initially, it's a good approach, even if it doesn't fix the central problem with the fact that eclipses shouldn't as hard to deal with as they appear to be in the World of Bruce Gordon.

For all my complaints, "Eclipso" is fun in the same sort of way that cheesy sci-fi movies from the 1950s are fun: The level of free-wheeling nonsense present in each tale is an attraction in-and-of-itself and perhaps in the small doses it was originally presented in that might be enough to carry the series. Certainly, the publisher and editors at National Periodicals/DC Comics must have thought so, even if the fact there was enough material published in "House of Secrets" to fill this book makes me wonder "why"?

The first two "Eclipso" stories feel fresh and engaging, with their sci-fi take on the Jekyll and Hyde myth; for the modern reader they even demonstrate how long the pipe-dream of practical solar energy has fired imaginations as the first target of Eclipso's evil is a grand city that runs entirely on solar power. But once those are behind us, the limitations of the concept become evident and Haney's struggles to deal with them fall somewhere between the Labors of Hercules and the Punishment of Sisyphus. While I can easily picture editors being blinded to the flaws in the scripts for the half-dozen stories featuring the exciting line work of Alex Toth, the inconsistent art of Jack Sparling--who drew the bulk of the stories and who often couldn't make a character appear the same from panel to panel, let alone from page to page--should have made even the most content-hungry editor consider better options. (Of course, it's possible that readers loved Eclipso and that's why the series stuck around. There is, after all, no accounting for taste.)

'The Secrets of Sinister House' revealed!

Showcase Presents: The Secrets of Sinister House
(DC Comics, 2010)
Writers: Michael Fleisher, Joe Albano, E. Nelson Bridwell, Sheldon Mayer, Jack Olek, Robert Kanigher, George Kashdan, et.al.
Artists: Tony DeZuniga, Alfredo Alcala, Dick Giordano, Don Heck, Mike Sekowsky, Rico Rival, Alex Nino, et.al.
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

In the early 1970s, DC Comics made numerous attempts to expand their market beyond the superhero titles that have always been the bread-and-butter of the American comic book industry; they'd already been enjoying tremendous success with war titles, so it was reasonable to take a crack at fantasy, horror, sci-fi... and romance.

First published in September of 1971, "The Sinister House of Secret Love" was one of the less successful experiments, be it on a commercial or artistic level. The series began as a vehicle for "book-length" tales of gothic romance that, despite the fact the covers implied a degree of horror content, were so close-hewn to genre standards that one could use them as teaching aids in a class on the subject.

However, it must have quickly been obvious to the editors and business folks at DC Comics that their foray into the gothic romance market was not setting the publishing world on fire. The first four issues have covers with an unadulterated paperback romance novel cover vibe (complete with the standard "women running from houses" motif), but starting with the fourth issue they started making obvious attempts to play up the horror aspect of the gothic romance genre, first redesigning the cover logo so "The Sinister House" was really large and "of Secret Love" was very tiny and describing the story within the covers as a "graphic tale of gothic horror" even though it actually contained fewer overt horror elements than tale in issue #2; and retitling the series "Secrets of the Sinister House" as of issue #5.

But it wasn't enough, so by issue #6 the book-length gothic romance stories were gone and the title morphed into an anthology book, joining the long-running "House of Mystery" and "House of Secrets" horror/thriller anthology titles in DC's line-up. Several of the stories presented still had more of a romance flavor than most of the tales presented in DC Comics' horror anthologies--possibly because some had been commissioned as back-up stories like the one featured in the first issue of the series. However, "Secrets of the Sinister House" didn't catch on the way the other titles had, and by issue #18, it was cancelled.

Thanks to DC Comics' low-cost black-and-white series of "Showcase Presents" reprint books, all the tales presented in this failed experiment can now be enjoyed by modern audiences. It's a book that might appeal for a number of different reasons, although given the shift in direction halfway through, not everything is going to be of interest to everybody.

Fans of the gothic romance genre in particular might want to give the book a read as "The Curse of the MacIntyres" (from issue #1), "To Wed the Devil" (from issue #2) and "The Bride of the Falcon" (from issue #3) and "Death at Castle Dunbar" (from issue #5) are rather decent efforts, both story and artwise.

The second half of the book is of interest to fans of short-format horror comics, as it contains a couple dozen tales of marauding monsters, vicious villains, and poetic justice. As was the case with all of DC Comics' anthology titles, the entertainment value of these short stories varies greatly but the artwork is universally top-notch.

In fact, the only group this entire book will appeal to are lovers of comic books as an art-form as well as an entertainment medium. For the first half of the book, we get to see great artists like Don Heck, Tony DeZuniga, Dick Giordano, and Alex Toth at their finest, and in the case of Heck working in a rare non-superhero environment. The short horror stories with art by Alfredo Alcala, Rico Rival, and other artists from the Philippines are visually gorgeous--even more so in the black-and-white reprint format than in their original presentation--no matter how wretched some of the stories. In fact, with the exception of the art by Tony DeZuniga, just about every story in this book looks better than it did back when it was first presented 40 years ago... and the only reason DeZuniga's work suffers is because a number of panels and layouts were clearly designed with coloring in mind. As a result some seem a bit vacant and sparse in appearance.

"Secrets of the Sinister House" may be an uneven collection, but it's the sort of offbeat material that I hope to see more of in the "Showcase Presents" series. I'd REALLY love a book collecting the myriad of characters that came and went with barely a ripple, such as Nightmaster, Kong the Untamed, Firehair, and Black Orchid. I hope this volume of obscure non-superhero comics sells well enough to encourage DC Comics to bring us more of the same.

Trivia: In reading this book, I realized that "The Secrets of Sinister House" #8 was one of the first comics I ever read. "Paying with Fire" (the story of a boy, awful parents, and a dragon) and "Moonlight Bay" (the tale of a werewolf astronaut) stayed with me in my imagination to this very day. It was great to be reminded of where they came from originally.