'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.

'Bat Lash' is lighthearted reading of Wild West

Showcase Presents: Bat Lash (DC Comics, 2009)
Writers: Denny O'Neil, Sergio Argones, Len Wein, and Cary Bates
Artists: Nick Cardy, Dan Speigle, George Moliterni, and Mike Sekowski
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

"Bat Lash" is one of the many titles and characters in DC Comics' long publishing history that was deserving of greater success than it enjoyed. The series centered on the title character, a drifter who moved from town to town in the Wild West of the 1860s, trying to avoid trouble but always finding it... usually because of an attractive woman or because of his sense of right and wrong couldn't let him stand by while innocent people suffer.

From the collection of Alex Johnson

Collected in this budget-priced, black-and-white book are all of the initial Bat Lash tales from 1968 and 1969 (including his debut appearance in "DC Showcase" and every issue of his short-lived solo series), another try-out tale from the late 1970s, and a trio of back-up tales from "Jonah Hex." Skipped entirely are the stories where Bat Lash served as an ongoing supporting character in the excellent "Scalp Hunter" series from "Weird Western Tales" (which I hope means DC Comics will be collecting those as well, even if it's a slim hope because the Political Correctness Brigade would probably freak out over the title), so there's a little bit of a disconnect from the 1960s stories where he's a shiftless rogue to the ones from the 1980s where he's a professional gambler.

The tone of the "Bat Lash" series has been compared to some commentators to the TV series "Maverick," but a more accurate comparison would be to the second-tier Italian westerns of the late 1960s and early 1970s. If you enjoy the Terence Hill and Bud Spencer Western vehicles, I think this is a book that will be right up your alley.

Most of the stories in the book feature art by Nick Cardy. His is a style that never impressed me on his superhero work, but his covers and artwork on DC horror titles like "Witching Hour" immediately spring to mind when I consider comics art that is top-notch. With "Bat Lash," he is just as great, and these are comics I admired as a kid and that I admire even more as an adult. Whether Bat Lash is comically trying to escape death at the hands of a fling's angry husband, or tragically carrying a dying child across the desert, Cardy invokes exactly the right mood at the right time. His artwork is so effective that you can even just look at the pictures and get what is happening on the page, story, mood, and all. This is work that many modern comic book artists should be forced to study and internalize as most of them can't tell a story if their lives depended on it.

"Showcase Presents: Bat Lash" is slimmer than most of the DC Comics books in this format, and it can be digested in a single long afternoon. However, the price is right, and if you're a lover of Westerns or just good comic books, it's a book you want to pick up.