I like big books and I cannot lie.
Specifically, I like big comic books! 100 Page Super-Spectaculars, 80 Page Giants, Giant Size Man-Thing, Treasury editions, whatever!
For some reason, comics as periodicals keep reverting to 32 page floppies. Which are a low profit margin item at the best of times. Comics were dying a slow death in the 1970's.
When Jenette Kahn became publisher at DC in the 1970’s one of the first things she did was create Dollar Comics. These, as the name suggests, cost a buck. They had way more pages than a regular comic, sometimes they had wraparound covers and no ads, and they delivered more profit per unit than a standard sized floppy. I have read that they were sold in places that normally did not sell comics.
These lasted 5ish years - I think tying the name into the price point might have been a mistake during times of inflation. Dollar Comics went from 80 pages to 48 pages during this time. Not long after that, regular 32 page comics cost a buck.
The first two Dollar Comics were House of Mystery #251 and Superman Family #182, both on sale December 14th, 1976. (According to http://www.mikesamazingworld.com/mikes/features/guide.php?page=giant&groupid=38 which has a nice overview of the Dollar Comics line.)
Today, we will be looking at House of Mystery #251. Which cost a whole dollar.
There’s a wicked Neal Adams cover that vaguely ties in to one of the stories, although the monster on the cover is bigger, scarier, better drawn and menacing some children. Children always seem to get menaced on the front covers of ‘mystery’ titles.
Check it out!
As for the insides, it’s a mixed bag, which is pretty common for these ‘mystery’ anthologies. A couple of stories are really nicely illustrated, but none of the stories is much of a grabber. These are milder EC stories. Still, that cover is pretty great.
First off is a framing sequence that is not credited, but attributed online to Paul Kupperberg, John Calnan and Jack Abel. Cain and Abel are telling stories to some jaded kids that Goldie brought to the House of Mystery. Really, Cain and Abel’s whole existence (prior to The Sandman) was telling stories to jaded kids.
The storytelling in this sequence is a little off. The interactions between Cain, ABel and the kids pictured below don’t quite land. I am a man of no talents, but I think these panels could have been laid out a bit better and more funnily because the dialogue is amusing.
The first proper story is “Return of the Vampire” by Jack Oleck and Frank C. Reyes. It’s nicely drawn, but the production doesn’t help the artwork. The story is mystery book predictable, but perfectly OK.
As you can see, the printing technology of the time left some unsightly off-register bikini lines.
Next up is “Bride of the Pharaoh” written by Maxene Fabe and illustrated by the great Ramona Fradon. The splash panel is kind of a spoiler alert for a fairly predictable story that takes place in “Egypt”. Quote marks because I’m not sure how accurately the story reflects life in that country. Or, really, any country ever.
Curt Swan and Vince Colletta give us a story in which Aquaman uses Hostess Twinkies to defeat undersea miscreants. While the page says “Advertisement” at the top, I would prefer to think of it as being in Continuity. Even Post-Crisis and Post-Zero Hour and Post-New 52 and Post-Rebirth and Post-Convergence Continuity. Because Twinkies.
Here’s a house ad for Dollar Comics themselves, featuring this issue and the first Dollar Comics issue of Superman Family. I was reading comics at this time, but very rarely splurged on Dollar Comics. Not sure why, although none of the Dollar titles were things I had been reading regularly, or as regularly as one could given mid-70’s comics distribution in the small-town Midwest.
The next story is pretty spectacularly illustrated by Jess Joploman and written by George Kashdan. The story is a little predictable.
There are some short features in here as well, like one page cartoons by Sergio Aaragones, 2 pages of letters and a Diploma in which Jennette Kahn, Joe Orlando, Cain and Abel call me stupid for buying this comic for a dollar. The joke is on them, as I bought it as a back issue for even more than a dollar.
Steve Skeates, Ernie Chua and Bill Draut give us what is easily the best drawn thing I have seen from Ernie Chan’s work at DC. I dunno if that’s Bill Draut’s inks or what, but Mr. Chan’s cover at DC in the mid 1970’s were not good at all. Like weirdly amateurish. This story is pretty OK, too. Better than the average mystery book story.
The next story is illustrated by EC great Wally Wood and it’s the best thing in here. The story is fun and funny - maybe it was originally destined for Plop!. I liked it.
Wally Wood sure knew how to draw dames!
As a bonus, the story features a guest appearance by Wonder Wart-Hog!
There’s an uncredited three page look ‘Behind the Scenes’ at the House of Mystery, which has a caricature of Paul Levitz in it.
There’s a story by Paul Levitz, Michael Uslan and Q Redondo that is nicely illustrated and follows the mystery book formula pretty closely.
Our cover story is by Jack Oleck and Alfredo Alcala. Nicely illustrated. Has a kind of Swamp Thing thing going on, but without the tone that made that first Swamp Thing story so great.
And those kids from the framing sequence? I guess they didn’t find these stories all that scary at all.
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