Halloween Countdown Day 13: More Gil Kane Style

For this week's Gil Kane story, I've picked "Comes a Warrior," from House of Mystery 180 (May-June 1969), and, like the previous House of Mystery story, this one is also inked by Wally Wood. However, unlike any other Gil Kane story I've covered so far, this one features a rare occurence of a Gil Kane script!

Kane, who was an intensive autodidact, taught himself many of the classics and was particularly fond of opera. "Comes a Warrior," therefore, is a bit of a riff on Beowulf and Wagner's The Ring cycle, which Kane would adapt later in his career, with the help of Roy Thomas on scripts.


The story opens with a young Nordic warrior named "Rangarry" (short for "Rangarry Ran Ross") brandishing a sword through a lightning storm, which can't possibly be safe. Rangarry has been riding around for years looking for adventure that would help him build his reputation as a warrior. If it's taken him years to do this, he's either very picky about what constitutes a worthy adventure, or he's just not looking in the right place. I mean, I've technically spent "years" looking for the perfect Philly cheese steak, but my search has been limited to a couple of places in South Carolina. I wouldn't necessarily call that a "quest."

Rangarry arrives in a small, deserted village, where he senses the danger that he's longed for. Suddenly, a man attacks him, claiming the warrior is a demon in disguise.


After being offered a taste of Rangarry's blade, the attacker realizes he's got things wrong, and he goes on to explain that the village was devastated in an attack by an evil dragon and its "foul spawn."

The dragon looks a lot like the Basilisk that Kane and Wood drew in the story I covered from issue 184 last week.

Eager to get his adventuring out of the way, Rangarry sets up an elaborate trap for the dragon. Then, in an awesome full-page spread, he gets the dragon to follow him.


The dragon falls into the trap, and Rangarry puts the beast away with a well-placed sword to the neck.


However, in the usual House of Mystery fashion, there is an ironic twist coming. It turns out, despite appearances, the dragon was a good guy, guarding a temple that was imprisoning demons and keeping them out of the human world. The dude who attacked Rangarry earlier was one of these demons who had managed to sneak out, and now all his bretheren are freed.

Feeling ashamed, Rangarry just lets the demons kill him, thus dooming mankind to their wrath.

"Comes a Warrior" also serves as a set-up for the next story in this issue, which happens to be one of my favorite Gil Kane stories of all time. This, I'll be covering next week!

Halloween Countdown Day 6: Gil Kane Style!

During the Halloween Countdown, I'm going to change up the Gil Kane Punch feature. Instead of just showing a specific punch, I'm going to cover a horror comic that Gil Kane drew. And often, these don't involve punching, but they are still awesome.

The first one is titled "The Eyes of the Basilisk," from House of Mystery 184 (the same issue that featured Alex Toth's story "Turner's Treasure"), written by E. Nelson Bridwell and inked by the great Wally Wood. "The Eyes of the Basilisk" demonstrates that dynamic art can elevate an otherwise mediocre story.

The tale opens in the mythical kingdom of Karinek, where four young herdsmen named Dikon, Jalk, Adro, and Wark are lazing about in a field while their cattle roam free. Suddenly, the cattle are all killed by a frightening, serpent-like creature known as a Basilisk, which has the ability to kill with its gaze.

Three of the stupidly named characters are killed by the Basilisk, while Jalk gets away to warn the rest of the kingdom of the serpent's attack.

The creature terrorizes the town to the point that the king, Lundru, consults his "chief wise man," Canthros (Jesus, I hate these stupid fantasy names). Canthros explains to the king that, while he may have 99 problems, the Basilisk ain't one.

Actually, the Basilisk is one of only two problems the king apparently has, the other being an unmarried daughter, Princess Adeen. Canthos explains that Lundru can kill two birds with one stone: offer the princess as the prize for defeating the Basilisk. Coincidentally, this is exactly how I solved a landscaping problem I had earlier this summer.

Word gets out that any man who kills the Basilisk will score a hot princess, so a bunch of douchebags give it a shot, and they all fail.

Eventually, word of the challenge gets to "Dursus the Clever" and his brother, "Ulfar the Afflicted." It sucks enough being the brother of Dursus the Clever, but then to be stuck with the epigram "the Afflicted," especially when no one goes on to explain what the affliction actually is. It leaves too much to the imagination.

Dursus decides that all the other men failed because they weren't clever enough, and he devises a plan where he will use a polished shield to serve as a mirror, so he doesn't have to look directly into the Basilisk's eyes.

This plan does not work at all.

So, who's the clever one now?

Ulfar is stricken with grief at the loss of his no-longer-clever brother, and he decides to take on the Basilisk in order to get revenge, despite the "affliction." Ulfar then uses a mirror to shine in the Basilisk's eyes, thus turning the deadly gaze back on the creature.

The Basilisk dies, and as promised, Ulfar gets the hand of Princess Adeen. Adeen is excited because Ulfar turns out to be pretty hot himself. He then goes on to explain why he was especially suited to defeating the creature, which gives us the story's ironic twist:

Quietly, the king replaces Adeen with his even-more-unmarriable daughter, Ugleen.

But seriously, Wally Wood's tight inks on Gil Kane's pencils are just fantastic here, and the Basilisk itself looks pretty awesome. Kane did a lot of work for the DC mystery titles in the late 60s and early 70s, even though the bulk of his work at the time was done for Marvel. We'll be picking up some more of these great stories in the coming weeks.

Halloween Countdown Day 4

Around the time of the story discussed in the last post, Neal Adams did some awesome covers for DC's House of Mystery. Most of these covers related to interior stories, but they also featured the same three young kids placed in danger. This is an interesting appeal to the comic's target audience, and it's unfortunate that editor Joe Orlando didn't do more to get interior stories that matched this appeal. Still, I like to look at these covers as glimpses into some kind of Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew ongoing narrative.

Here's the cover to House of Mystery 183. I plan on covering the Moby Dickish story in this issue in a later post, but I particularly love what Adams does with the visual planes in this cover.

I picked the cover of issue 191 not so much for the "Puppet People" connection, but because killer dolls represent one of the more effective horror tropes, and Adams turns it into a creepy cover.

For issue 192, I like to imagine that the three kids stumbled onto the set of Crank 2: High Voltage.

Halloween Countdown: Turner's Treasure!

One of the things I love about DC's Showcase Presents volumes that reprint their mystery and horror stories is how good a lot of the art looks in black and white. This is especially true for the stories drawn by the great Alex Toth, whose heavy line, minimalist style really shines without color.

And these series like House of Mystery and House of Secrets get a bad rap for being watered down by the Comics Code, but occasionally a genuinely creepy story snuck through, which is the case with "Turner's Treasure" from House of Mystery 184 (Jan.-Feb. 1970; reprinted in Showcase Presents: House of Mystery vol. 1), written by Jack Oleck and drawn by Toth.



The story itself is not terribly out of the ordinary for the DC mystery titles. A college Philosophy professor, Paul Turner, has discovered clues that could lead him to a secret Egyptian treasure. He quits his job, possibly because conducting an archaeological expedition will not get him tenure in the Philosophy department. Also, he realizes that spending the last 20 years lecturing to students has been a waste of his life, which just makes me sad.

Turner takes his wife with him on the expedition, and he quickly discovers the secret treasure.

This panel in particular demonstrates Toth's skill with shadow and light, so while the dialogue may be cliched, the image itself is effectively creepy.

The treasure, of course, turns out to be cursed, and some Egyptian demon possesses Paul and forces him to kill his wife, which, despite the fact that it occurs off-panel, is a surprisingly disturbing turn for this story.

Paul proceeds to try and sell his treasure, but the demon manages to kill every person that comes in contact with it, including, in the end, Paul.

Throughout much of the story, Toth uses wide, horizontal panels that stretch across the page in a way that may be common in contemporary "widescreen" comics but seemed to stand out at the time.


It's in a panel like this where you can really see Toth's influence on artists like Jordi Bernet and Eduardo Risso.

Toward the end of the story, as the police are closing in on Paul, Toth gives us this nice four-panel sequence that serves as a textbook example for how to build suspense on the comic page.


Throughout this Halloween Countdown, I'm going to feature some of my favorite artists from these Showcase Presents collections and highlight some real gems hidden therein.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: Day 13!

To celebrate the 13th day of the Halloween Countdown, here's the "Room 13" page by Sergio Aragones from House of Mystery 186, reprinted in Showcase Presents: House of Mystery Vol.1:

Yes, credit cards are pretty scary.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: Favorite Scary Covers!

With Halloween fast approaching, I want to spend today and tomorrow covering some of my favorite horror comics and movies. Today, I'm posting some of my favorite scary covers from horror comics I have owned.

This Wally Wood cover from Eerie 2 is probably my favorite horror comic cover in my collection. This just doesn't look like a good situation.


I've had this issue of Phantom Stranger since I was a kid, and for some reason, this Neal Adams cover gave me nightmares. I think, even then, I had a fear of evil children.


This Jose Luis Garcia Lopez cover for Ghosts 1 meets Chris Sims's criteria for a good horror comic cover by featuring a skeleton where it shouldn't belong.


House of Mystery 201 is a comic I wish I still owned. The cover story, with interior art by the great Jim Aparo, is about a kid who transforms into a violent, demonic persona. In order to control him, his parents arrange a lobotomy, and the last panel shows the boy playing on the lawn in a near-vegetative state. Just substitute Ritalin for the lobotomy, and you've got a story that's still scary and relevant today. If I'm not mistaken, I think this cover is by Mike Kaluta.


Another House of Mystery cover, this one by Berni Wrightson. Wrightson is awesome, and that is all I have to say about that. Also, like the last cover, this one also features a female character reading in a chair while a threat looms behind her. Interesting.


While Wrightson and Adams did some great covers for DC's horror books in the 60s and 70s, I think that Nick Cardy's covers for the same books are quite underrated (and often uncredited, though his style is distinctive enough to spot). This cover has more fantasy elements to it, but it's still nicely done.


Though not a horror title per se, Jim Aparo's Spectre covers for his run on Adventure Comics were really boundary-pushing in the 70s. This one also had an effect on me as a child.


Joe Kubert did the first five covers or so for Weird War Tales, this one being for issue 3. These covers really combined Kubert's talents for both war and horror comics. I also like the adjective "Gut-Grabbing."


Not a scary cover, but I do like cats.


Take the stupid spider with a skull off this Neal Adams cover, and it makes a certain painting by Edvard Munch look like a pile of puke.

Dr. K's Halloween Countdown Presents: The 13th Page!

In the old House of Mystery series from DC Comics, the thirteenth page of each issue was specially marked in some way. Often, by looking at the page, the reader was promised bad luck for a signficant amount of time: anywhere between 7 and 100 years.

Now, anyone familiar with DC's horror comics in the 60s and 70s knows that, for the most part, they weren't very scary. As a kid, I was scared by just about anything, and even I found these horror comics to be tame. Here's an exception, from the 13th page of House of Mystery 175 (1968)--reprinted in the Showcase Presents: House of Mystery Volume 1 collection--written by Joe Orlando and drawn by Sergio Aragones.

Some of these choices are pretty scary, and I have to wonder who the target audience was for this. Clearly, this was pitched at college-aged readers, with choices like "You are drafted" and "You will be caught in the dormitory," though some of the parent-related choices seem aimed at a younger audience. The "drafted" one is particularly disturbing, considering the time the cartoon was published. In addition, many are downright edgy and subversive. What is it your father found? What is the "truth" your parents found out about? What kind of "trip" are we talking about here?