Ryan B does World For A Witch

 

 

 

Hiya, kids, welcome to Comic Book Crud!

 I’m your (sort of) host, Ryan B.

 

For those of you who are new to this blog, let me tell you a little bit about what we do here. You see, from up in my mama’s dark and dusty attic, me and my buddy, Tom…

 

Look through my dead uncle’s old comic book trunk and pick out the best, the worst, and the somewhat in between stories that his moldy horror comics have to offer. I then present them to YOU accompanied by my own commentary and opinions, because… it’s my blog. But I don’t have all the fun. If a particular story we’ve picked has been adapted to another medium like television, or film, then Tom will do his own little write up of that version in a segment we call, Adaptation Analysis. Pretty cool, right?

So now that you cats are down with the format, let’s keep this blog rolling…

So far, we’ve already paid a visit to DC’s The House of Mystery. Cain the able caretaker treated us to a piece of wormwood called Roots of Evil and it pretty much stunk up the place. Something about a killer tree and a goon with thick glasses and a C.H.U.D face. Anyway, it wasn’t great, so now let’s try Cain’s brother, Abel’s place across the street.

Direct from The House of Secrets, this enchanting bit of Dickensian doom is called…

World For A Witch

Ryan B does Majority Of One

 

 

So, when I did my first review of a story from Twisted Tales, I picked a bit of a stinker. This may have given some of you new to horror comics the idea that this book or maybe Bruce Jones specifically, is not so great. Well, that’s not true. My review of Jenifer should have been enough to show you that Bruce Jones is a genius and one of, if not THE best, in his field. Now I want to show you one of his best, most classic stories from Twisted Tales (which, on the whole, was a consistently great book all around). No, it’s not the infamous Banjo Lessons, although we’ll no doubt get to that one eventually. No, this is a little story about not fitting in called…

Majority Of One.

Ryan B does Faced With Horror

Along with horror titles such as The Vault of Horror, The Crypt of Terror, and The Haunt of Fear, EC Comics was also responsible for being the leading publisher of crime comics in the early 1950's. Sure there had been crime stories on the news stands before, in pulp novels aimed more at adult readers than kids. Books like The Shadow and The Spider were heavy on words and not much on pictures, with a serious, more realistic tone. They featured masked avengers solving mysteries and were akin more to what would later be superhero tales more so than horror comics. EC changed that by having their crime comics such as Two-Fisted Tales and Crime SuspenStories deal with bad things happening to bad people. There were no werewolves or vampires here, but there were adulterous spouses and axe weilding madmen and were just as taboo and envelope pushing as anything the Crypt-Keeper could come up with.

So let's take a look at one of these nasty little noirs. It's a story of crime and vanity from one of the earliest issues of Crime SuspenStories called...

Faced With Horror. 

Ryan B does The Roots Of Evil

So in 1951 when EC Comics launched their very first horror comics, thus giving birth TO the horror comic, and starting the "new trend", DC, like so many other publishers, decided to jumped on the horror bandwagon. The result was The House Of Mystery.

Unlike many of the other followers, however, DC actually knew what they were doing. After all, this is the company whose initials stand for Detective Comics, so they should at least know how to do a good mystery and suspense story, right? Unfortunately, when the comics code authority cropped up and started putting the kibosh on horror/suspense/crime comics, DC decided to yield to them rather than die a premature death like EC did.

Thus The House Of Mystery morphed from a classic horror book into a superhero book with moderately creepy undertones. Tales like the serialized, Dial H For Hero, became the regular in HOM's pages and it seemed like it was in a downward spiral. That is until old EC alumni, Joe Orlando, took over as editor in 1968. He decided to breath new death into the book and return it to it's sinister roots. He also introduced a host to The House (something that every self respecting horror anthology needs).

This mysterious figure was Cain, the proverbial "first killer" who layed his brother low. Cain took over as "able" caretaker (get it?) in issue 175, but it's the issue after that (176 for all you delinquents who flunked math) that we'll be looking at today. Remember I mentioned about The House Of Mystery being taken back to it's roots? Well that's exactly the same subject that today's story is about. It's a gnarled bit of deadwood Cain calls...

The Roots Of Evil.

Ryan B does Beauty And The Beast

Today's story straddles the line between horror comic and hero comic in a way that only a Batman book could. I've always thought that The Joker's maniacal personality was just perfect for a horror host. I mean, a crazed clown with horrifically comical weapons like acid squirting flowers and 1,000 volt joy buzzers who can spout puns as good as the GhouLunatics and the Creepy family combined? He was meant for such a job.

DC must have heard my swears because in 2009 they created a series of comics called Joker's Asylum in which old Mr. J would act as psychotic story teller for each issue. The fact that Batman's rogues gallery is filled with nothing but schizos, monsters, and malcontents meant that The Joker had an almost unlimited source for creepy characters to fill his tales, which range from crime stories, to horror stories, to demented love stories like the one we're looking at today. It features one of the bat's most feral foes, Killer Croc, and has the apt, if unoriginal title of...



Beauty And The Beast.

Ryan B does Jenifer

Witch? Demon? Succubis? Alien?

Is she an innocent victim, or an evil genius?

Some are repulsed by and frightened of her, while others find themselves drawn to her, spellbound.

What, or who is...

Jenifer?