House of Mystery #175

House of Mystery #175 (On Sale: May 9, 1968) has the first of many wonderful Neal Adams HOM covers featuring a group of children. Neal's covers, more any other single factor, set the tone for the highly successful run of DC mystery books.

What is amazing about this issue is that it contains just about the entire fully fleshed out formula that DC would employ on their successful run of horror books. The repercussions of this comic will resonate through DC for a decade and a half.

Inside we begin with a one-page introduction of Cain the caretaker of the House of Mystery written and drawn by Joe Orlando. Older fans had been reading black and white stories introduced by Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie for a few years, but this was the first horror host at DC and it became a part of the formula.

The first story is a reprint, "The Gift of -- Doom", drawn by George Roussos coming to us from House of Mystery #137. That is followed by "All Alone" a two-page text story illustrated by Joe Orlando and a two-page "Page 13" gag-panel written by Joe Orlando and drawn by Sergio Aragones.

We finally come to the meat of the issue, "The House of Gargoyles" by Bob Haney and Jack Sparling, the first original DC "mystery" story in years and the start of a long and successful run of mystery/horror stories at DC. It features a couple of interesting things that will become staples of the DC horror books. First, the first page is an introduction to the story by the host, Cain, who also appears at the end of the story to wrap things up.

Second, there is a panel in the story that the cover by Neal Adams mimicks. This story is about three children who discover the secret of these living gargoyles. Apparently the cover with the children was so effective that the three tykes would return to the cover month after month under the technical expertise of Adams. I heard Neal say that it was his idea to put the children in peril on the covers. I say, whoever thought it up, was right on. This first story was reprinted in DC Special #11, Limited Collectors' Edition C-23 and Showcase Presents: The House of Mystery Vol. 1 TPB.

So there it is, almost the entire formula: 1) A cover by Neal Adams, featuring a scene from a story in the book, which may have kids in peril added to it for extra drama (later a cover by Berni Wrightson or Mike Kaluta could be substituted), 2) A talkative host who appears in the actual stories and can appear in full-page book intros depending on page-count needs, 3) Short stories of many lengths that can be assigned in bulk and then put together into books as they come in (shortly they will add that if possible, get a new kid to draw it on the cheap), 4) Humorous fillers by Sergio Aragones so no one ever takes things too seriously, 5) For a while the inclusion of reprints to really bring down the cost of production. This formula made DC a lot of money during the seventies and eighties.

Edited by Joe Orlando.