Wednesday, August 5, 2009

House of Secrets #82

House of Secrets #82 (On Sale: August 5, 1969) has a cover by Neal Adams.

We begin with a framing sequence by Bill Draut featuring Abel telling stories to Goldie and his friend.

The first actual story is "Realler Than Real" drawn by Werner Roth and Vince Colletta. Producer Talbert Talcott fires the director of his latest film as bemoans about the state of art in Hollywood and how none of the pictures are real enough. Back at his mansion a director, George Purkos awaits, but when he offers to direct Talcott's next picture, he tells him to leave.

Sometime later Talcott receives a call from Purkos saying he has some real realism to show him in the screening room. As Talcott watches the western film in the screening room he once again screams that it is not real enough. When they next find Talcott he has been shot with an arrow. How's that for realism?

Most sources list this as Werner Roth's first work for DC since his first pencil job in Secret Hearts #42 in 1957, but Jerry Bails' Who's Who of American Comic Books contains a long list of Roth work for DC romance books covering most of the 60s. This includes long runs on Falling In Love, Girls' Romances, Secret Hearts, Young Love and Young Romance.

Roth spent most of his early career at Atlas/Marvel, beginning in 1951 when he started drawing the Apache Kid. Roth was so good at drawing women that Atlas publisher Martin Goodman had a comic created just for him: Lorna, the Jungle Girl. His last work at Atlas was in Strange Tales in 1958 and he didn't return till 1965 when now Marvel needed an artist to replace Jack Kirby on the Uncanny X-Men. At Marvel, Roth sometimes used the pseudonym Jay Gavin. He would remain the X-Men penciler till 1969, when he would return to DC starting with this story. However, in the later half of the 60s and the early 70s Roth also worked on a number of Marvel's other book, including The Avengers, Sub-Mariner, GunHawk, Kid Colt, The Rawhide Kid and Werewolf By Night.

Werner Roth also worked at Dell Comics and drew Mandrake the Magician for King Comics and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. for Western Publishing. He also worked for a time as an assistant on the On Stage newspaper strip.

In 1970 Roth became the penciler of Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane, a book he would work on til his death in 1973 at the age of 52.

The next story is "Sudden Madness" drawn by Dick Giordano. All over the world posters saying "Sudden Madness, the new game sensation is Free and Fun!" Some of the signs say the game will arrive in a few months and a few months later the game arrives in everybody's mail. As people try to put together a block puzzle they begin to quarrel and fight.  Soon, people all across the planet are fighting as the aliens arrive to take over a soon to be uninhabited planet thanks to their "mind-retroverters" which were disguised as a game.

Next is "The Little Old Winemaker" drawn by Jack Sparling. Rudy is unable to keep his aunt Teresa from marrying Gino, a poor grape grower. Rudy fears that Gino is just waiting for his older aunt to die so he can inherit her fortune, which is what Rudy was expecting to do. After they are married, Gino seems to dote of Teresa as he works his vineyard, but Teresa's health is not very good. When she is not seen in town for two weeks, Rudy heads for Gino's, barging in and demanding to know where he buried his aunt's body as he is sure Gino murdered her.

Gino tells him that her health was faltering so she went "to sea" for her health. Rudy does not believe him and takes an ax the nearest barrel of wine, declaring, "Which one! Where have you hidden her?!" He smashes barrel after barrel and Gino fearing for his life leaves to get the police. So that Rudy wont get away, Gino locks the door. Inside, the room fills up with wine and Rudy, unable to open the door, drowns. We all know this is nonsense, but, hey, it's comics.

A few days later the police come to Gino's door with more bad news. His wife Teresa, on hearing of the death of her nephew, Rudy, had a heart attack and died. After the officer leaves we find out that that was Gino's plan all along.

We end with "The One and Only, Fully Guaranteed Super-Permanent, 100%?" by Marv Wolfman, Dick Dillin and Neal Adams. Just to be clear here, the art is very uneven and there are some pages that don't look like Neal Adams ever touched them. But, that said, the art is really interesting at times. Stanley Landman is constantly dominated by his wife, Stella. She doesn't want him looking at catalogs, like "Catalog of Miscellaneous Services and Products" and she doesn't want him reading magazines; she wants him cleaning the house.

As he gets to it, he reads an ad for "The Problem-Solving Institute of America" that fell out of the catalog when Stella was tearing it up. He has never heard of them, but he does have a problem, so...

A week later a huge package arrives for Stella. She opened it and inside is another box, and another and another. 30 minutes later she opens a tiny box to find a gold cube inside. From the other room, Stanley hears a blood-curdling scream. He walks into the room and Stella is gone, only the cube remains. He gets a bill for $29,99 from the Institute and promptly pays it, while tossing the cube into the trash.

This last story was reprinted in House of Mystery #224 and Showcase Presents: The House of Mystery Vol. 3 TPB, The entire book was reprinted in Showcase Presents: The House of Secrets Vol. 1 TPB.

Edited by Dick Giordano.

6 comments:

SangorShop said...

Roth did alot of work at DC in the 1960s - doing romance comics.

-Keller said...

Well Steve I have heard this before, but I can find no evidence of it. GCD says there is a gap in his work from 1958 to X-Men #13 in 1965. Comic Book DB says it is from 1958 to 1966 (X-Men 18) and Mike's Amazing World of DC Comics says his DC romance work has a gap between Secret Hearts #42 in 1957 and Girls' Love Stories #161 in 1971, so until I see issues and stories I can't report this as being true. Maybe you have better resources than I do.

SangorShop said...

somehow the post i wrote on this subject hasnt shown up. Aso this will be shoerter, try Girls Love stories 43, 45, 46, 53, 54,56, 57,58,63, 65, 69, 71, 72 (1956-1960) art credits by Mike Tiefenbacher . See also the Who's Who of American Comic Books for other series (but not numbers),. disclaimer: I was a senior editor for the last ten years or so of the project.

-Keller said...

Great information Steven; sounds like you do have better resources than I do. Do the other books cover the years of 1960 to 65, or was Roth out of the business during those years?

-Keller said...

Well Steven you got me searching and I found a long list of books by Roth from the 60s, mostly DC romance books. Thanks for pushing me onward. I will correct the entry to show these new books.

SangorShop said...

most comic book fans read superheroes, so those are well documented - while romance and humor are probably the weakest documented.
the credits I quoted were from small print run fanzines. Robin Snyder and Mike Tiefenbacher are the experts on the DC romance books credits.
(and I forget how much time has flown by - i was senior editor on Jerry Bails' who's who for 20 years).