House of Secrets #91

House of Secrets #91 (On Sale: February 4, 1971), has a nice cover by Neal Adams.

This issue begins with our cover story, "The Eagle's Talon!" by Gerry Conway, Jerry Grandenetti, and Wally Wood. A dictator cuts off the claw-like hand of a revolutionary who lays a curse on him that he will die in a cage. The dictator orders his guards to kill all the eagles in the land but dies anyway when he becomes trapped in his villa's elevator.

Next is a one-pager Realm of the Mystics featuring Ziito the Magician by Gerry Conway and Jack Sparling.

This is immediately followed by another Realm of the Mystics, this one featuring The Ifrits! and also produced by Gerry Conway and Jack Sparling and serves as a warning about visiting the forgotten ruins of the Ifrits.

Next, we have "Please, Don't Cry, Johnny" written and drawn by Sam Glanzman. A child born bald acts out in school so his teacher takes him home one day in order to speak with his father who appears to be Humpty Dumpty.

We end with "There Are Two of Me... and One Must Die" by Gerry Conway and Murphy Anderson. A man who wishes to control his anger buys a Chinese lamp which promises that it will separate out madness when lit. It works and produces an evil doppelganger that threatens to destroy the good version. The evil one raids the man's bank account and hires a couple of diggers to dig a grave and coat it with lime so it will destroy every shred of existence and the evil version can take the place of the good. 

The man's son sees the two of them so he believes his father's story about the evil version trying to destroy him and decides to leave his father by himself in order to smoke the evil version out of hiding. The son pulls a gun on the two of them as the evil one attempts to throw the good one into the lime pit, but they both say that they are the good one. The son thinks he can tell which one is lying because one is sweating and the other is not. When he brandishes the gun, one of the men falls into the lime pit and is killed. The story's ending is ambiguous as to whether it was the good or evil version that fell into the pit.

The entire issue was reprinted in Showcase Presents: The House of Secrets #1 (2008) and House of Secrets: The Bronze Age Omnibus #1 (2018).

Joe Orlando takes over as editor from the departing Dick Giordano.