Witching Hour #14

Witching Hour #14 (On Sale: February 11, 1971), has a cover by Neal Adams, Al Williamson, and Carlos Garzon. 

This beauty is one of the great comics of 1971 and a final treat to us all from departed editor Dick Giordano. Murray Boltinoff never put out a book this good in his life. The framing sequence throughout the book is drawn by George Tuska and is notably shortened this issue, after the initial first page being delegated to 1/2 to 1/3 pages. But hey, it is not the reason this book is so grand. Really, check this out...

We begin with "Fourteen Months" by Gerry Conway and Jeffrey Catherine Jones. It will be 27 years before Jones will draw another story for DC and that one will be her last. If you don't count the uncredited work Jeff did on Nightmaster in Showcase, this is her first work for DC. It has been fourteen months since the starship Klondike has been attacked and began limping home. Captain Scott is manning the bridge when a Krill warship appears. He screams at the unresponsive engine room but still manages to blast the Krill ship as we see that Scott has been living for fourteen months as the only survivor aboard the Klondike. Three and a half pages of Jones' magic.

Jeffrey Catherine Jones is best known for the over 150 book covers she painted from the mid-1960s through 1976, as well as the fine art produced after that time. Frank Frazetta called Jones "the greatest living painter." Although Jones first achieved fame as simply Jeff Jones and lived for a time as a male, she later changed her name and transitioned to female. Jone's first comic book work appeared in Warren magazines, starting with Creepy #16 in 1967. Starting in 1972, Jones would produce a monthly strip, Idyl, for National Lampoon. By the early 1980s, she had a recurring strip in Heavy Metal titled I'm Age.

In 1964 while attending Georgia State College, Jones met fellow student Mary Louise Alexander (later notable as writer Louise Simonson). The two began dating and were married in 1966. Their daughter Julianna was born the following year. After graduation, the couple moved to New York City but divorced in the early 1970s.

From 1975 to 1979 Jones shared a workspace in Manhattan's Chelsea district with Bernie Wrightson, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Michael Kaluta, collectively named The Studio. Dragon's Dream produced a volume of their work in 1979.

Jeffrey Catherine Jones passed away on May 19, 2011, from severe emphysema and bronchitis as well as hardening of the arteries around the heart.

Next, we have  "Which Witch Is Which?" by David Kaler and Stanley Pitt, the second of only three stories Pitt would draw for DC. In 2370 a space captain is bewitched by a woman who seeks revenge on behalf of another the space captain seduced and dumped. His partner thinks he is acting crazy so he slugs him, and when the captain wakes, finds himself with his partner in deep space. He gets into a physical confrontation with his partner in an effort to turn the rocket around and go back to his love when the eject button is hit and they are both sent to their death.

Stanley John Joseph Pitt was an Australian cartoonist and commercial artist. Pitt was heavily influenced by the classic style of Alex Raymond's artwork, particularly his method of switching from a pen to a brush. His comics career began in 1943 when he began illustrating comics for Frank Johnson Publications. These included Larry Flynn, Detective. 

In 1945 he produced comic strip advertisements for Colgate Palmolive, which led to Associated Newspapers placing him under contract to develop a new science fiction strip, Silver Starr (or Silver Starr in the Flameworld). Silver Starr debuted in the Sydney newspapers The Guardian and Sunday Sun in November 1946. The strips ran until November 1948. Silver Starr was a Flash Gordon-style comic strip. 

From 1948 on, Pitt produced a number of comic book series and newspaper strips, mostly limited in distribution to Australia. He did strips such as  Jim Atlas and Dr Peril of Igogo as well as the comics Captain Power and Yarmak-Jungle King, a Tarzan knockoff.

The work of Pitt's life though seemed to be Gully Foyle. Based on Alfred Bester's novel The Stars My Destination, the strip was a copyright nightmare that seemed like it would never be completed. In 2001 a limited edition of Gully Foyle was finally published and released. Pitt died the next year, at the age of 77.

The last story of the issue is "The Haunted House in Space" drawn by Al Williamson and Carlos Garzon. This is the second of only three stories Al Williamson will draw for DC, and Carlos Garzon's first work with the company. Space pirates come across a haunted house placed on an asteroid in space. As they argue and turn against one another, the killing begins. But after the first pirate dies he is reformed as the attic of the house. A witch appears and tells them that they will each be turned into the room they most fear. The last pirate ends up in the torture chamber.

The entire issue was reprinted in Showcase Presents: The Witching Hour Vol. 1 TPB (2011).

This artistic extravaganza (Adams, Garzon, Jones, Pitt, Williamson) is credited to the editorship of Murray Boltioff, but this is Dick Giordano's baby from front to back.

House of Mystery #185

House of Mystery #185 (On Sale: January 8, 1970) has a cover by Neal Adams. For some reason this cover just doesn't work for me. I love the foreground figures, but something about the gaping-mouthed swamp in the background just doesn't register right with me.

Irregardless of my misgiving with this issue's cover, this is a wonderful issue of House of Mystery with good stories all around and more importantly, Joe Orlando brings a legend to DC for the first time and he performs like the legend he is. But that is later on.

We begin with "Boom!" written and drawn by Jerry Grandenetti. I liked this story and the way it utilized Cain. It begins with Cain running back to the House of Mystery being chased by something in the air following him. He makes it back inside when "Boom!," whatever it is lands on the roof of the house.

Deciding to meet his fate head on, Cain runs upstairs and sees something through the open window. It ends up being a man, wearing a parachute. He is an exhibition sky diver named Tony Saunders, who can't figure out how he landed at Cain's house in Kentucky when he jumped out a plane in California. Unable to catch a ride anywhere, Saunders settles down for the night in the house as Cain's guest, when a strange car pulls up to the house and two gentlemen in top hats and suits get out and ask for Tony Saunders.

Saunders goes freely with the two men, saying he "knew you'd come for me." The next morning, listening to the news on his radio Cain hears of the the death of sky diver Tony Saunders when his chute failed to open somewhere in California. Cain rushes to his front door and sees that Tony left him a gift: his parachute.

Next is a Cain's Game Room by Sergio Aragones and a Page 13 written by Joe Orlando and drawn by Sergio Aragones.

These are followed by a short three-pager, "Voice of the Dead" drawn by Wayne Howard and reminiscent to the "true" short stories around this time that were written by Marv Wolfman. A North Carolina farmer dies in 1921 and when his will is read he leaves everything to his third son, Marshall. This leaves his widow and her other children penniless. Four years later his second son begins having a reoccurring dream where the ghost of his father tells him to look inside his old coat for a sewn-up pocket. A note of the art here is that some attribute the inking of this story to Wally Wood, though DC does not. Wayne Howard was such a Wood devotee that it would be hard to say for sure, but I would tend to agree with those who say this is Wood's inks. It really, really looks like Wally Wood.

After nights of having the same dream the son goes to his mother's house finds the coat and a note inside saying to look in the family bible. There they find a later dated will which split his estate evenly.

This is followed by another Cain's Game Room, this one written and drawn by Joe Orlando, but none of these are the reason you should own this book. No, that is the final story in the issue, "The Beautiful Beast" by Joe Gil and the legendary Al Williamson. This is the only story that Al will both pencil and ink for DC and folks, it is just out and out, drop dead gorgeous! This is Williamson in his Secret Agent Corrigan prime. This is the story of Joe Carver, escaped killer who hides out in the swamp and the inescapable justice that lurks there. But the story is superfluous, the artwork is the real story. Handsome men, a beautiful woman, hulking dinosaur-like creatures, a fetid swamp, serpents, lost cities, gnarled moss-laden trees, cavemen-like warriors, exotic birds and flying reptiles; this is a story custom-made for the talents of Al Williamson and he delivers completely.

But there is more to the art in this story than meets the eye. In an interview in Comic Book Artist Michael Kaluta said this:

I never even thought about being an illustrator or comic book artist. I’d just finished my second year of college...I didn’t know what I was going to do, stay in school or join the army. After the next SCARP convention, Phil Seuling contacted me and said that Al Williamson had seen stuff that I did and was interested in talking to me about maybe helping with a story. That flipped me out. At the next New York Convention I went up to Al and he gave me a script that he was having trouble getting in to. He asked me to stretch it out. “Give me plenty of boots, girls, dinosaurs and stuff” he said. I made 7 pages into 12. Al still has my fumbling pencil originals and unless he gets mad at me we won’t tell anyone. They’re really awful, awful stuff. I was so uptight about doing the job that I just rendered and detailed it to death. Later Al did a fine job with the story and let me doodle a bit on a page or two. DC Comics published it under the title The Beautiful Beast.

Regardless of the pedigree of the artwork, it is some stunning stuff and certainly makes you wish Al Williamson could have done more work for DC. Al Williamson was born in New York City but spent his childhood in Bogotá, Colombia. Upon his return to New York, he took art courses from Burne Hogarth, whom he assisted on some 'Tarzan' Sunday pages.

He made his professional debut at the age of 17 with western and adventure series like 'Buster Crabbe' for Eastern Color, 'Billy the Kid' and 'John Wayne' for Toby and 'Outlaw Kid' for Marvel. He was the youngest member of the "EC family," joining when he was only 21 years old in 1952, He was considered "the kid brother," for most of his colleagues were family men. Williamson contributed to EC's Weird Fantasy, Weird Science and Tales of Valor, often in collaboration with the so-called "Fleagle Gang": Frank Frazetta, Roy Krenkel and Angelo Torres. Al especially loved doing pencil work, but was "deathly afraid" of inking, so often Frazetta undertook that task for him.

Al also did comics work for ACG, Charlton, Prize and Dell. In the 1960s, he assisted John Prentice on 'Rip Kirby' and did a 'Flash Gordon' comic book, which was a natural for Al as his fluid style is highly influenced by Alex Raymond's original Flash Gordon work. For King Features Syndicate, he took over the 'Secret Agent X-9' daily, which was retitled to 'Secret Agent Corrigan' which was written by the wonderful Archie Goodwin.

In the 1980s Al drew the Marvel adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back and eventually the syndicated Star Wars newspaper strip. When this strip folded, Al went back to comic books, working for Pacific Comics in Alien Worlds and Summerset Holmes. For Marvel he did the Blade Runner and Return of the Jedi adaptations and a couple of stories for Epic Illustrated. He then transitioned to becoming a full-time inker, working first at DC on Superman and then for Marvel where he inked a ton of stuff off and on through 2003.

Al has worked for Dark Horse and has done occasional inking for DC. His last work for DC was on Green Lantern #146 in 2002. Living in Pennsylvania with his wife Corina, Williamson retired in his seventies and died on June 12, 2010, in Upstate New York.

This entire book was reprinted in Showcase Presents: The House of Mystery Vol. 1 TPB.
Edited by Joe Orlando.