House of Mystery #189 (On Sale: September 8, 1970) has a classic horror cover by Neal Adams. The power is in its simplicity; just a brilliant cover.As a buffer to the creepiness of the cover, we begin with two pages of House of Mystery humor by the great Sergio Aragones featuring caretaker Cain.
That leads us into our cover story, "Eyes of the Cat" by Robert Kanigher, Jerry Grandenetti and the inks of Wally Wood. Nicholas Towers is a tenant in the House of Mystery who is constantly tormented by the wailing of a black cat named Lucifer. Cain lets us know that Lucifer is a ghost cat, tormenting a ghost villain. Through Lucifer's glowing red eyes we see the past, Nicolas living with his Uncle Ansel, his cousin, Cynthia, and her pet cat, Lucifer.
We see Nicholas losing a small fortune in bad gambling and his uncle refusing to pays his debts any longer. We see a desperate Nicholas, pushing his Uncle's wheelchair off a cliff, drowning him in a lake, the sad funeral that follows and Nicholas learning that his uncle left everything to Cynthia. We see Nicholas trying to lure Cynthia to her death at a rigged railing, only to be thwarted by Lucifer, and days later him trying to shoot Cynthia in the woods. We see Lucifer once again protecting her and Nicolas chasing after him to finish the pet off first. We see Nicolas being lured into quicksand and sinking as Lucifer looks on.
Cain does not like Nicholas always shooting at the cat and scaring off his other tenants.
Next we have "The Deadly Game of G-H-O-S-T" drawn by Leonard Starr and reprinted from House of Mystery #11. At a meeting of the Occult Society, leader Alice has brought her boss along as a guest to join the members in a game of Ghost, where each person says a letter, spelling an occult word. The person who finishes a word fives times is said to be the ghost. A member named Philip Gregg is the loser and to everyone's surprise vanishes into thin air. Robert Trent, another member refuses to believe that it was nothing more than a parlor trick, but that night, as he tried to sleep he is visited by the ghost of Gregg, who says he knows that Trent murdered his business partner. The next day, Gregg's ghost follows Trent to his work.
Alice asks if he is OK, but Trent says he is fine, but the ghost is everywhere and he finally breaks down, admitting that he killed his partner when he found out Trent was embezzling money from the company. A few moments later the police arrive and arrest Trent. It is revealed that she suspected her boss of killing his partner and staged the whole thing using luminescent paint and hidden speakers.
Leonard Starr worked in comics from 1948 to 1957, mostly for DC doing mystery and western books. In 1957, Starr created the newspaper strip On Stage, which he wrote and drew till it ended in 1979. In 1979 he revived the comic strip Little Orphan Annie. and drew it till he retired in 2000. In 1980 he created Kelly Green with Stan Drake as a series of graphic novels about a sexy female action heroine, which were illustrated by Drake. He also ghost wrote Rip Kirby for years and also worked in animation for a time. He died June 30, 2015.
We end with "The Thing in the Chair" by Jack Oleck and Tom Sutton. Parents bring their girl to a healer that lives in the swamp and offer him twenty dollars if he can drive Satan out of the girl. The girl claims she is a witch and calls the old man a fake, but when he says he has cured her the parents pay him anyway. She visits the old man several times demanding he return her parent's money and hexes his animals and well. When she tells him that she sees him and Death sitting in the same chair he becomes angry with her and throws her out. She hits her head and is killed. He disposes of the body in the swamp but there is a witness who alerts the authorities. He is tried, convicted and meets his end in the electric chair.
Tom Sutton started in comics in 1967 with work for both Marvel (Kid Colt Outlaw) and Warren, (Eerie #11), spending the next few years working for both companies, including a stint on Marvel's parody book, Not Brand Echh! and Vampirella's origin story in Vampirella #1.
This was Tom's first work at DC, where, for a time, he did mainly horror and war stories, including a long stint on I... Vampire in House of Mystery from 1981 to 1983. In 1984 he began a five years stretch on DC's Star Trek book, beginning with issue #1 and ending with issue #55. He also did work on Batman, Dr. Fate, Swamp Thing, Hacker, Hellblazer, Animal Man and the Doom Patrol. Tom also did work for Atlas, Skywald, Eclipse, Eros, Fantagraphics, First and Charlton. Police found Sutton dead of an apparent heart attack in his Amesbury apartment on May 3, 2002.
The entire book was reprinted in Showcase Presents: The House of Mystery Vol. 1 TPB.
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