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.

Witching Hour #5

Witching Hour #5 (On Sale: August 19, 1969) has a cover by Nick Cardy.

We began with "The Witching Hour Has Arrived - And I Have A Chilling Tale To Tell!" which is the story wrapper penciled by Alex Toth wherein the witches test the backbone of Cynthia's college boyfriend with their eerie tales. Cynthia's college boyfriend Terrance visits the witches' castle. He was frightened by Egor, who met him outside, but Cynthia's sisters scare him even more when the tell him their tales. Terrance wants to run, but Cynthia makes him stay for her story. Terrance is too frightened to judge the tales and leaves the castle as quickly as possible. This tale interweaves the others in the book.

The first of those is a seven-pager, "The Sole Survivor," introduced by Mildred and drawn by Bernie Wrightson. The bowsprit of a wrecked ship acts as a witness against Captain Dandrigde, who recklessly sails his ship into a storm, killing his crew and stranding himself on a deserted island.

That is followed by "The Non-Believer!" which is a one-page horror story. Mr. Scruje forecloses on Mr. Meek's house and Mr. and Mrs. Meek conspire to scare Mr. Scruje into signing the house back over to them.

Next is "A Guy Can Die Laughing," a six-pager drawn by Pat Boyette and is introduced by Mordred. A clown having difficulty in making people laugh finds himself in a museum where an old jester costume promises laughs to whoever wears it. The night watchman interrupts the clown before he can finish reading the costume description and the clown kills the man in order to steal away with the costume. That evening, he is a success in his new costume, but after the show he finds that he cannot remove it. Everywhere he goes in public, people laugh at him. He returns to the museum to read the rest of the description and, to his horror, finds out that the cursed costume can only be removed upon the wearer's death.

"The Computer Game" is Cynthia's tale and is drawn by Stanley Pitt and Dick Giordano. A dating service computer bent on world conquest is accosted by its boss when its plans are made known, however, the boss turns out to simply be an illusion the computer was responsible for creating in order to keep up appearances.

It is followed by "My! How small You've Grown!" a one-page tale drawn by Sid Greene. Two explorers in Africa run into a tribe of headhunters.

Edited by Dick Giordano.