© Warner books and DC
© Warner Books and DC
House of Mystery was my favourite of the DC horror/anthology comics that emerged in the early 1970s following the relaxation of rules by the Comics Code Authority. I became an avid collector of House of Mystery, which I had gotten into through exposure to the Batman/House of Mystery team-up in Brave & Bold #93. Thus the House of Mystery line was my “gateway drug” into the line of other DC light-horror comics of the early Bronze Age. I had come for the stunning Neal Adams covers, but stayed for the compelling stories by Jack Oleck and great artwork by the likes of Nestor Redondo, Alex Toth, Gray Morrow , and particularly Berni Wrightson.
The brother-in-law of Joe Simon, Jack Oleck was an extraordinarily prolific comics writer. He had worked as an EC writer in the 50s before moving to DC to pen “The Devil’s Doorway” in House of Mystery #182 in July 1969. He went on to pen a further 227 stories for DC, found in the pages of House of Mystery, House of Secrets, The Unexpected, Witching Hour and other DC gothic romance comics from the mid-70s, finishing his run with House of Mystery #287 "Legend of the Lost" in 1980.
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| Jack Oleck 1914-1981 |
Which is why I was so pleased to see the two books for sale in Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed in a visit to Soho in late 1975. priced at 47 1/2p each.
The two paperbacks House of Mystery #1 and #2 were written by Jack Oleck, featuring amazing B&W artwork by Berni at his creepiest. I must have disposed of my copies sometime in the 80s, but was fortunate to have snagged these two very fine copies recently and enjoyed them just as much in re-reading this time around.
So why did Warner publish these books? The early 70s was a time when horror anthology films were making a comeback at the cinema. Films like Doctor Phibes were capturing the public imagination, and Oleck had already experienced success with movie novelisations of the films Tales From The Crypt and The Vault Of Horror at Bantam books. Those films were Amicus productions based on the old EC horror comics. Oleck had been a natural choice for those novelizations, having been a writer for EC comics himself.
Perhaps Warner were thinking of making a film based on House of Mystery? The film title had been used 3 times before for supernatural horror films, the most recent at that time being in 1961. Perhaps Warners wanted to again experiment with seeing if they could cross-fertilize genres across media, from comics to books.
Warner had established Warner Paperback Library as a home for TV tie-ins, film novelizations, science fiction and factual music books. They also had a long line of bringing selected content from Mad Magazine in the paperback world. In 1972 they had ventured in bringing superhero comic properties into the adult paperback world by producing two books reprinting GL/GA issues 76-79 in January and June 1972, which had sold well, and had been commercially successful
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| © Warner Books and DC. GL/GA paperbacks from 1972 |
According to openlib Warner Paperback Library published 196 books from 1961 to the mid-70s, when it became Warner Books. They hit their peak in 1973 with 71 editions that year alone, with books including novelizations of the Kung-Fu TV series, lots of Mad books, Gothic romances and humorous books by Woody Allen. They also published 36 stories of pulp hero The Avenger during this period.
After publication of House of Mystery #2, Warners ceased the experiment. The horror anthology cycle in films was waning at the box office and no more books were forthcoming.
Jack Oleck continued his work at DC, and Berni Wrightson went on to Swamp Thing and other endeavors.
Without checking and going from memory, I think it was Jack Oleck and Joe Simon who came up with the Spiderman (no hyphen) character that was later transformed into The Silver Spider and then The Fly. Jack Kirby later claimed that he'd come up with the idea, and though he later redrew the pages that C.C. Beck had first drawn, he doesn't appear to have been involved in Oleck's and Simon's early development of the character.
ReplyDeleteI do like those book covers.
I hadn't realised that Jack Oleck had a role in the creation of the earlier iteration of Spiderman, Kid. I had only known him from his work on the horror books. He certainly seemed to be able to turn our new ideas and stories from month to month without fail. Like you, I really like the book covers - I think they were done specifically for the books, rather than being re-purposed from previous House of Mystery comics. Very detailed with great colour work on them.
ReplyDeleteI remember seeing these books advertised in Warren mags in the 1970s but I wasn't sure if they were text or comic stories. I always liked the covers though. I have a few DC comic book paperbacks including Swamp Thing and the Legion of Superheroes but personally the comic paperback style ( not the Archie, Blue Ribbon format) doesn't work that well for the actual comic strip reprints
ReplyDeleteYes, McScotty, I agree that paperbacks are not a good medium for reprinting comics - 2 panels to a page, usually. Other than the 2 Green Lantern/Green Arrow paperbacks (which I got for the essays by Samuel Delaney and Denny O'Neil), I only have those 4-Square/NEL Batman paperbacks from 1966 as comic reprints.
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