The House of Mystery: The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 1

The House of Mystery: The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 1 by Joe Orlando
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The House of Mystery: The Bronze Age Omnibus Volume 1 contains issues 174-200 of The House of Mystery. Do You Dare Enter... The House of Mystery?

After the demise of EC Comics, Joe Orlando drifted until he landed at the helm of DC's House of Mystery. Joe steered it away from the cancellation iceberg and turned into second coming of Tales From the Crypt. Well, that's not completely accurate, I guess. Since the comics code was still trying to suck all the fun out of comics at that point, the tales felt more like episodes of The Twilight Zone.

Even without gore, vampires, werewolves, and zombies, the House of Mystery contains some fun stories. Since ghosts, witches, and black magic were still on the table, quite a few people meet their ends by supernatural means. Most of the tales feature the Tales from the Crypt reversal of fortune ending, although they have to work harder to get there. For what they were, few of the stories strayed into dud territory but most of those were culled from issues of House of Mystery, House of Secrets, My Greatest Adventure, and Tales of the Unexpected from the '50s. It seems Joe Orlando needed to pad things with reprints when the deadlines got tight.

The star of the show is really the artists. Old pros and young up and comers alike illustrate the tales. Neal Adams, Alex Toth, Bernie Wrightson, Jim Aparo, Sergio Aragones, Gil Kane, Gray Morrow, Michael Kaluta, Jack Kirby, the list goes on and on of noted artists who graced the pages of House of Mystery during this era.

I never realized how indebted the early issues of Sandman were to House of Mystery, not just the inclusion of Cain and the House of Mystery, but the artwork style was heavily borrowing from Alex Toth and Bernie Wrightson. It's also interesting to see some evolution in action. For instance, there was a little person in a Gil Kane tale that Kane later reused the look of for Myrwhydden in Green Lantern a few years after. A Bernie Wrightson tale featured a Moss Man that looked quite a bit like a certain muck-encrusted avenger he'd latter draw. And Jack Kirby served up an early version of Negative Man years before he showed up in Doom Patrol.

The House of Mystery: The Bronze Age Omnibus is an interesting look at horror under the Comics Code. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

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