House Of Mystery C23

Miss Terry’s Abode

House Of Mystery 
DC Limited Collector’s Edition C23
DC

Please note this review was originally supposed to go up on 31st October but then unforseen circumstances meant I never got to post it. So, sorry it's late but, here you go...

2025 has had a really hard end of year for me so far with, I suspect, worse to follow (you’ll see the effect of that on this blog at some point, no doubt but, I have no plans to stop writing this thing permanently any time soon). However, one thing which has delighted me is DC’s latest round of facsimile editions of their past comics, which has included their old, large format, card bound treasury editions of the 1970s, the DC Limited Collector’s Editions. These have been unleashed, one or two a month (though, sadly, now slowing down in rapidity) and, asides from price and cover variants (and some new ones they’ve also added to their large format library), these are pretty much identical to the ones I was buying in the 1970s (and I wish Marvel would also get in on the act with their old treasury editions).

I’m happy to say that the majority of the ones they have released so far are ones I never actually had as a kid (so my old selection of these titles has come in for a bit of an expansion) and, in all but one case (which I regret because I missed it’s original release and was left with the only variant they had left), I plumped for the foil edition covers which present us with a shiny metal version of those comics of yesteryear. The only real problem is the price. In the 70s they were at the extremely prohibitive price of 50p. Very few people could afford to buy these on anything like a regular basis... and nowadays they’re around £18 so... yeah.

I was delighted to find that, for the Halloween season, they have released this edition, C23 from 1973, which is a collection of stories sourcing back to 1960s and early 1970s from House of Mystery, a title I never read in its original incarnation (I’ll get to it at some point, okay?). And the caretakers of the titular ‘house’ are, of course, Cain and Abel, who were later appropriated by Neil Gaiman for his The Sandman comics (and who also appeared in the TV show, reviewed by me here). This one has a number of great writers and artist’s contributions to these ‘twist in the tale’ horror stories, such as Neal Adams, Gil Kane and Sergio Aragones. 

The stories included are as follows...

The House of Gargoyles tells the tale of an old ex-sculptor who murders and steals the designs for two gargoyles that follow him (once he’s sculpted them) and perch on the house where he has come to hide, eventually flying off with him to exact bloody vengeance for his actions. 

Secret of the Egyptian House tells the tale of an Egyptian beauty who is turned into a cat... resembling the cat god whose shrine she attends...and abducted by a wicked, magical ‘suitor’ called Konassos, until she finally turns the tables on him. The afterword of the tale exactly conveys the spirit of these stories and why I like them... “That’s what ol’ Konassos gets for trying to whisker away!”

Widows Walk is the tale of a rich young widow who exacts her revenge on her no good husband and condemns him to a watery grave until, after her death, the ghostly galleon and its crew rise from the depths to return home. 

My Name Is Kane is a metatextual story about the artist Gil Kane, who also does the artwork of this piece, which portrays him in a very bad light. He eventually falls into his own artwork to run afoul of the mercy of hack editors, writers and inkers.

Alex Toth’s The Devil’s Doorway is a tale of a demonic mirror bought at an auction which, it turns out, was the only thing not exorcised from a once troubled house. Fans of films like Oculus (reviewed here) and The Conjuring - Last Rites (reviewed here) might want to check this one out for the obvious similarities.

The Poster Plague is a wonderful piece of Sergio Aragones nonsense where a plot to use out of date posters pasted around a university is an attempt to distract from the one poster which actually is a warning... Klop Is Coming. Without giving too much away, the onomatopoeic ending of this is absolutely brilliant and right up my street. 

Lastly we have Nightmare, a tale of a statue of Pan which comes ot life to play with a lonely rich girl... and the trouble it gets her into. It’s got a nicely touching ending on this one. 

And that’s it apart from the usual treasury diversions such as a running set of features called Cain’s Games Room, with games with squares which really date it (and are a little bit risqué nowadays but not for the tougher kids of the 1970s) such as landing on squares with captions like... “Your blind date will think you’re a dog”, “You are drafted” and “Your father found it”.  Also some stand alone Aragones cartoons, a skit on how to draw a Haunted House (again by Aragones), a pin up of your peerless host (Cain), a behind the scenes look at the various creators (with photos and illustrations) and, on the back, the inevitable cut out and stick 3D diorama.

All in all, C23 - House Of Mystery is a well entertaining volume full of clichéd but fun stories and some wonderful artwork etc. Although, for the price paid nowadays, I’m much less tempted to cut out and build the diorama, truth be told.