The art is good, but the story is weak. The shrewish wife tells her beleaguered husband of her nightmare, which turns out to be a premonition. That is not a new idea, and even at that time seemed hackneyed. But, I loved Bernie’s artwork, so I don’t care if “All in the Family” does not live up to the drawings. That was a common failing in DC’s so-called “mystery” stories (can’t call them “horror” because of the Comics Code). Joe Orlando, a former artist at EC Comics, was the editor of House of Mystery. I consider the cover for this issue to be in the EC tradition.
This past Saturday, October 27, 2018, would have been Bernard Albert Wrightson’s 70th birthday. Bernie got taken by brain cancer last year, a real-life nightmare and horror story. It took away his ability to draw, then took his life. Read the Bernie Wrightson obituary by his widow, Liz.
The tale has an added dimension to its dead body digging her way out of a grave to go after her killers: it is told from the point of view of the grave. If you can believe that a corpse can drag living people into the grave, then you can also believe a grave can think.
What we know is true about “The Craving Grave” is it was sold on Heritage Auctions (from whence came these scans; thank you, Heritage) for $7,760.50.
Got to love Wrightson's art. The second story reminded me of Mad magazine stories from long ago. Happy Halloween Pappy!
ReplyDeleteYou've articulated my thoughts on DC's "mystery" output ... incredible art, tons of great artists, but the stories were always relatively worse than what came in the pre-code days. There were tons of badly written pre-code tales, but those could at least depend on being bonkers to make up for it.
ReplyDeleteThis stuff ... it's just relatively boring.
The art though, was always spectacular. This job by Wrightson looks a little rushed but it's still incredible. Like Ghastly, he also had a great hand at shadowy architecture.
This story may have been the very first that I saw by Wrightson.
ReplyDeleteReally, the scripts in House of Mystery and those in Plop often weren't markedly different, which is to say that they had just one real gag, for which everything else was little more than set-up.
In my opinion, Wrightson was also one of very few artists to do a proper job in illustrating the Batman.
Brian, I used to collect the DC "mystery" comics for the artwork, and didn't pay a lot of attention to the stories. It is a problem I have with any short story without a larger continuity to it; I just don't become involved with the characters. And the surprise endings are seldom, if ever, surprising. I agree wholeheartedly about the pre-Code stuff being bonkers.
ReplyDeleteDaniel, I saw Wrightson's work in the fan press in the late '60s before I saw him cross over into the professional market. I believe Web of Horror may have been the first professionally published I work I saw by him. I remember there were a lot of new artists who began working in the mainstream comics in the late '60s-early '70s. I thought it was probably because the older artists were close to retirement, and they needed new ones to draw comics. Up to that point DC, for instance, was a closed shop. I don't know if they had hired a new artist in years until I saw Neal Adams, Wrightson, Mike Kaluta, et al.
ReplyDeleteJBM, thanks for the greeting. Mrs Pappy and I live in an older neighborhood with few children, so we didn't get any trick-or-treaters. Or it might be that most of the very young ones, accompanied by parents, come during early evening when it is still daylight. We don't get out of our coffins until it's dark.
ReplyDelete