The House of Mystery - Book #2

It's been nearly four years since I read the first of the two The House of Mystery novels based on the old DC Comics horror anthology title.  After obtaining the first book, I spent a number of years tracking down the second prose novel at a reasonable price (I found several online, but the prices were more than I was willing to pay).  I happened across this particular copy of No. 2 at a decent price, so I bought it - and when I got it, I was surprised to find that it was autographed on the cover by Bernie Wrightson, the artist who illustrated the book!  Wrightson (1948-2017) was a rather famous comic book artist, most particularly known for his art in the horror genre - so, to have his autograph on this book is pretty special, in my opinion.  And now that I had the second novel, it was time to sit down and read it.

The House of Mystery (no. 2) followed the format of its predecessor, in that it contained eight stories of horror and suspense written by Jack Oleck.  Just like the old DC comic series, each story is set in a various time period, with settings ranging from high-rise apartment buildings to Transylvania castles to long forgotten islands.  And each story ends with an ironic twist that, in most cases, an astute reader will see coming a mile away.  But that doesn't lessen the impact of those endings, as they remind the reader that nothing is ever really what it seems, and you have to be very careful what you wish for, because you just might get it - only not in the way you expect!

The book gets us started with "Wolf Spawn," a story about a man who is absolutely convinced that his wife is a werewolf.  He calls his brother-in-law and begs him to put an end to his wife's nocturnal frenzies - but it turns out it is all a ruse to rid himself of his wife and inherit her fortune! He quickly discovers though that lycanthropy can be a family curse!  After that rather long opening tale, Oleck treats us to a brief story about the "Sweet Smell of Success," in which a man congratulates himself on finally ridding himself of a nagging wife that he never loved - but there's something still nagging at him, and he can't shake the feeling his wife is still around!

"Island of the Damned" is a rather sad tale about a woman who sets about conning a deformed man in the hopes of stealing whatever treasure he has hidden on his island home for misfits.  But she learns that every action has its consequences!  "Where Dead Men Walk" is probably my favorite story of this collection, as it deals with a deadly vampire and a woman's attempt to convince her husband the abandoned castle they are honeymooning in is actually the home to a real vampire.  With the help of a determined priest, the woman sets about trapping the vampire and ending his reign of terror - and in the end, it's the priest who is the final nail in the coffin!

The fifth story, "Message from Beyond," is less supernatural and more about karma.  It tells the tale of a charlatan psychic who has been scamming widows and unsuspecting women out of their money - only this time, his tricks backfire and his true nature is revealed.  "Sacrifice" is one of those ironic stories about a man wanting to live forever, and he continually regains his youth by sacrificing his wives - but what happens when you have a wife you really love and she willingly offers to sacrifice herself for you?  Tobin soon finds out!

The penultimate tale, "Never Say Die," is rather unique - a petty thief gets caught in the act, and when he is shot by the police, he finds himself on a strange train ride to purgatory.  Desperate to get off the train and back to his life, he makes a deal that sends him back to the real world - but what he comes back to is not the life he was expecting!  And the final horror story in this collection is "Donovan's Demon."  This is a love story of sorts, as Donovan attempts to summon a demon of avarice in order to get the riches he needs to keep the woman he loves.  But someone stands in his way, so he makes a deal with the demon to remove that obstacle - and, as always, fate has a way of intervening, teaching Donovan a horrifying lesson!

The one thing I really wish they had added to this (and the previous) book was the inclusion of Cain, the caretaker of The House of Mystery in the comic series published by DC.  A comedic narrator who introduced the stories in the comic, it would have been fun to see (or rather, read) him introducing each of these tales.  We do still get the beautiful pen and ink line drawings by Wrightson at the beginning of each story, which are dark and horrific, setting the mood for each tale.  But Cain's absence is definitely felt, although we do get his one and only novel appearance here on the cover of the second collection of stories.  Perhaps they wanted to avoid the humor, to keep the stories dark and "scary" for readers.  In any event, there was no third book in this series, so this ends the jaunt into the the terrifying tales awaiting just inside The House of Mystery!

RATING:  10 magnetic chalk boards out of 10 for hearkening back to the days of good old horrific tales of terror and suspense!

The House of Mystery - Book #1

Back in the late '70s and early '80s, when I was first getting into comic books, I was buying pretty much everything off the rack (DC and Marvel - never really fancied Archie comics). That included a number of horror anthology titles by DC, including books like Ghosts, Unexpected, Secrets of Haunted House, and, of course, House of Mystery.  As my tastes in comics evolved, I eventually stopped reading the horror anthologies, and apparently I wasn't the only one, as they all seemed to disappear by the mid-'80s or so.  Thus, I never really gave them another thought...

Flash-forward 30 plus years, and this year, while at a comic convention, I was looking through a box of comic-related items and came across this novel of The House of Mystery, written by Jack Olsek and illustrated by the mega-talented Berni Wrightson!  I assumed it was a paperback novel-sized comic in book form, but no! When I opened it up, it was an anthology of eight prose tales of horror and suspense!  Obviously, I wasn't going to pass it up - I mean, a throwback to be sure, published back in 1973, and now that I've read it, it certainly brought back a lot of memories of those horror comics and their chilling tales of irony and the unexpected.

The book gets off to a great start with probably the most recognizable horror staple - the vampire!  In "Chamber of Horrors," a young man who seems to never have any luck happens to meet the perfect girl who - surprise surprise! - is actually interested in him. But when he drops her off that night at her house, he sees two people carrying what appears to be a coffin into the house.  No one will believe him, so he investigates on his own, only to discover that the girl and her parents are vampires! But, are they?  The police investigate, but find nothing out of the ordinary. The girl has a logical explanation for everything. Is he simply going mad, or do vampires really exist...?

"Nightmare" is one of those tales where the protagonist is someone you can't wait to see get what's coming to him. Kelso (what a name!) is a bitter man who is not happy about anything - certainly not about the trip to England that his wife forced upon him, nor about their excursion to see Stonehenge. He is belligerent to the tour guide and other people on the tour, he is downright nasty to his wife, and when he storms away from Stonehenge in the heat of the day to find some shade, he finally gets the peace and quiet he's been looking for. But what if those stories the tour guide was saying are true? What is Stonehenge is the place of ritual sacrifices? Kelso is about to find out...!

The third story, "Collector's Item," shows the lengths a man will go to when shown the ultimate collector's item - but at what cost?  "Born Loser," is yet another tale of a married man in an unhappy marriage. When he finds romance with a woman at work, he decides to summon a demon to get rid of his wife - but with witchcraft, there is always a price to pay! Then, in the fifth story, "Tomorrow, the World," a man in the psych ward is accused of killing a woman, but he insists he is innocent, that she was the victim of a satanic cult.  A new psychiatrist is hoping to help the man - but is the man's story a figment of his imagination, or is there something to his conspiracy theory?

"The Haunting" is a nice little twist on the haunted house tale, very much in the vein of The Sixth Sense.  The next story after that, "You Only Die Once," is another unhappy marriage tale (there seem to be a lot of those, don't there?) where a greedy husband is tired of waiting for his wife to die, so he sets a plan in motion to get rid of her before she can give away her fortune, leaving him penniless.  Of course, she's not going down without a fight!

The eighth and final story, "Act of Grace," is the perfect tale to end this one - it is one of irony, of sadness, of hopelessness, and of facing reality.  A young boy is sent to an orphanage - but he doesn't mind, as he has his Happy Place that he can go to any time he wants. No one believes it exists, until the other boys at the orphanage who have been bullying him watch him disappear into a stone wall! A successful psychiatrist is brought in to help him - but what will happen when they severe the boy's connection with his Happy Place?  Tragedy, in no simple terms....

Each story is introduced by a beautiful pen and ink drawing by the master of horror himself, Berni Wrightson.  And the stories are beautifully told so that it is very easy to imagine each one on the comic page - my mind vividly displayed each story, panel by panel, as I read the pages, leaving me to wonder if these were ever adapted into the comic book series published by DC Comics.  Regardless, the horror fan in me thoroughly enjoyed the read, and I am going to have to track down the second book that was published by Warner Brothers.

RATING:  10 mushroom filled boxes in the basement out of 10 for living up to the tagline on the back of the book:  "For the Connoisseur of Terror"!

Nancy Drew Anthology - Writing & Art Featuring Everybody's Favorite Female Sleuth

First published in 1930, the enduring pop icon, Nancy Drew, has maintained pretty much continued publication for more than 85 years now. So, it should come as no surprise that fan fiction would sooner or later be collected into a published form.  The real surprise is only that it took this long to happen!

The Nancy Drew Anthology was published this year by Silver Birch Press, and as the tag line on the back cover says, it is filled with writing and art inspired by the forever-teenage sleuth, Nancy Drew.  With a rather appealing cover of Nancy Drew studying a book through a magnifying glass (with her iconic "mystery shadow" in the background) - an image I would love to get a print of! - the book holds out hope of being something special, something that long-time fans have probably dreamed of for many years.

I can honestly say I would be one of those fans.

My mom bought me Nancy Drew books when I was a kid, along with all the other mystery series back in the day, including Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins, Trixie Belden, etc.  But, for whatever reason, Nancy Drew always struck a special chord with me.  Perhaps it was because each book was all about mystery and not about adventure or science or nursing or such.  Perhaps it was because Nancy had strawberry-blond (or titian) hair like me, so I didn't feel so much like the odd-man out.  Perhaps it was because she was independent, quick thinking, and determined - qualities that any kid, male or female, would want in their own life.  Whatever the reason, I always loved reading the mysteries, and when I got back into collecting as an adult, I found the original text stories even more engaging!

So, I thought this book might turn out to give some interesting stories inspired by Nancy Drew.  Sadly, I found very little to be interesting (to me, anyway) within its pages.  First, this is not to say that the contributors were poor writers, or that the submissions were not worthwhile.  But, quite frankly, the anthology is overflowing with poetry in its many forms, and well, honestly, I can't stand poetry.  I have never liked it, and when I took two semesters of it to complete my Creative Writing degree at USF, they were my two lowest grades of my entire college career.

That was disappointment number one.

The next disappointment came when I realized that there was very little fan fiction at all in this anthology.  Rather, a good chunk of it is filled with authors' memories of how they first "met" Nancy Drew.  There is one short story, "Nancy Drew and the Secret of the Gravedigger," which is actually rather cute and brings back Helen Corning in a unique way.  There is also "The Mystery of the Northern Lights," which is toted as the last, unpublished Nancy Drew story, of which only the first chapter was written - it is a bit strange, in that it deals with supposed trolls in Iceland.  The author of that story does, however, have fun playing with Nancy's relationships with her friends, her father, and the police chief.

Now, that's not to say the book was a complete loss for me.  There were a few good little ditties that took the various Nancy Drew titles (either just the first 56 books, or in a couple of cases, the first 64 books) and integrated them into a story or poem, and there were several artistic images scattered throughout.

Would I buy it had I known?  Probably, simply because it is yet another Nancy Drew collectible.  I just wish it had been advertised as being more about poetry than anything else, so that I would have been aptly prepared for what I found when I opened the cover.  I have no doubt there are a lot of fans out there who enjoy poetry (Lisa coming to mind right away!) and who will thrill over the lyrics and rhymes they find inside, and honestly, I'm glad that they have something that appeals to their taste.  For me, however, this will go on my collectible shelf, likely never to be opened again...

RATING:  5 magnifying glasses out of 10 simply for giving Nancy Drew fans an opportunity to express their own creativity inspired by their favorite sleuth.