Showcase Presents The Witching Hour

DC Comics horror anthology The Witching Hour started its long series run back in 1969, eventually ending in 1978 with its 85th and final issue. That was almost ten years worth of decent comic book styled horror stories, or at least decent within the allowance of the Comics Code Authority, that governing body created by the Comic Magazine Association to censor any and all material that was deemed inappropriate for children.

Even under this self-imposed scrutiny comic horror stories thrived and were relatively entertaining, all things considered. Nearly every comic publisher had at least two bi-monthly horror magazines for sale by the end of the Silver Age. DC National had five or six of them going strong in the early years of the Bronze Age (1970s), with most of the titles considered horror by some association, incorporating either mystery, gothic, or weird science as overtones.

Now in 2011, DC Comics has added yet another edition in its ever growing Showcase Presents lineup: The Witching Hour!, Volume 1 (ISBN: 9781401230227). This massive 551 page omnibus reprints the first eighteen issues of The Witching Hour series in a variant black & white format, eliminating the original four-color look. This allows DC to price the Showcase editions modestly, and allows us an easy way to get re-acquainted with some of our favorite Silver Age artists and writers.

The Witching Hour stories are ably hosted by three competitive witches named Cynthia, Mildred and Mordred, modeled after Macbeth's Weird Sisters. Each witch represents an archetype of the triumvirate woman: Maiden, Mother, and Crone. Alex Toth was the first comic book artist to design their signature look, followed in turn by Mike Sekowsky, Neal Adams and George Tuska. Below is the introductory splash page from The Witching Hour #4, illustrated by Alex Toth. Pictured from left to right are, Mildred, Mordred and Cynthia.

Less than half of the stories in The Witching Hour are credited to actual writers or creators. The remaining contributors are virtually unknown, an unfortunate aspect of comic book legacy. The names that are mentioned are familiar to most Silver-Age fans; Dennis O'Neil, Len Wein, Carl Wessler, Steave Skeates, Gerard Conway, Marv Wolfman, Sergio Aragones, Murray Boltinoff, and Mike Friedrich. These men were capable of writing great stories, and did throughout their careers, but they also cranked out a lot of pedestrian level material, which in all fairness to them was probably all that was needed to satisfy the comic book readership of the time. After all, it was mostly 10-16 year old kids who read horror comics back then, along with a few adults who were still hanging onto the medium. The stories here reflect that general output; some are outstanding, some are very good, and some are just plain awful. A few could be described as ludicrous. Nevertheless, all of the stories seem to be entertaining in at least one way or another. The plots mostly involved miscreants getting their comeuppance as a result of their bad behavior or avarice, and usually in the form of revenge and retribution. In some cases fate itself lashes out to punish the wicked, or some type of feral phenomenon. Plenty of fantastic elements were used as narrative devices; haunted houses, alternate dimensions, paranormal events, outer space, inner space, time travel, sorcery, deviltry and magic. There were also some dastardly murders thrown in for good effect. Most tales ended ironically with clever twists, either psychological or preternatural, and usually in deadly fashion. I suppose kids who read these stories on a regular basis were taught valuable moral lessons about the pitfalls of misbehaviour or committing sins. I know I learned a lesson or two.

But for many of us kids it was the art in the comic books that was the main attraction, especially in these horror comics. Heavily influenced by the monster movies that were being constantly shown on television, it became a natural progression for interested kids to look for more horror visuals wherever they could find them. Comics books were a perfect medium in that regard.

To a large extent the artwork in The Witching Hour is of high quality. Superior artists like Alex Toth, Bernie Wrightson, Bill Draut, Neal Adams and Gray Morrow contributed regularly to the series, accompanied by several of their lesser known and sometimes less talented colleagues. I was never an ardent follower of George Roussos, George Tuska, or Jack Sparling, but all three artists were heavy contributors to The Witching Hour, and to horror comics as a whole. Sparling, who I always considered to be a kind of poor man's Grandenetti, had contributions in nearly every horror magazine published during his long career as a professional artist. In this volume alone he appears in seven out of eighteen issues, illustrating ten stories out of a possible eighty. That's quite a presence. But his cartoonish style never appealed to me, even with its recognizable vigor.

But the artwork of the other benefactors did, led by Comic Book Hall of Fame inductee Alex Toth (1928 -2006). Toth illustrates four of the series best stories, and provides the important framing introductions, interludes, and epilogues in all of the early issues. An icon in the field of comics, Toth started his art career in the 1940s drawing syndicated strips and comic books. By the late fifties he was working primarily for Dell, where he illustrated the seminal comic book Zorro. Hanna-Barbera hired him in the early sixties as a storyboard and animation design artist. Two of his most famous creations are Jonny Quest and Space Ghost, and his animation style has been parodied on the Cartoon Network and other cable shows-- a definite sign of his respect and influence within the medium. Toth is considered to be "a giant of 20th Century cartoon design" by most fans and industry experts. Several books have been published by and about him since 1995, and his stature continues to grow with each passing year. Pictured below is a good example of his strong draftsmanship, famed minimalist approach, and skill at formulation, pulled from the yarn Computerr in Issue #8 (written by Sergio Aragones). Note the clever use of punch holes outlining each panel (that's how computer cards looked back in the '70s).

Bill Draut (1921 - 1993) was another excellent draftsman who had a productive career in comics. Some of his best work was done for The Witching Hour. Pictured below are two pages from Issue #7, taken from an atmospheric story written by Steve Skeates called The Big Break!. Here, the black & white format actually accentuates Draut's clean ink lines and powerful contrasts. It's almost an improvement over the four-color method used in the original publication. William Draut began his career in the 1940s, doing newspaper comic strips before signing on with Jack Kirby and Joe Simon at Crestwood Publications. His ability to draw people and faces were honed while doing Crestwood's romance titles, in addition to the time he spent working at Harvey Comics in the late fifties. After a brief stint at Marvel, he started a longtime collaboration with DC, providing illustrations for both their horror and war comics.

Pat Boyette (1923 - 2000) was a talented fellow who almost single-handedly kept Charlton Comics alive during the Silver and Bronze Ages, writing and drawing hundreds of stories for the low-budget publisher. Some of his artwork for Charlton is rather shoddy, most likely the result of his overworked schedule. But when he was given the time and applied himself properly he was as good a draftsman as there was in the business. Boyette tended to use diagonal shaped panels to achieve a different narrative flow for his pages. While contracted at DC, he delivered some of his finest illustrations. Pictured below is a page from the premier issue of The Witching Hour, showing Boyette's distinctive detailed style. The story is named (appropriately enough) Saved The Last Dance For Me!, and was written by Dennis O'Neil.

To my knowledge, former DC editor and artist Carmine Infantino (1925 - ) had only one story published in The Witching Hour series, a reprint from Sensation Comics (DC, May-Jun, 1952). Fingers of Fear is one of my favorite stories, not only because of Infantino's solid perspectives and sure-handed lines (pun intended), but because his story shares the same title with one of my all-time favorite horror novels written by J. U. Nicolson (and published in 1937 by Covici Friede). It also happens to be a prime example of one of those ludicrous stories that ran throughout the series. Pictured below are two examples from Issue #17, taken from the Showcase edition, and a colorized image cropped from the original Sensation Comics cover (and possibly inked by Murphy Anderson).

Gray Morrow (1934 - 2001) was a distinguished science fiction magazine illustrator noted for his exceptional realism. He painted scores of paperback covers for more than three decades, and worked periodically on syndicated newspaper strips. Morrow was also one of the regulars at Warren Publishing, providing superb covers and interior art for their magazines Creepy, Eerie and Blazing Combat. Along the way he found time to work on comics, mainly for Timely, Atlas and Classics Illustrated. Eventually, he wound up working for DC in the early 1970s, illustrating stories in several of their horror comics. A superb layout artist, Morrow was also adept at using graphic tricks to achieve innovation in his art. This meant blending washes, screentone effects and drybrush techniques with traditional looking illustrations. The results were often impressive. Pictured below is an excellent example of his work, from the story Maze, in Issue #13 (written by Alan Gold and Marv Wolfman). This page is bold even in Showcase's black & white format, but especially when enhanced by color, as evidenced farther below in a scan of the same page, taken from the original comic book.

My interest in comic books ebbs and flows. It's been that way since I was a teenager, when I first drifted away and started pursuing other activities. Right now my interest is back, stronger than ever, but my focus is mainly on the Golden and Silver Age comics, which constitutes a trip down memory lane for me.

With a few notable exceptions (the Light Brigade being one), I rarely collect any of the modern graphic novels and comics that are so plentiful now, although I do read quite a few of them. But it's astonishing to see just how far the medium has come since those days when I was a young devotee, scribbling away in my Big Chief Tablet as if I were a prospective cartoonist. These days, the variety of styles and subject matter seems far reaching, although in reality that diversity may not be that much greater than it was in any previous era.

But the packaging of comic art has evolved dramatically over the years, some of it for the better, some of it for the worse. While I would prefer to see all of the old comics reprinted in color, and closely resembling their original treatment, these black & white Showcase volumes do allow us to see comic illustrations from a different perspective, a perspective that most of us kids never had privy to until much later, when we began buying dedicated b/w magazines like Creepy and Eerie. I've thoroughly enjoyed reading the Showcase editions, especially the horror reprints. They're easily recommended, not only from an aesthetic point of view, but because they're solid examples of the mediums ability to effectively transmit genre stories.