I’ve been recently reading the DcComic’s Presents showcase books, and having just picked up the House of Mystery edition of the series i thought id just do a quick overview of the whole thing.
There’s not a whole lot i want to say about the books beyond the fact that they’re a great buy – though anyone whos read the Marvel comics Essential series is already familiar with the format il explain it for those of you who havent encounterd it before. The idea of the books is simple – classic comics from the 60′s and 70′s reprinted in bulk for cheap. The usual setup is 500 pages for 17$ which is not a bad deal.
But what makes the House of Mysetery edition worth talking about is this – its better than any of the other books of this sort that i’ve purchased before. Considering that 2 of the 4 other editions of these books i possess were written by the team of Stan Lee / Jack Kirby this is an astonishing achievement. Especially when the fact that the stories involved are basically all short Twilight Zone / Outer Limits pieces which half the time are not even remotely scary (especially considering that these comics were done back in the day when comics were ment for children) desptite this the stories have a great charm, are often very imaginative and have some wonderful artwork – the Bernie Wrightson and Wally Wood pieces are worth buying the book for alone.
Anyway, long story short this is a purchase id greatly recommend
John Mortell’s blog » Ozzy Osborne, July 3rd the point theatre and my two days in the big schmoke... | 05-Jul-07 at 11:49 pm | Permalink
[...] was a treat as usual and I got the second ‘Showcase; House of Mystery’ book – here’s hoping its as good as the last one…I was also quite interested to see that in Neil Gaiman’s career as a big novelist these days [...]