It’s spooky month! What better time to focus on horror comics? Although the Silver Age was a bleak time for the horror genre, there were some legitimate scary comics out there, both in the heart of the 1960s and toward the end. Let’s take a look at the DC horror comics published at the end of the 1960s.
The Return of Horror
In 1968, DC Comics made a bold move and began publishing horror comics. Both DC and Marvel had been challenging the Comics Code Authority to tone down their rules. DC, which was in a dogfight at the time with Marvel over publishing supremacy, knew that it needed something to differentiate themselves from the upstarts with their increasingly popular superheroes. So, as many publishers had done in the early 1950s, they went the horror route. While it didn’t help their sales a great deal at the time, their turn to horror was a critical success, winning the publisher awards and helping the industry to win the overall fight with the CCA, which would relax their rules in 1971. And it all began with House of Mystery #174.
Of course, DC wasn’t quite ready for the shift and House of Mystery #174 contained reprint material. Still, it was a start, and for a series that had been focused on Dial H for Hero stories for two-and-a-half years prior, it was a definite change. The cover is eye-catching with its come hither layout by Carmine Infantino and finished by either new series editor Joe Orlando or George Roussos. It’s that cover that has drawn collectors. There are 269 graded copies, and the highest price paid was a slashed $8,900 for one of only two 9.8 graded copies in an eBay sale in 2021. It’s the only recorded sale for the top grade. Sales in grades 7.5 and below over the past year have seen increased prices, while the sale of a 9.0 in an October 2023 Heritage auction saw a slight decrease in value.
The Birth of Cain
The next issue in the series, House of Mystery #175, saw the introduction of Cain, the caretaker of the House of Mystery. Neal Adams drew the cover, as he would for many of the subsequent issues in the series. There are 115 graded copies with the highest being a lone 9.6, which has never sold. The highest price paid was for a 9.4 grade - $1,705 back in 2009 – and there hasn’t been another sale since 2011. It’s hard to say what these higher graded copies would go for if they were put up for sale today, but it isn’t hard to imagine they would be much higher. The last sale of a 9.2 was in a November 2023 Heritage auction for $1,680, up more than $1,200 from the previous sale in 2015.
House of Secrets
After nearly a year of Eclipso stories and declining sales, DC put House of Secrets on the shelf for a bit in the summer of 1968, but finally brought it back nearly a year later with a new focus on horror in House of Secrets #81. Abel, Cain’s brother, first appeared in this issue, and Neal Adams once again produced the cover. Although not quite as favored by collectors as the longer running House of Mystery, the series would go on to have DC’s greatest horror success of the 1970s in Swamp Thing – but that’s the story of another era. There are 138 graded copies of House of Secrets #81, none higher than 9.4. The highest price paid was $1,938 back – again – in 2009 for one of those 9.4 copies. Prices dropped in subsequent sales to the point where one sold in February 2020 for $766 before shooting up again a month later to $1,155. None have sold since. There have only been a few sales in the past year, and the results have been mixed, although it’s possible we’re seeing a slight rebound from recent lows.
Birth of a Legend
House of Mystery #179 is perhaps the most important of DC’s Silver Age horror comics as it contains the first professional work of none other than Bernie Wrightson, a name synonymous with Bronze Age horror. There are 172 graded copies. None are in the 9.8 grade and only three are in the 9.6 grade. As we’ve seen now with a number of DC’s late Silver Age horror books, the high grades are rarely put up for sale. A 9.6 copy last sold in 2011 for $2,629 – the highest price paid for a copy – and a 9.4 last sold in 2017 for $574. Even in the 9.2 grade it’s been more than four years since one sold. In fact, there’s only been one sale in the past year across all grades, a 6.0 going for $119 in a November 2023 Heritage auction. Clearly Wrightson fans are holding onto their copies. Scarcity, along with the growing popularity of the artist’s work, should see some sharp price increases in the event that higher grades show up in the market.
Overall, DC’s venture into horror in the late 1960s was a critical success that paved the way for creations that would reach even higher heights in the 1970s and push their primary competitor, Marvel, to publish their own brand of horror comics in the Bronze Age.
