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Showcase Presents #91
Showcase Presents: The Witching Hour, Vol. 1
DC’s mystery/horror series THE WITCHING HOUR is collected for the first time in a value-priced package! Stories include: “Let the Judge Be . . . You!” “Once Upon a Surprise Ending” “A Fistful of Fire” “The Lonely Road Home” “The Turn of the Wheel!” This volume features artwork by comics luminaries including Neal Adams, Alex Toth, Bernie Wrightson, Michael Wm. Kaluta, Wallace Wood, Gil Kane and more.
551 pages, Paperback
First published March 29, 2011
3 people are currently reading
114 people want to read
About the author
Neal Adams
1,052 books83 followersNeal Adams was an American comic book and commercial artist known for helping to create some of the definitive modern imagery of the DC Comics characters Superman, Batman, and Green Arrow; as the co-founder of the graphic design studio Continuity Associates; and as a creators-rights advocate who helped secure a pension and recognition for Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
Adams was inducted into the Eisner Award's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1998, and the Harvey Awards' Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1999.
Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Adams was inducted into the Eisner Award's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1998, and the Harvey Awards' Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1999.
Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 14, 2020
Great collection of the first 19 issues of DC's 1969 horror title, The Witching Hour. Like all collections of this type, you have stories that run hot and cold but here you do get more good than bad. There's even a few with art from my two favorite artists, Berni Wrightson and Neal Adams.
These stories work especially well in black and white. I miss these phone-book sized Showcase Presents and Essential Marvel collections, but the upside is there are still over 100 of these that I have yet to read.
These stories work especially well in black and white. I miss these phone-book sized Showcase Presents and Essential Marvel collections, but the upside is there are still over 100 of these that I have yet to read.
August 7, 2012
Imagine that you are say 10 to 12 years old camping out in your tent in the great outdoors, your parents backyard. You are armed with a flashlight to read with and a baseball bat for protection against things that go bump in the night. Also with you is a stack of 19, that's right 19 total, scary comic books for reading material. Man if this book does not take a person back. A total of 19 complete Witching Hour comics stuffed into one big volume, from the late 60's into the early 70's and all approved by the comic authority code, which is a story in itself. DC has done an amazing job and they also have other large volumes of other comics for fans of these old rags as well. Check them out and if you read this one beware, for when the bells toll midnight it is The Witching Hour.
February 16, 2015
A haunted house in space? It doesn't get better than that.
May 31, 2021
I really enjoyed this collection!. Typical of most bronze age DC books of the 1970s it features amazing art but the stories, not so much. I really loved the artists featured within, there were no really bad ones in the bunch. The Witching Hour is a masterclass on how to make brilliant comic book art!
March 8, 2024
I love these monster phone books, as they are among the best entertainment values on the planet. Where else could you get 550 pages of comic books for $19.99 MSRP? While many fans grumble about the lack of color, the black and white format works really well on these Horror comics. Another nice thing about these being in black and white is that you can really see the fine linework of the art. While I would love to see these done in Archives or other hardcover format, these Showcases are terrific placeholders until such books become available, if ever.
These comic books are admittedly tame by today's standards, but they are fun, traditional Horror stories. Like the old EC Comics, there are three hosts, in this case the Three Witches, who take turns trying to outdo each other with their stories. This format continues until issue 16. While the Three Witches telling stories are still an integral part of the title, there are also several reprinted stories from earlier in the decade.
There are some fantastic artists on this title. Just take a gander at those names up top. It's a veritable who's who of Silver Age greats. Nick Cardy's covers are genius. He really creates an eerie, creepy atmosphere. Gray Morrow is another tremendous artist whose work was head and shoulders above many of his peers. Pretty much every artist on this title was good, although you occasionally get a subpar artist like Jerry Grandenetti.
Issue 12's Double Cross (by Steve Skeates and Gil Kane) is hilarious. Enlightenment through a yoga class causes a housewife to see things as they really are, in terms of good vs. evil. It turns out the school is really a front for a Satanic cult, and they were just trying to steal her soul. I adore early '70s “Hollywood” Satanism nonsense like this. This sense of non-ironic fun is what makes these such fun reads.
This book is a welcome addition to DC's Showcase library, and a terrific companion to The House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Secrets of Sinister House, and Ghosts Showcase Presents volumes. DC's table of contents are more detailed than Marvel's in these phone books. They list each cover's artist, something that Marvel's Essentials do not do. Also, I love the fact the pages are numbered. This is another shortfall with Marvel's Essentials. Aside from that, these phone books are neck and neck since DC decontented the paper stock to the same pulp paper that Marvel uses. For 20 bucks and this many pages, though, who cares?
These comic books are admittedly tame by today's standards, but they are fun, traditional Horror stories. Like the old EC Comics, there are three hosts, in this case the Three Witches, who take turns trying to outdo each other with their stories. This format continues until issue 16. While the Three Witches telling stories are still an integral part of the title, there are also several reprinted stories from earlier in the decade.
There are some fantastic artists on this title. Just take a gander at those names up top. It's a veritable who's who of Silver Age greats. Nick Cardy's covers are genius. He really creates an eerie, creepy atmosphere. Gray Morrow is another tremendous artist whose work was head and shoulders above many of his peers. Pretty much every artist on this title was good, although you occasionally get a subpar artist like Jerry Grandenetti.
Issue 12's Double Cross (by Steve Skeates and Gil Kane) is hilarious. Enlightenment through a yoga class causes a housewife to see things as they really are, in terms of good vs. evil. It turns out the school is really a front for a Satanic cult, and they were just trying to steal her soul. I adore early '70s “Hollywood” Satanism nonsense like this. This sense of non-ironic fun is what makes these such fun reads.
This book is a welcome addition to DC's Showcase library, and a terrific companion to The House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Secrets of Sinister House, and Ghosts Showcase Presents volumes. DC's table of contents are more detailed than Marvel's in these phone books. They list each cover's artist, something that Marvel's Essentials do not do. Also, I love the fact the pages are numbered. This is another shortfall with Marvel's Essentials. Aside from that, these phone books are neck and neck since DC decontented the paper stock to the same pulp paper that Marvel uses. For 20 bucks and this many pages, though, who cares?
June 29, 2011
The Witching Hour was an interesting mystery/horror book with a fun framing device for the stories. Three witches introduce each issue and then tell one story each, one of the witches favoring inhabited object stories, one more traditional horror, and one going for a more "modern" touch (what qualified for modern in the early 70's at least). Because of this conceit, there tends to be a good variety of different types of stories in each issue.
Some people may find the modern witch a bit dated or annoying with her use of slang and differing opinions about what a witch should be. I personally found it quite entertaining every time she used some sort of retro-modern reference (and believe me, that happens a lot). Overall I think that the "mod" witch adds more than she subtracts from the material, and she isn't completely unbearable.
The art in this volume is almost uniformly great, with some especially impressive performances by Gray Morrow. Alex Toth also does a solid job with most of the framing stories with the three witches. Some of these stories have obviously been reprinted or re-purposed from other DC mystery titles, and in a few spots it is obvious where the witches have been added in on a single frame of a story to tie them in with the rest of the book.
Around issue #16 The Witching Hour went to a "bigger and better" format, which greatly diluted the overall theme of the book because now it had to contain more than three stories per issue to meet its larger page count. After this point the coherency of the title really went downhill, but luckily you're already more than 2/3rds of the way through this Showcase before you reach this point. Overall this volume definitely deserves a 4-star rating and is worth picking up for an amazingly low cover price for 551 pages of classic horror comics.
Some people may find the modern witch a bit dated or annoying with her use of slang and differing opinions about what a witch should be. I personally found it quite entertaining every time she used some sort of retro-modern reference (and believe me, that happens a lot). Overall I think that the "mod" witch adds more than she subtracts from the material, and she isn't completely unbearable.
The art in this volume is almost uniformly great, with some especially impressive performances by Gray Morrow. Alex Toth also does a solid job with most of the framing stories with the three witches. Some of these stories have obviously been reprinted or re-purposed from other DC mystery titles, and in a few spots it is obvious where the witches have been added in on a single frame of a story to tie them in with the rest of the book.
Around issue #16 The Witching Hour went to a "bigger and better" format, which greatly diluted the overall theme of the book because now it had to contain more than three stories per issue to meet its larger page count. After this point the coherency of the title really went downhill, but luckily you're already more than 2/3rds of the way through this Showcase before you reach this point. Overall this volume definitely deserves a 4-star rating and is worth picking up for an amazingly low cover price for 551 pages of classic horror comics.
March 19, 2013
The sisters Mildred, Mordred, and Cynthia (a riff on the three witches from Shakespeare's "MacBeth," best known to modern readers as important characters in Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN) narrate twist-ending campfire tales in this nostalgia volume collecting one of DC's staple horror titles from the Bronze Age.
The book is a mixed bag, as most anthologies are, but it's noteworthy for its art by some of the giants of the era like Alex Toth, Bernie Wrightson, Neal Adams, Mike Kaluta, Jeff Jones, and others. The art survives the translation to black-and-white very well, as this material doesn't have the dependency on color that brightly-costumed super-heroes do. The bulk of these stories have never been reprinted elsewhere, and the DC mystery books have gotten surpisingly expensive to pick up in their original form.
Sensibilities have changed significantly in the 40+ years since this stuff originally saw print, and no adult in the jaded world of the 2010s is going to find these stories remotely scary - this is purely a nostalgia trip for us old-timers. That said, this could be a fun spooky read for pre-teens who haven't developed the stomach for more intense horror yet. If your kids enjoy "Goosebumps" and the like, this would be a perfect volume with which to introduce them to comics.
It's great to see the Showcase line collecting more obscure series, especially the horror, war, and SF books. The audience for these volumes is primarily a 40-and-over crowd who aren't necessarily hungry for more collections of the super-hero material we've already seen reprinted many times through the years. As always, the value is unsurpassed, at 550 pages for 20 bucks.
The book is a mixed bag, as most anthologies are, but it's noteworthy for its art by some of the giants of the era like Alex Toth, Bernie Wrightson, Neal Adams, Mike Kaluta, Jeff Jones, and others. The art survives the translation to black-and-white very well, as this material doesn't have the dependency on color that brightly-costumed super-heroes do. The bulk of these stories have never been reprinted elsewhere, and the DC mystery books have gotten surpisingly expensive to pick up in their original form.
Sensibilities have changed significantly in the 40+ years since this stuff originally saw print, and no adult in the jaded world of the 2010s is going to find these stories remotely scary - this is purely a nostalgia trip for us old-timers. That said, this could be a fun spooky read for pre-teens who haven't developed the stomach for more intense horror yet. If your kids enjoy "Goosebumps" and the like, this would be a perfect volume with which to introduce them to comics.
It's great to see the Showcase line collecting more obscure series, especially the horror, war, and SF books. The audience for these volumes is primarily a 40-and-over crowd who aren't necessarily hungry for more collections of the super-hero material we've already seen reprinted many times through the years. As always, the value is unsurpassed, at 550 pages for 20 bucks.
May 3, 2011
Another one of DC's Showcase volumes for their 70s horror series, this one was fine but hampered by two things I don't care for. 1. One page all-text stories which are rarely if ever as good as the regular graphic stories in the rest of the book. 2. Cynthia the "mod witch". In what was certainly meant to be a nod to then-popular culture, one of the three witch narrators for the series is a mod. We are told this over and over again by both Cynthia and her two ancient-looking stepsisters Mildred and Mordred. But, for me, there's always something faintly embarrassing with characters like this, who seem like some creator somewhere is just trying way too hard to create something hip and cool, especially as the average writer back then was probably not some young teenager but a bemused middle-aged man trying to understand youth culture. Beyond that, there's the usual stories of horror where some horrible person does something bad and gets exactly what they may or may not deserve, or at least as much as the Comics Code would allow back then, but the innocent aren't really punished. You can find some of these stories in the various "House of Mystery" and "House of Secrets" reprints as well.
August 6, 2011
Este é um dos mais clássicos comics de antologia de histórias de terror da silver age. Se os contos são normalmente banais, inúmeras versões dos conceitos de objecto assombrado, crime com castigo irónico ou assombração psicológica, muitos estão deliciosamente ilustrados com o traço de alguns dos maiores nomes da época neste género. É impossível não admirar os traços elegantes de Neal Adams e Wally Wood, os fortes contrastes de Alex Toth ou o virtuosismo do corpo humano desenhado por Gil Kane. É também sempre divertido ler as discussões sobre mérito literário entre as três bruxinhas que Neil Gaiman reinventa brilhantemente em The Sandman no início de cada edição destas horas do assombro.
October 31, 2011
A lot of really great art by Alex Toth and Gerry Grandanetti just past his prime. Other artists I enjoyed most in this were Jack Sparling and Gray Morrow. In this entire collection there are maybe 6 to 8 really cool stories. The rest is just bland, pointless, or very poorly written. I blame the comics code, not the talent.
January 8, 2012
I so love this stuff.It's a great way to see some vintage art &the stories are so cheesy they're great.
November 24, 2014
551 pages of Bronze Age horror comic fun.
January 25, 2015
Nice artwork but bit dated now with eerie stories told at the witching hour by 3 witches one who is a hipster and a bit annoying, but i suppose that was the era they were written in.
October 23, 2017
hold softly, hand of death..
is one of thrm.stories that really stands out from the rest
is one of thrm.stories that really stands out from the rest
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews