It Came From the Long Box! -- Secrets of House Sinster #6

Secrets of House Sinister #6
cover by Mike Kaluta

I’m fortunate enough to have a comics collection that is widely varied in its tenor and genre, and when I dig through it, I’ve always got a great chance to find something that is both a lot of fun and something that I haven’t read in a while. Last night, while I was trying to reorganize some things, I came across Secrets of House Sinister #6. It’s a recent acquisition, and I had not had a chance to read it up to that point, but I dug into it this morning and had a lot of fun with it.

There’s something wonderful about horror comics, particularly those of a certain era. Naturally, there are those wonderful pre-code horror comics from EC, Charlton, and the like. But there’s another era that is of equal greatness, if not of equal importance, that era is the one that was given it’s vigor in the 1960s by Warren publishing and its Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, and other magazines. Regardless of precise publication date, it’s the braveness of Warren, in my opinion, that made horror comics once again welcomed in the mainstream market place again and helped reinvigorate Charlton’s horror line and allowed for DC’s House of Mystery, House of Secrets, The Witching Hour, a whole host of other titles from DC and Marvel, and, in particular, the subject of this review: Secrets of House Sinister.

Getting the Expected from Vertigo's "The Unexpected"

I love comics anthologies. I've bought a fair number of them over the years: everything from fairly obscure regional comics collective efforts to classic, long running mainstays like Dark Horse Presents to the enormous, dazzling modern tomes like Flight and Popgun. I love them because of the often bewildering variety of styles of display. I love them because they are treasure troves of newly discovered talent. I love them because you can sample them like an exotic box of sweets, never knowing quite what you'll find, but never having to linger long to find out.

DC's Vertigo imprint has published a fair number of anthologies in the past, usually revolving around broad yet specific topics like horror or crime. There's an unofficial adage in comics publishing...anthologies don't sell...which probably goes some way toward explaining why Vertigo doesn't publish as many of them as they used to. In a recent trip to a comic shop, however, a brand new one-shot anthology, apparently published "just because", caught my eye.

Since you're looking at the cover of The Unexpected right now, you can probably see why. Rafael Grampa (with an accent on the second "a"; not sure how to add that) drew the cover. His art immediately calls Geof Darrow's hyper-detailed linework to mind, but closer inspection reveals that Grampa is a true original.

That cannot be said for much of the content between the covers. That's mostly okay; a lot of these Vertigo anthologies are like modern day versions of the old Warren and EC comics. Twist in the tail stuff. Nothing wrong with that. Done well, I enjoy those stories as much as the next guy. And most of the stuff in here is pretty well done. There are a few stories that transcend the formula and offer work as original and daring as Grampa's cover, and those are the ones I'd like to highlight here.