DC’s Weirdest Horror Comics Experiment Has a Surprising Wes Craven Connection

One of the least well-remembered geek culture fads of the seventies was Dark Shadows, a “Gothic soap opera” created by TV horror maestro Dan Curtis (Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Trilogy of Terror). Although best known today for inspiring one of Tim Burton’s less well-liked films, the original Dark Shadows was a phenomenon in its time, spawning board games, frequent Famous Monsters of Filmland cover stories, and even its own Gold Key comic series. The Dark Shadows comic was hardly the only horror comic book title on newsstands in the early seventies. Relaxing censorship standards meant that horror comics, functionally banned in the aftermath of the 1950s “Seduction of the Innocent” anti-comic book moral panic, were newly permitted under revised Comics Code Authority regulations, enabling Marvel and DC to experiment with the genre. And while some of these experiments spawned still-iconic characters like Blade and Swamp Thing, others were less successful. The strangest were DC’s Dark Shadows-inspired “Gothic romance” comics, a genre-bending flop turned fan favorite highly-prized collectible.

Having found success with horror comics like House of Mystery and House of Secrets (and even Batman, which took on a definite horror angle in the early seventies), DC assigned top talent like Neal Adams and Nick Cardy to new titles Sinister House of Secret Love and Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love. Despite eye-catching art from industry legends, sales were poor, and neither title lasted longer than four issues. However, the most famous talent working on these issues was as-of-then undiscovered: the struggling freelancer writing text supplements for the Gothic romance titles. Only two years away from launching his career with the still-shocking grindhouse classic The Last House on the Left, struggling independent filmmaker Wes Craven supplemented his meager income writing prose stories and articles for DC Comics — incidentally providing their horror anthologies with their most pedigreed name. Ignored by readers at the time, Sinister House of Secret Love and Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love are now among the most sought-after DC Comics of their era, evidenced by the $1.2k and climbing price tag for a near-mint copy of Sinister House of Secret Love #1 up for auction today through Heritage.

Why DC’s Gothic Romance Comics Could Only Have Happened in the Seventies

The Bronze Age marked a major transitional period for comic book publishers. While they had begun experimenting with new or revived genres like horror and sword-and-sorcery comics, DC and Marvel were also in the process of condensing what kinds of titles they published. Like western and war titles, romance comics were a mainstay for decades that, by the early seventies, were waning in popularity. The Gothic romance comics were an odd hybrid, combining a newly-repopularized genre with a genre in decline. The result is a muddled intended audience: for a horror comic fan, Sinister House and Dark Mansion placed too much emphasis on melodramatic romance; for a romance comic fan, the relationship drama was underpinned by morbid, macabre violence.

Another problem facing the Gothic romance titles was their format. Both employed a less-than-popular strategy used by DC and Marvel to anticipate and combat inflation, with higher page counts and a higher price-point. These 52-page comics were meant to provide perceived value, but reader consensus was that paying less was a worthwhile trade-off. As the cost-value proposition was a difficult sell with even established titles like Justice League of America and Superman, it was an even tougher sell with new titles Sinister House and Dark Mansion. Demonstrative of the price factor’s impact was competitor Charlton’s (relative) success with their Gothic romance comic Haunted Love, which ran for eleven issues from 1973 to 1975 before its cancellation.

Wes Craven’s contribution to DC’s Gothic romance titles took the form of another Bronze Age relic: short stories. Dating back to the Golden Age, it was common practice for comic books to include two pages of prose short stories. Though speculation has long abounded as to why this was done (with one theory being that it was a low-cost, low-time investment way to add extra content to an issue), the real explanation was provided in a 1965 Blue Beetle letter page. Says the editor of Blue Beetle: “As to the short stories, the Post Office insists we put them in so as to meet second-class postage regulations.” By including just two pages of pure text, a comic book qualified as a magazine, and was therefore entitled to a different, discounted postal rate. Wes Craven, later scribe of all-time classics like A Nightmare on Elm Street, only had his first paid writing job because of a legal workaround designed to save DC a few cents on shipping.

The Collecting Legacy of DC’s Gothic Romance Comics

Both Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love and Sinister House of Secret Love were rebranded after their initial four issue runs, becoming Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion and Secrets of Sinister House respectively. Under these new names, the stories became more traditional horror anthologies, with Secrets of Sinister House even gaining a host: Eve, mother to Cain and Abel, hosts of House of Mystery and House of Secrets. In this revised format, both titles would run until 1974, a time when many of DC and Marvel’s horror titles were beginning to lose steam. As with many of DC’s horror hosts, Eve would become a supporting character in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman titles through the 1990s. The Secrets of Sinister House name would be revived for a one-shot Halloween special in 2019. The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love title was used for a 2016 Deadman limited series inspired by DC’s Gothic romance line.

Over the decades, a slow, steady cult following has built up for Dark Mansion and Sinister House, with their covers and interior art representing some of their legendary artists’ best work. Their initial poor sales make them some of the rarest DC Comics of the bronze age: the near-mint condition of the Sinister House of Secret Love #1 on auction at Heritage is so rare that their description for it reads “We haven’t offered a copy in this high of a grade in almost 10 years!” The CGC population report lists only a little over two-hundred graded copies in existence. For comparison, the CGC lists more than fifteen hundred graded copies of Brave and the Bold #28 or Action Comics #252. Taking that into account, it’s less of a surprise that this issue is one of the highest-priced items in an auction that also includes grail comics like Giant-Size X-Men #1 and Fantastic Four #48. To some comic collectors, condition really is everything — and this issue’s surprising, unique position in horror history is certainly a bonus.

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