This is "Look Back," a feature that I plan to do for at least all of 2019 and possibly beyond that (and possibly forget about in a week, who knows?). The concept is that every week (I'll probably be skipping the four fifth weeks in the year, but maybe not) of a month, I will spotlight a single issue of a comic book that came out in the past and talk about that issue (often in terms of a larger scale, like the series overall, etc.). Each week will be a look at a comic book from a different year that came out the same month X amount of years ago. The first week of the month looks at a book that came out this month ten years ago. The second week looks at a book that came out this month 25 years ago. The third week looks at a book that came out this month 50 years ago. The fourth week looks at a book that came out this month 75 years ago.

We'll be doing October in a day!

Next up is House of Secrets #83 from October 1969.

Just recently, as part of my 31 Days of Horror Comics feature, the great Alisa Kwitney recommended one of the stories from House of Secrets #83, which reminded me of an interesting aspect of that issue (which I covered in a Comic Book Legends Revealed many moons ago) that I think I should spotlight, since it is now the 50th anniversary of that issue.

You see, in 1969, the Comics Code still had a restriction that banned the depiction or mention of vampires and werewolves in comics. Gerry Conway was writing the framing sequence for the issue (each issue of House of Secrets was "hosted" by Abel) and he knew that the lead feature in the issue was written by Marv Wolfman. He knew that they banned mention of "Wolfmen," but they couldn't ban a mention of MARV WOLFMAN, right? So he had Abel mention that he was told a story by a traveling Wolfman...

which then led into the story with a Marv Wolfman credit...

Now, while the Wolfman story had a credit, the next story in the issue did not...

Conway, though, wrote the last story (the one Alisa recommended) and he made sure to credit himself, too...

Wolfman's close friend, Len Wein wrote the lead feature in the next issue and he was credited...

But there was no credits in the rest of the issue.

By House of Secrets #85, though, now ALL of the stories had credits!

And all because of Gerry Conway having some pun fun with Marv Wolfman's name! How funny!

If you have any suggestions for November (or any other later months) 2009, 1994, 1969 and 1944 comic books for me to spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Here is the guide, though, for the cover dates of books so that you can make suggestions for books that actually came out in the correct month. Generally speaking, the traditional amount of time between the cover date and the release date of a comic book throughout most of comic history has been two months (it was three months at times, but not during the times we're discussing here). So the comic books will have a cover date that is two months ahead of the actual release date (so October for a book that came out in August). Obviously, it is easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was internet coverage of books back then.