House of Mystery #241

A graveyard setting turns genuinely unsettling on Ricardo Villagrán's cover for this May 1976 entry in DC's long-running anthology series — a desperate man swings a weapon amid tombstones while the enormous, snarling apparition of a white cat looms over him, yellow eyes blazing, with onlookers cowering in the background and an open chest of money at his feet. The tagline "Beware of the Man Who Hated Cats!" sets the tone perfectly for the featured story, "Death Pulls the Strings." Inside, Jack Oleck and Frank Robbins deliver "Paid in Full," promising the kind of grim karmic comeuppance that made House of Mystery such a satisfying horror read throughout the 1970s.