House of Mystery #251

Neal Adams delivers a genuinely unsettling cover here, depicting a massive, thorned tentacled creature lunging from a murky green void to seize a group of terrified figures — one already lifted into the air, the others scrambling desperately below. This 1977 DC Dollar Comics edition packs an impressive 80 pages of all-new stories into a single $1.00 issue, with the tagline promising seven chilling tales inside, including Jack Oleck's "Return of the Vampire," brought to life by artist Franc Reyes. The House of Mystery #251 is a satisfying grab-bag of horror from an era when anthology titles reliably delivered the creeps.