The Witching Hour was an American comic book horror anthology published by DC Comics from 1969 to 1978.
Publication history
The series was published for 85 issues from February–March 1969 to October 1978. Its tagline was "It's 12 o'clock... The Witching Hour!" and was changed to "It's midnight..." from issue #13 onwards. The series was originally edited by Dick Giordano, who was replaced by Murray Boltinoff with issue #14. Nick Cardy was the cover artist for The Witching Hour for issues #1-6, 11-12, 15-16, 18-52, and 60. Stories in the comic were "hosted" and introduced by three witches, based on Macbeth's Weird Sisters: Morded, Mildred, and Cynthia. The witches defined the archetypal Maiden/Mother/Crone—in reverse order—triumvirate of womanhood. A prototype version of the extraterrestrial Psions appeared in issue #13 (February–March 1971).
After The Witching Hour's cancellation as a result of the "DC Implosion", the title was merged with The Unexpected, until issue #209. The witches were later revived—along with the hosts of the companion series House of Secrets and House of Mystery as important characters in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.
With a modern literal meaning of "midnight," the term witching hour refers to the time of night when creatures such as witches, demons, and ghosts are thought to appear and to be at their most powerful and black magic to be most effective. Adversely, the term devil's hour applies to the hour of 3am or 3:15; the suggestion being that this demonic hour is an inversion of the time at which Christ died at Calvary. The suggestion being that this hour is a mocking of the holy trinity.
It may be used to refer to any arbitrary time of bad luck or in which something bad has a greater likelihood to occur (e.g., a baby crying, or a computer crashing, or stock market volatility, crimes, supernatural, etc.). The witching hour from medieval times is the time believed that witches came out to do their "unholy" practices. Women caught out late at night could have been suspected of witchcraft if they did not have a "legitimate" reason to be out.
See also
The Witching Hour (Spanish: La hora bruja) is a 1985 Spanish drama film directed by Jaime de Armiñán. The film was selected as the Spanish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 58th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.
Cast
See also
References
External links
The Witching Hour is a 1921 American silent drama film directed by William Desmond Taylor and written by Julia Crawford Ivers and Augustus E. Thomas. The film stars Elliott Dexter, Winter Hall, Ruth Renick, Robert Cain, A. Edward Sutherland, Mary Alden and F. A. Turner. The film was released on April 10, 1921, by Paramount Pictures.