origins of Cain from the Sandman series

[FS]

I always had a sense of familiarity about Cain, then it suddenly hit me where I knew him from. So I went looking through my old comics stash and found this:

http://www.fragile-minds.com/~fs/sigs/cain2.jpg

The House of Mystery, a comic series from about 1984 with ghost and horror stories, and a continuing story called "I... Vampire" about a vampire hunting after his former lover to stop her from taking over the world. The comics were quite good, actually. I only got the first three issues from a small comic book store that looked like it just sold leftover issues of old series.

Anyway, the stories were nearly always given an introduction by the librarian and janitor of the House of Mystery, Cain:

http://www.fragile-minds.com/~fs/sigs/cain1.jpg

Unmistakable, right?

Be sure to scald me if this is common knowledge. I have no idea how well or bad the House of Mystery series did, and beyond the first three issues the closest I got to seeing more of it was an ad for issue 4 on the back of a Batman comic. But I thought it was kind of interesting, since Neil Gaiman thanks a Bernie Wrightson for Cain and Abel in Preludes & Nocturnes.

[FS]

would-be edit: A little googling just led me to understand there were at least 300 issues of the series, so I'm guessing it did fairly OK. Too bad I can't find any bundled issues of it on Amazon.

[McMock]

Yup. Well done. I didn't know about this, and I've never heard of the The House of Mystery series. Cain himself is a cameo from the bible, as everybody knows, but the resemblance in how he's drawn is uncanny. I did not know you were dutch.

Hmm. In other issues where Neil Gaiman uses somebody elses character, he tends to mention where he got it from, though. Like in the episode with the woman who could change the fabric of her body (and the sungod), he mentions he got the character from, well, I don't remember the name of the series. And there are a few other occurances like that where he uses a character, but gives the author credit. Maybe he didn't feel like doing so with Cain because obviously the crecit for coming up with the character is not that of the author of The House of Mystery, but I wouldn't rule out that it's something the guy who drew the comics did, perhaps subconsciously, and that Neil Gaiman had nothing to do with it. (Because Neil Gaiman is only the writer, and doesn't decide how the characters look on paper. So it's impossible that his subconscious is to blame here)

Well found, nevertheless. Neil Gaiman has a blog and he answers questions from his fans who write him there. It's a very high traffic site, and I do believe he takes his fans seriously. Maybe you could send him an email with the scan and ask him if you really want to know.

[FS]

Well, like I said, Gaiman thanks a Bernie Wrightson for Cain & Abel in the credits page of the first Sandman volume. I couldn't find that name in House of Mystery # 2 or 3, and #1 has wandered off somewhere.

What I figure happened is Gaiman simply asked Wrightson if he could use his character. In House of Mystery, Cain is just a storyteller, so there's not much background to go on. Gaiman probably just took that character, gave him his brother Abel (to equate him to the Bible story), and moved him from the House of Mystery - to the House of Secrets, in Sandman. He's still kind of a keeper or stories there.

[McMock]

Yeah, maybe. Cain is a really sucky character anyway so I don't care much where he comes from.

[Protoclown]

I believe that these versions of Cain and Abel extend back to the 1970s, actually, and I know that Destiny has been a DC comics character for quite some time as well.