Cain and Abel (comics)
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Cain and Abel are a pair of fictional characters in the DC Comics universe based on the Biblical Cain and Abel.
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[edit] Publication history
Originally they were the respective "hosts" of the EC-style horror comic anthologies House of Mystery and House of Secrets, which ran from the 1950s through the early 1980s. During the 1970s, they also co-hosted (along with Eve), the horror/humor anthology Plop!. Cain the Able Care-Taker, created by Bob Haney, Jack Sparling, and Joe Orlando, first appeared in The House of Mystery #175 (July 1968), and Abel, created by Mark Hannerfeld, Bill Draut, and Joe Orlando, first appeared in DC Special #4 (July-September 1969) and began hosting The House of Secrets with #81 (August-September 1969), after the comics had been running Dial H for Hero and Eclipso, respectively.
On the letters page of Weird Mystery Tales #3, Destiny stated that Cain, Abel, and Eve were not their biblical counterparts, whom he said he found much more pleasant.
House of Mystery was cancelled in 1983. The final issue showed Cain in front of the House, for sale, with his bags packed, and Gregory behind him. The cover of Vertigo's mostly-reprint Welcome Back to the House of Mystery showed him returning with Abel and Gregory. The House of Secrets and The Witching Hour were eventually merged with The Unexpected and cancelled around the same time.
It was Neil Gaiman's series The Sandman that more fully developed the "reinvented" characters into more mature, post-Comics Code version of themselves, and who helped fully drag them out of obscurity.
[edit] Fictional character biography
[edit] House of Mystery/Secrets
Cain frequently told tales of various people who boarded at the House of Mystery, and the fascination/disgust of the locals at its presence. Abel stammeringly took abuse from both Cain and the House of Secrets itself, and had an "imaginary" (it was always rendered in quotes) girlfriend named Goldie, who berated him, too. In the early issues, Abel told the stories directly to her, but he always appeared to be alone. He said she was a ghost.
Cain is a thin, long-limbed man with an angular, drawn face, glasses, a tufty beard, and hair drawn into two points above his ears. Cain is often mean to Abel, but he is jovial and a friendly storyteller to children and did everything he could to help Superman when the need once arose. Abel is a nervous, stammering, kind-hearted man. Abel is somewhat similar in appearance to Cain, with a tufty beard and hair that comes to points above his ears, though his hair is black rather than brown. He is shorter and fatter than Cain, with a more open face. It is eventually stated (in Sandman #40) that the only time he doesn't stutter is when he is telling a story, and this was characteristic of his earlier appearances. Cain owns a large green draconic gargoyle named Gregory, who first appeared (as a baby) in House of Mystery #175, apparently the offspring of enchanted sculptures who come to the house for a French sculptor who murdered the artist who designed them. He grew to maturity over the course of the series and continued to appear in Sandman stories.
They live as neighbours in two houses near a graveyard, Cain in the broad House of Mystery and Abel in the tall House of Secrets. According to their appearance in Swamp Thing, the difference is that a mystery may be shared, but a secret must be forgotten if one tries to tell it. The houses are in small-town Kentucky, and it was later revealed that they simultaneously exist in the Dreaming. It has also been suggested that this is not the case, and that there has been a location change as a result of the Crisis on Infinite Earths.
During the Crisis, although not mentioned in that series, Elvira stumbled onto the House of Mystery, which charged her to find Cain, who had disappeared, possibly because of the Crisis.
In 1985, the characters were revived by writer Alan Moore, who introduced them into his Swamp Thing series in issue #33, retelling the Swamp Thing's original origin story from a 1971 issue of House of Secrets. They reappeared in issue #50, where they acted as observers and commentators on a fierce battle in Hell.
[edit] Sandman
In Gaiman's Sandman universe, the biblical Cain and Abel come to live in the Dreaming at Dream's invitation. This is based on the verse in the Bible which says that Cain was sent to live in the Land of Nod. Destiny claimed in Weird Mystery Tales #3 that they were not the same as the Biblical Cain and Abel, but this could be a post-Crisis retcon.
Gaiman's Cain is an aggressive, overbearing character. He has been described (usually by Matthew), as sounding "just like Vincent Price." The earlier stories showed Cain sometimes torturing Abel (for example, in House of Mystery #219, Cain chained Abel to an anchor and stuffed him in his water cooler (full), allegedly because Abel put banana peels in it) that helped inspire Gaiman's development of the character, with a little help from the Bible.
Cain frequently kills Abel in a kind of macabre form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, re-enacting the first murder. In the Dreaming, Abel's death is impermanent, and he seems to recover after a few hours. Cain seems unable to control his frequent murders of Abel, and occasionally expresses remorse over them; there is a genuine bond between the two, beneath the surface contempt. Abel remains dedicated to Cain, and frequently dreams of a more harmonious relationship between the two.
In turn, during The Wake, Cain is so distraught when Abel is murdered permanently by The Kindly Ones, he sinks into a rambling mess when asking the new Dream to restore him.
In the first appearance of the characters in Sandman, issue #2, Cain gives Abel an egg that soon hatches into another gargoyle, a small golden one. Abel is delighted and names the gargoyle "Irving," but Cain forcefully insists that the names of gargoyles must always begin with a "G." When Abel resists, Cain murders him, and after Abel revives he renames the gargoyle "Goldie," after a friend of his who "went away."
The main function of Cain and Abel throughout The Sandman is as comic relief. However, the two play significant (though not key) roles at several points in the series; it is they who take Morpheus in until his strength is restored following his 72-year-long imprisonment. In the fourth story arc, Season of Mists, Cain is sent to Hell to give a message to Lucifer because the Mark of Cain protects him from all harm. Cain and Abel also aid The Corinthian with the child Daniel during The Kindly Ones, the penultimate story arc of the series. They also appear with Morpheus in The Books of Magic (vol. 1) #3.
