There's no escape from - the House of Secrets.

As I roam the multi-layered splendour of Tinsley Viaduct, Sheffield's finest tunesmiths the Arctic Monkeys often lean out of their Rolls Royce to ask me, "Steve, how many secrets can you keep?"

Then they ask me, "Don't you know that you're in deep?"

Then they ask, "Stop making the eyes at me. I'll stop making the eyes at you."

And I say, "Why are you speaking in your own song lyrics?"

They say, "Your name isn't Rio but I don't care for sand."

And I say, "What the hell are you on about?"

And they say, "Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984."

Then they wind up the window and drive silently on while affecting to have the accents of ageing northern working men's club Elvis Presley impersonators.

But, in answer to their question, I of course keep no secrets.

However, there is one place not so blessed with the quality Quincy used to pronounce as, "Nigh-eev-tay," and that's the comic that each month brought us terror in doses we'd be lucky to survive.

That can only mean one thing...

It's time to revive that ever-popular feature where I vainly try to remember what was in an issue of a DC horror mag I've not read in nearly forty years.

Mr Whippy turns Mr Drippy, as ice cream becomes you scream.

From what I can remember of this, we get a re-telling of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court but starring an ice cream van driver.

Is this the one with the rather pathetic sideshow freak who eats live chickens?

If it is, this was the mag that first introduced me to the word, "Geek."

I remember this one containing the tale of an ageing ice dancer who gets her revenge on a man who can only be labelled a cad and a bounder.

Sadly, there was not a Zamboni in sight.

Another of those stories about a man who imitates a monster and gets his comeuppance, in what turns out to be a tale of unlikely romance and love at first sight.

Is this the one with the boy who disappears off into a fantasy land filled with unicorns and satyrs?

If so, it's another of those Blackpool-bought issues - and one of my faves.

I had a copy of this a couple of years ago but all I recall of it is that the cover story features a boy who takes up a dare to spend a night in a haunted house - with disastrous consequences.

I wrote a review of this very issue, right here.

I have a feeling this one contains a traumatic tale of a terrible tontine.

If it does, it's the mag that first introduced me to the word, "Tontine."

This means that, in its time, the House of Secrets introduced me to two new words. Who says comics aren't educational?

House of Secrets #127. Haven't we been here before?

Cain and Abel, Karloff and Lugosi, Ant and Dec. Twosomes to send a shiver down the spine of the most hardened of souls and, in the 1970s, there was no fear greater than reading the latest issue of House of Secrets.

Well, OK, probably, buying an ice cream was more frightening than reading the latest copy of House of Secrets.

But I didn't care. It was a DC horror mag and that was good enough for me.

In fact the only DC horror title that had any ability to confer fear on the reader was Ghosts because, as it said on the front cover, all the stories inside were true - even the ones that involved only one person who ended up dead at the end of the tale and had no witnesses, meaning the writer would've had to be psychic to have known of the events within.

What with this and Sea Monkeys, I always got the feeling advertising laws in the US were somewhat more lax than they were in good old Blighty.

But each of DC's horror mags had a clearly differentiated identity and there was of course, a huge difference between House of Mystery and House of Secrets. House of Mystery featured a house, and House of Secrets featured a different house.

For those still not certain, House of Secrets was the one narrated by poor old put-upon Abel and House of Mystery was done by his brother Cain.

All of which leads us to House of Secrets #127, an issue I first got on holiday sometime in late 1970s.

In the first tale, a man in post-revolutionary France wants to know who the masked axeman is who's ruthlessly decapitating dissidents.

In the second, a man enters the Amazon Jungle back in the days when you could still call it a jungle, rather than a rain forest, without fear of upsetting David Attenborough.

He finds some Indians with loads of emeralds, steals them and then gets eaten by piranhas.

In the the third, a man steals a magic pool cue that guarantees its owner victory and is promptly squished by giant pool balls.

I can't deny it, this is basically the same issue that got published over and over again every month for years, with just the names changed. The only thing missing is the story about a man/child who dresses up as a monster for selfish ends and then bumps into the real monster.

I once read a book.

In fact I once read more than one.

One of them had Daleks in it.

But, in the book I'm referring to, its feminist author asked, "Does the fact that the baby I'm carrying will be male mean that, even at birth, it'll be born a male oppressor?"

Frankly, I didn't get the feeling she was a barrel of laughs.

As an equally deep thinker, I must ask, "The House of Secrets, does this lack of fear and originality mean I must despise it?"

No.

It doesn't.

Of course the mags weren't scary. They were comics. I'd be a bit worried if things that could scare people into lunatic asylums were being sold for 8 pence to children. Why, I'd expect to pay at least 12 pence for a thing like that.

And the originality point is pointless. By the time you reach issue #127 of anything, what're the chances you're going to be doing things that have never been done before?

So, for me, it's a question of kick off your shoes, sit back, dig the skeleton-fixated Luis Dominguez's fab cover and then soak up the cosy familiarity of it all.

Cosy? That's something they never called Sea Monkeys. Vicious they were. Vicious.