Len Wein was Cain!

 

The characters of Cain and Abel were introduced by DC Comics editor Joe Orlando over 50 years ago to serve as the hosts of The House of Mystery and The House of Secrets respectively. The two characters introduced the stories but never were really included in the stories themselves. Those DC horror/mystery titles had a great 10+ year run, and then they faded away by the early 1980s. (Back in my days of collecting original artwork I even owned a Michael Golden page 1 splash of Abel from The House of Secrets.)

But do you know the original of the designs of those two characters? It turns out that comics legend  Len Wein served as the model for Cain and Mark Hanerfeld served as the model for Abel. These grainy late 1960s photos show those two gentlemen in those two roles, and the artists who drew the characters followed these modelling photos expertly! Over here you can read the full story of this Wein/Hanerfeld chapter of comics history.

Writer Neil Gaiman re-introduced Cain and Abel in his Sandman series in the late 1980s, and legions of new fans are seeing Cain and Abel for the first time as they appear in the just-released Netflix Sandman series. And now you know where the story began!