Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-246292-20170103045332/@comment-1257201-20170105033415

A typical issue of House of Secrets, House of Mystery, or Witching Hour in the late 60s and very early 70s had structure like the following:
 * The host(s) do something silly for a couple pages, then introduce story number one.
 * Story One.
 * The host introduces story two (often this is not a separate page, but is the top panel above story two).
 * Story Two.
 * The host introduces story three.
 * Story Three.
 * The host returns and makes some ironic or macabre comment about the tragic ending of story three. Then the host returns to whatever he/she/they were doing at the beginning of the comic.

Originally the very first and very last segment could be fairly long (in the first segment was 5 pages and the final segment was 2 pages); by the mid-1970s these were much shorter, and the hosts were a much less noticeable presence in these comics.

Question: Should the framing stories be listed as actual stories on each comic's page? If so, should each piece of the framing story be listed as a separate story, or should this be treated as a single story that is broken up into pieces throughout the comic?

And if the framing story is treated as a story, then should the hosts be listed as characters within the individual stories at all? After all, Cain/Abel/Mordred/whoever doesn't actually appear in Story One -- they merely appear in the panel introducing the story.

With respect to Story One, Two and Three, the hosts are functioning as hosts. But with regard to the framing story, these hosts are actually characters, who do things other than narrating stories.