Who's Destiny?

Who's This? A big reader.

The facts: Weird Mystery Tales was one of the lesser known horror anthologies from DC, and like the House of Mystery and Secrets, it needed a "horror host". Marv Wolfman and Bernie Wrightson devised the embodiment of Destiny itself, chained to a book that contained all of history from which he would read the stories contained in any given issue (the series running 24 issues from 1972 to 1975). Destiny was gradually replaced by Eve (as a connection to the more popular Cain and Abel) and was out of the story-telling business as of #15. Though Destiny has been spotted in the superhero world of DC (notably in Mark Waid's Brave and the Bold revival), his main use after this issue of Who's Who has been as a member of the Endless in Sandman. Neil Gaiman made use of all the horror hosts in that series.
How you could have heard of him: Well, it's gotta be because of the Sandman stuff, right? He even got his own mini-series out of the deal.
Example story: Weird Mystery Tales #4 (February 1973) by E. Nelson Bridwell, Mike Kaluta, Steve Skeats, Romy Gamboa, Rico Rival, Joe Orlando and Bernie Wrightson
Much more so than the Houses, Weird Mystery Tales feels like it's running overflow written and drawn for other anthology books. In his opening piece, Bridwell introduces us to Destiny's "Cosmic Log" in which his stories are transcribed, a much better means of discovering individual destinies than Tarot cards, for example.
True enough, especially considering the three cards shown have nothing to do with the stories about to be told. These look like the Emperor, the Magician and... maybe the Hierophant (AKA the Pope)? They all might fit the devil summoning of the first tale, or the last tale, which has to do with the search for immortality. But the middle story---wait a minute, there AREN'T three Tales in here, there are FOUR! Even if the middle ones run 2 to 3 pages. Mismatched generic splash page aside, what's more damning is that anyone could be narrating these stories, and when Destiny is actually pictured, it's always the same pic authored by Bernie Wrightson.
It looks like they kept pasting Destiny to inventory stories.
And here's the original, at the top of the letters page:
This is where Destiny could actually have lived his best life, because editor Joe Orlando takes on the role of Destiny to introduce the segment, but NOT, sadly, to answer the mail. How much more fun would it have been to have him find in-universe ways to admit the Kirby story from a previous issue was meant for Spirit World, or that he was created by Wolfman and Wrightson? Alas.

Horror hosts get little respect. Gaiman really did come to their rescue.

Who's Next? A simian sleuth.

Comments

I have an issue of Superman where Destiny actually stops him from helping people out to show them and him that they are capable of doing things on their own despite not having Superman's powers. His point is that they were relying too much on Superman, that there are times you need a superman and times they can save the day themselves.