Eerie Publications’ horror magazines brought blood and bad taste to America’s newsstands from 1965 through 1975. Ultra-gory covers and bottom-of-the-barrel production values lent an air of danger to every issue, daring you to look at (and purchase) them.

The Weird World of Eerie Publications (Feral House, 2010) introduces the reader to Myron Fass, the gun-toting megalomaniac publisher who, with tyranny and glee, made a career of fishing pocketbook change from young readers with the most insidious sort of exploitation. You’ll also meet Carl Burgos, who, as editor of Eerie Publications, ground his axe against the entire comics industry. Slumming comic art greats and unknown hacks were both employed by Eerie to plagiarize the more inspired work of pre-Code comic art of the 1950s.

Somehow these lowbrow abominations influenced a generation of artists who proudly blame career choices (and mental problems) on Eerie Publications. One of them, Stephen R. Bissette (Swamp Thing, Taboo, Tyrant), provides the introduction for this volume.

Here’s the sordid background behind this mysterious comics publisher, featuring astonishingly red reproductions of many covers and the most spectacularly creepy art. The book is beautifully designed by Sean Tejaratchi of Craphound.

Click images below for hi-res gruesomeness!

Early Eerie Pubs issues featured reprints of precode horror stories that were first printed in Ajax/ Farrell comics like Voodoo and Haunted Thrills. Not gory enough for 60s readers, art director Ezra Jackson (father of a current Congresswoman) would draw in extra bloodletting. Jackson’s favorite trick was to rip away the victim’s cheek, exposing a neat row of white teeth! (Left is the Ajax original, right features Jackson’s embellishments.

Myron Fass, publisher
of the Eerie Publications and the undisputed “King of the
One-Shots”. Fass published thousands of magazines from the 50s
through the 90s on every subject imaginable, as long as it
would turn a profit. A gun enthusiast, tyrant, madman and
genius, Fass’s unorthodox management style horrified (but
taught) his staff and his magazines offended and influenced
millions of twisted young minds.

Chic Stone, who had a
“real job” at Marvel Comics inking Jack Kirby’s pencils on a
number of best-selling Superhero comics, let his hair down at
Eerie Pubs and delivered some unforgettable gore covers for the
them, including this one for Terror Tales
V1 #8 (May 1969).

Bill Alexander, a
former Irving Klaw fetish artist, was Eerie Publications’
premier cover artist, painting more than a quarter of their
printed covers. This is from Weird V3 #5
(Dec. 1969). He was concurrently painting nudie comics for
Fass’s girly mags and covers for Star Distributions’
jaw-dropping porno paperbacks.

Carl Burgos was Eerie
Pubs’ editor and visionary. Pissed off at an industry that he’d
helped form (he created The Human Torch back in 1939), Burgos
joined forces with Fass to give the finger to respectable
comics everywhere with the Eerie Pubs. He also painted a few
covers, like this one for the only issue of Tales
from the Crypt (V1 #10- July 1968). Bill Gaines at
EC still owned the rights to the title, so it’s no surprise
that with the next issue, the title was changed to
Tales of Voodoo.

Multi-monster mayhem,
gratuitous gore and bound beauties… these are the earmarks of
a good Eerie Pub cover! This is Tales of
Voodoo V7 #1 (Jan. 1974), art by Oscar Novelle, one
of many South American artists whose work proliferated in the
Pubs.

Dick Ayers was
another Marvel Comics artist who enjoyed moonlighting with Fass
and Burgos. Told to redraw old 50s horror comics but make them
gorier, Ayers delivered in spades! This is the splash panel (!)
for “A Corpse for the Coffin,” one of more than two dozen
eye-poppin’ stories illustrated by Ayers for Eerie Pubs.

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