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The Weird World of Eerie Publications: Comic Gore That Warped Millions of Young Minds
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 of World of Eerie Publications 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.
340 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 26, 2015
Guilty! as a twerpy, gawky kid in the 70's I would look at these gruesome and tasteless magazines in the racks and wish I had the change and guts to buy them. No way my parents would have let me take one home. Instead, I figured that if I'm going to get busted for having prohibited and forbidden magazines stashed away in my room, it might as well be the likes of OUI or Penthouse. If you're going to get in trouble, make it worth it! Anyway, this book is a nice look down memory lane for those of us who love this junk!
January 21, 2011
Finally, a comprehensive history of my favorite horror mag publisher of all time, Eerie Publications. I read it in one sitting. Yeah, I shed a happy tear.
December 14, 2017
I'm interested in the topic, but this is somehow unreadable. I don't know if it's because I'm reading the ebook on Hoopla and Hoopla renders strangely, or if it's just hard to read. Either way, I don't care and I'm dumping it.
February 11, 2017
As a young man growing up in rural Mount Airy, NC, the line of black and white Eerie Publications magazines were on the farthest corners of my radar. Sort of like a ghastly accident that leaked into your field of vision before you could whirl your eyes away (and whirl I did ... my tastes for horror and grue really didn't develop into my teenage years). Sure, these tasteless attempts for your pocket change sprung out on magazine shelving, but focusing straight ahead and perusing the safety of the four color spinner racks for new Marvel comics at local outlets such as the late and lamented "Stop -N- Go" or Dowell Bros. Grocery usually kept me safe. Of course, I inadvertently spied a few of the Eerie Pubs. covers, which, as a child scared the holy hell out of me - they were lurid, bloody, tasteless and ultimately unforgettable for the distinct since of unease they created in my delicate constitution.
My own experience with actually looking past a cover came early in the 1980s at Bannertown Superette, a local store that had a TEN FOOT tall magazine section to the left of the front entrance that had frozen in time around 1973. I'm NOT kidding. The owner had a pet chicken that wondered the store well into the 1990s, and the last time the floors were cleaned had to be during the Nixon Administration. In other words, exactly the kind of establishment where Eerie Publications thrived. I must have chosen a good 'un, because the grey, smoky pages within were black with gore. Eye gouging, limb chopping, decapitations galore. Brrrr. No thanks. Still wasn't ready.
And now, as I shift into the lower gears of middle age, Mike Howlett's wonderful history of the publisher appears, with all of the covers reproduced in full hyperbolic color, a history of the actual stories (most of them reprinted or redrawn tales of pre-comics code horrors with extra "sauce" to up the body counts and violent on panel deaths), information on the many artists who contributed, and how the company managed to survive the competition (one word: laughable page rates for artists and lots of reprints) of other companies who sold comics via the black and white magazine markets such as Skywald, Marvel and yes, Warren Publications (the gold standard).
If you have any interest in these books whatsoever, this years in the making study/tribute belongs in your comics reference library ... or maybe you are like me, and finally ready to confront youthful fears head on.
My own experience with actually looking past a cover came early in the 1980s at Bannertown Superette, a local store that had a TEN FOOT tall magazine section to the left of the front entrance that had frozen in time around 1973. I'm NOT kidding. The owner had a pet chicken that wondered the store well into the 1990s, and the last time the floors were cleaned had to be during the Nixon Administration. In other words, exactly the kind of establishment where Eerie Publications thrived. I must have chosen a good 'un, because the grey, smoky pages within were black with gore. Eye gouging, limb chopping, decapitations galore. Brrrr. No thanks. Still wasn't ready.
And now, as I shift into the lower gears of middle age, Mike Howlett's wonderful history of the publisher appears, with all of the covers reproduced in full hyperbolic color, a history of the actual stories (most of them reprinted or redrawn tales of pre-comics code horrors with extra "sauce" to up the body counts and violent on panel deaths), information on the many artists who contributed, and how the company managed to survive the competition (one word: laughable page rates for artists and lots of reprints) of other companies who sold comics via the black and white magazine markets such as Skywald, Marvel and yes, Warren Publications (the gold standard).
If you have any interest in these books whatsoever, this years in the making study/tribute belongs in your comics reference library ... or maybe you are like me, and finally ready to confront youthful fears head on.
September 13, 2021
When I first started reading the back and white horror comics, I liked publications such as CREEPY and EERIE, and some others. But I also liked the Myron Fass published line of comics, Eerie Publications (no relation to EERIE, the magazine). They were not in the same league as CREEPY or EERIE. They were cheaply printed and had gory, often stomach-churning covers. They were kind of sick and twisted, really -- but my young mind loved them. This is the story of those publications, and of Myron Fass, the bizarre (possibly mentally ill) publisher, who had a ton of cheap and sensational magazines from the 1960s through the 1980s, not only these comics, but publications about almost anything (UFOs, the occult, romance, movies, etc.). It was a kind of golden age of crap, but what delightful crap! This book is fun and very informative. For instance, I didn't know that these black and white horror comics were essentially rip-offs of the pre-code horror comics, with titles changed, and new art. But Myron produced stuff as cheaply as he could, and his belief was apparently that anything he could get away with was okay, and he made a lot of money at it. There is a ton of information (and many illustrations) in this big book so, while it is a bit pricey (over $30), you get a hell of a lot of bang for your buck.
January 26, 2016
What I thought was a book about the Eerie comics turns out to be a book about a publisher I had no idea about. Wonderful cover illustrations all throughout. Exploring titles such as 'Weird' 'Tales of Voodoo', and 'Witch Tales'. Book does exactly what it sets out to do.
June 28, 2015
This book was a pleasure from start to finish. Just a thing of (literally) eye-popping, garish beauty.
April 14, 2024
Travel back in time with me, my friends, to the year 1980. Imagine if you will a ten year old boy, walking down College Ave. in Somerville, Massachusetts, with a few dollars yearning to burst free from his pockets. There is a smoke shop on College Ave.--the kind of place that doesn't really care how old you are when you buy things. It is a sort of Mecca for the boy. While the proprietors won't let him take down a copy of Hustler to peruse, pretty much everything else is fair game. There is a spinning rack of paperbacks, and the boy often buys the most vile, nasty horror novels he can--The Cellar, Death Tour, and other delights. But it is the magazine rack that draws him like a moth to the flame. Eerie Magazine #42 Oct. 1972, Creepy Magazine Number 89 June 1977, Heavy Metal Magazine #115, and--glory of all glories--Weird #42 (Vol 7 No 5) - Eerie Publications August 1973 - Magazine.
I used to devour these things when I was 10, 11 years old. The lurid, bloody covers. The sick pen and ink stories of ghouls, cannibals, freaks, and mutants. The every-girl-has-giant-boobs artwork. Eyeballs getting torn out. Great meaty bites being taken. Buckets of blood and gore and entrails. It was glorious.
This book is a history of the company the produced these glorious magazines. I didn't read all of the text, but the illustrations! The covers and splash pages! The dripping, oozing, sliming glory of it all! It was like a time machine for me. So. Much. Fun.
I used to devour these things when I was 10, 11 years old. The lurid, bloody covers. The sick pen and ink stories of ghouls, cannibals, freaks, and mutants. The every-girl-has-giant-boobs artwork. Eyeballs getting torn out. Great meaty bites being taken. Buckets of blood and gore and entrails. It was glorious.
This book is a history of the company the produced these glorious magazines. I didn't read all of the text, but the illustrations! The covers and splash pages! The dripping, oozing, sliming glory of it all! It was like a time machine for me. So. Much. Fun.
May 2, 2011
This book made me think publishing might be better now than it these books were being published. Yikes. Some parts are dry and I found some content didn't really pertain to horror comic fans. But the horror stuff is fascinating and the author lets you know that the book is dealing with material inferior to both EC and Warren. If anything there is too much detail. These comics were gruesome and cheap and often poorly drawn which makes them even more disturbing than the better crafted horror titles.
March 18, 2013
Wow. After reading this, I felt like taking a tick bath. Eerie and its brethren were the crudest, low-brow magazines dealing with horror, true crime and the like. Poorly written fiction and salacious journalism, abominably executed artwork, an editor who carried a .45 tucked in his belt while he worked to destroy the moral fiber of our nation. There really isn't a modern equivalent anymore, in print anyway. One now has to find it on the Internet.
The book itself does a good job with the history of Eerie, but the tawdriness of the subject is profoundly disturbing.
The book itself does a good job with the history of Eerie, but the tawdriness of the subject is profoundly disturbing.
July 4, 2011
If you're a fan of horror comics you will enjoy this. Maybe I'm old but I was kind of taken back by some of the explicit detail. It's interesting to see how derivative the industry could be especially stealing frames and recycling them via covers, stories, etc.
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March 13, 2011The text is a little dry and sometimes drags -- I skipped through the 50-page chapter providing bios of all the Eerie Pu artists. But if you're a fan of the gory covers, this book is chock full of them, and for that alone it's worth the price.
February 21, 2011
Great book examining Eerie Publications, publishers of uber-trashy horror comics, some of which are responsible for my life-long love of the genre.
March 19, 2013
great behind scenes book.wacky(cheap)publisher publishes wacky comics and makes a fortune.lots of great illustrations too.
April 18, 2013
Public library copy.
Nice art reproductions with insightful and in-depth publishing history commentary.
Nice art reproductions with insightful and in-depth publishing history commentary.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews