The Weird World of Eerie Publications - 2010

Since starting this blog back in 2007, I have of course had the opportunity to explore all kinds of magazines that I normally would never have come across. Some have been good, some have been bad, and some are just friggin' crazy.

Case in point: the output of Eerie Publications, an outfit that managed to survive for decades, producing thousands and thousands of pages of material...most of it totally crap. But it was the kind of crap Eerie Pubs produced that made it memorable, something author Mike Howlett explores in his new book, The Weird World of Eerie Publications.

Eerie produced magazines like Tales of Voodoo, Weird, and Horror Tales--fairly generic names but as you can see from the covers, Eerie took the idea of gore to a whole new level:

The book opens with an intro by the legendary Steve Bissette, who talks about discovering these magazines as a kid and falling in love with them, all the while knowing they were mostly garbage. And maybe that's the key--I never saw a single Eerie magazine on a newsstand when I was a kid, so I didn't have that attachment that forms instantly when you discover something that expands the horizons of your wee little kid mind.

But Bissette and Howlett clearly had that moment, and Mike goes on to explore Eerie--both its output and the story of the company itself--in exhaustive detail. He covers virtually every conceivable angle of the Eerie Pubs story, from detailed analysis of the stories (most of which were reprints, with parts redrawn by staffers to make them more gory), biographies of the people who made them (like the gun-toting Myron Fass, who ran the operation), and highlights some of the absolutely jaw-dropping dark alleys that Eerie traveled, all in the effort to make a buck (there's a cover here to a magazine called Mobs and Gangs that is so foul I can't believe it made it out of the printing press).

The book is stuffed to the gills with artwork, featuring beautiful reproductions of all the lurid Eerie covers, as well as a lot of the grubby-looking interiors:

As the book goes on, Howlett's enthusiasm for his subject is so captivating and infectious (a perfect word for Eerie Pubs) that you find yourself wanting to track down some of these magazines for yourself, even though you probably know (as Mike cheerfully admits) you'll be disappointed with the results.

Ultimately, The Weird World of Eerie Publications works as a way for the rest of us non-Eerie fans to immerse ourselves in the world without the crushing disappointment of the mags themselves. As soon as I was finished the book, I wanted to go back to the beginning and start again, revisiting Myron Fass' amazing story all over again. Anyone with an interest in black and white comic magazines should pick this book up, you won't be disappointed...though you might end up a little queasy!

The Great Monster Magazines - McFarland

I discovered this book on my friend Kevin's online store site, The House of Mysterious Secrets--a whole book on b/w comic magazines? I am so there!

Once the book arrived, I dived right into it.

Author Robert Michael Cotter gives a fairly in-depth overview of the history of comics and the eventual spin-off black and white magazine line, and since the Marvel magazines have not (as of yet) gotten their own book devoted just to them (unlike the Warrens and the Skywalds) he gives them a lot of attention, which they certainly deserve.

At only 222 pages, the book has to leave a lot out, so it reads more like one man's personal history of the format (hey, like this blog!) rather than a complete, encyclopedic reference work. Plus, it has a scarcity of images--only about 30 in the entire book--and while seeing them full-page is a nice tribute to the fine artists to did the covers, I would've loved to have seen a lot more, especially during the parts of the book where the author raves about how good a particular cover is.

But it is definitely an entertaining read, and it was so cool reading a whole book getting into the nitty-gritty of titles like Doc Savage, Zombie Tales, and others. Cotter's love of the format beams from every page. I read the book in less than a few days, and I would've been happy to read it if it was twice as long. He's definitely opinionated, and isn't shy about slamming something he doesn't like, but that didn't keep me from enjoying it.

Plus, the back cover is spot-on perfect: