I love those old Eerie Publications covers, any time I see an issue for sale in the wild at a good price, I grab it. It's amazing some of the graphic covers that were on newstands back in the 60s and 70s, covers that would never fly today. That's interesting that a lot of them were used for that line of DVDs, eye-catching for sure!

You might like these books if you don't already have them. I have them both and they are great.




Eerie Publications - The Complete Covers: The Whole Bloody Mess Digital PDF - FantaCo Publications

Looks like this below may be sold out but there are plenty on eBay.

Yep, I got them both, along with The Worst of Eerie Publications, a hardcover book that reprints a bunch of complete stories from the magazines, plus some covers.

The first book is really interesting, it covers the whole history of Myron Fass' bottom of the barrel magazine "empire" (of which the b&w comic mags were just a part of). It's a great read with tons of artwork and shows how many of the covers were painted over with different details and republished over the years, crazy stuff.

I have the ‘Complete Covers’ version, albeit a second ‘expanded’ edition from (I think) last year with a different cover, although I’m not sure what ‘expanded’ means as I’d imagine they didn’t miss anything in the first one.


I’m often reminded of those old ‘True Crime’-type magazines and their often salacious covers depicting women being menaced in various ways, or being menacing, or just being cheesecake. Not as out there as the Eerie stuff, but still less likely to pass muster today. By the time I saw them on the stands as a teenager in the 80s, the covers were generally cheaply-done photographs of trashy women holding various weapons, but I have to admit, they still caught my eye. And thankfully a book was published to honor them and the art/photography inside them and on the covers:

Yeah, some of those old covers are great. Of course, Myron Fass (of Eerie Pubs) had some True Crime magazine covers that were real charmers, like this one. Holy shit, where is that hot poker going to go? Again, covers like this were all over newstands back in those days.

Holy cow. That cover is crazy.

That is cracks me up about people saying the 1900's to the early 1960's were just such a great time period in America. No crime. Everyone is a Christian. Heterosexual husband and wife lived happily in the home they bought for $2000 with 2.2 kids and a maid and butler. Life was simpler then!

I always ask people who think like this...have you seriously ever read any history whatsoever? But I digress. Back to covers.

These poor, hot, buxom young women just keep getting attacked in the strangest places!











And as you can tell, I have a horror them going for October.

Nice covers, I love this kind of stuff.


The below one is especially good, drawn by Frank Frazetta and Sid Check. The girl is definitely Frazetta's artwork, I'm guessing the monsters were done by Check.

A fair digression considering the covers we’ve been posting!

That misguided nostalgia drives me nuts because it actually never went away, and probably never will. And it wasn’t just the 1900’s to the 1960’s that were “so much simpler and better”; it’s literally every time period that anyone grew up in, and – not to get too political, but it’s a factor – it’s invariably rooted in conservative thinking, a need to counter all the unpleasantness we perceive around us as we age, to preserve a feeling that only existed because we were a child or teen ‘back then’ and were probably shielded by our parents more than we realized from the wars and atrocities and awful people and salacious media! Hardly surprising that an irrational desire to get back to some hazily-remembered ‘good old days’ is so easily co-opted by conservative and far-right politicians.

Almost every “vintage” tv or movie clip on YouTube from the silent era to maybe a decade ago – not to mention all the videos about these comics and mags, their artists, and even the coffee table books devoted to them – invariably attracts comments along the lines of “Things were sooo awesome back then. Life was good. You just couldn’t do/show/say this nowadays thanks to cancelling, censorship, libs, etc”.

Claims like that ignore the fact that yes, you actually can get away with this now, and many artists and publishers (and authors and filmmakers etc) actually do because there’s no law against it, within reason, at least in North America. Some of it’s even mainstream! I’ve seen episodes of network TV crime shows that put the old detective magazine covers to shame! It may not be presented in the exploitative fashion of those old mags, but unsavoury yet well written and drawn (or filmed) content is out there if you want it. If anything, it’s just less of an ‘issue’ in today’s oversaturated “content” marketplace than it was back then. Virtually nothing stands out anymore when there’s just so much of everything vying for our attention 24 hours a day.

That ‘Crime Does Not Pay’ cover is a gem. Of course, one can’t mention the sleazy old detective magazine covers without mentioning the equally trashy ‘men’s adventure’ magazines that sat alongside them. These often weren't as gory as some of the comic stuff, but the misogyny and racism and overall ‘othering’ of people of color was off the charts, with mostly white women in shredded clothing (or less) alternately menaced by ‘krauts’, ‘japs’, fiendish/commie ‘orientals’, or African or Latino cannibals and headhunters, usually with a square-jawed American he-man nearby who might not get to them in time!

World War II. Sexy times, amiright?

And now for something completely different ...

I always loved this one, so I took the bar code off. It took a little time to match everything up, but it looks right this way.

Doubt we'll get Punisher shooting on a cover alongside Spider-Man ever again.

I had that issue of Spider-Man as a kid. Loved that cover and I hate that I sold it as a teen.



So, you only have to worry that the "man-eating plant" will strangle you and not eat you.

I am not a Cthulhu super fan, but dang that cover is great. It is just the monster and the colors used on this cover are beyond awesome. My favorite color is green and this cover makes great use of the color.

Wait a minute, I call shenanigans on that cover.

Because...

Yeah, great fake I guess, not really in Dell’s wheelhouse back then.

Can't fool you guys.

Bummer. I liked that Cthulhu cover.

But I did think that the art was oddly modern.

Yeah, that artwork is way too modern for the 1950s, CI had some nice painted covers but nothing ever had that kind of art style, that was the first tell. Secondly, I'm sure I would have heard of that issue long before now if it did exist and would have picked up a copy decades ago. The funny thing is if it was real, I'd bet these days it would be one of the more valuable issues of Classics Illustrated. Who the hell is looking for the CI adaptation of The Buccaneer.

Doh, but I should have realized that classics illustrated did not adapt a Cthulhu story.

Some of those 70s Charlton horror comics were pretty cool, I was a fan of this title when I was a kid:

That is so cool you posted that. I haven't seen that cover since I was a kid and owned that very issue! Awesome!