Weird Worlds v1 #10

Weird Worlds v1 #10 (December 1970) [Eerie Publications Inc.]

Today we celebrate Myron Fass published comic books.  I'm not sure when this issue of Weird Worlds was actually on sale, but since it has a cover date of Dec., I am using it to talk about our friend Myron.  It is actually the first issue of this 6 issue series, though it is numbered 10.

Fass was a comic book artist who later teamed up with Stanley Harris in the late 1950s until mid 1977 to publish thousands of magazines as well as hundreds of comic books. He was known as the king of the one-shot for putting out so many single-focus, single-issue titles like the John Lennon Memorial Issue.  Though the majority of his comic books were published under the Eerie Publications company name, he tried to brand his magazines/comics using the Countrywide Publications name as seen by the CWP logo on many of the publications.

Operating on the fringe of publishing, Fass & Harris used over 30 company names, but just mainly two for their comic books; Eerie for mag size b/w comics and MF Enterprises (ie Myron Fass enterprises)  for their standard color comics.  MF was also used on other magazines, while Eerie never was.  After they acrimoniously split in 1977, Fass used Stories, Layouts & Press Inc. and S.J. Publications Inc. for Gasm and Rump respectively.   Harris kept the Modern Day Periodicals Inc. imprint and put out his b/w comics  mags with it.  They both used these company names on other non-comics magazines as well.

With the short lived adult title Gasm, Fass used artists that also worked in regular comic books like Marshall Rogers, Frank Cirocco, Gene Day, Mark Wheatley, John Workman and Chuck Dixion.  Some of them also did comic strips and illustrations for his men's mags and other titles. Most Fass magazines were full of reprinted or pirated material, so Gasm is bit different as most of the comics in it were commissioned for the comic title.  Of course, that material was reprinted later in various Fass mags.  Rump was the last of Fass comics in 1980 and was just reprints from Gasm and his other magazines.

Harris kept the "Eerie" type comic magazines going until 1982, with but only a few issues each year.  Harris went on to become a very successful magazine publisher with Harris Publications continuing to this day, even though Stanley left a few years ago.  He even reentered mainstream comics as Harris Comics in 1991.

For more on all the Eerie titles like Horror Tales, Tales From The Tomb, Terror Tales, and Weird, visit the Eerie Publications Index which has tons of info.

An excellent book that covers Eerie and even more of Myron's publishing history is The Weird World of Eerie Publications by Mike Howlett, well worth the price.  For more on Myron than you ever wanted to know, check out the two From The Tomb magazine issues with Frank Motler articles on him (#24 & #25).