Number 1418: Myron Fass and the dead woman’s swamp

Myron Fass, the king of sleaze, whose magazines included the line of Eerie Publications* and various other exploitation rags like Violent World, was once a comic book artist.

An issue of Violent World.

I like to imagine Charles Manson framing this 1969 killer-hippie Eerie Publications cover and keeping it in his cell to remind him of happier days.

Well, I qualify Fass’s comic artist label...I don’t know how much Fass actually drew, and how much he might have subcontracted out to other artists. The quality of Fass art can vary widely. In this particular story, the quality has swung toward the amateurish, or as I like to call it, “serviceable.” It serves the purpose of the story and that’s about it. But I decided to show it for a couple of reasons. One is Myron’s inscrutable signature in the splash panel. If I’m reading it correctly it says “Nuts” Myron Fass, with the second “s” placed sideways. I’m bewildered by that. The other thing about the story is it is another swamp creature story. There have been enough swamp monsters in comics, all of them descended from Theodore Sturgeon’s 1940 prose story,“It!” to make up a separate genre for swamp-creature lit.

From Crime Mysteries #12 (1954):

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*The Bloody Pulp!, a blog devoted to Eerie Publications, hasn't been updated in a long time, but is still an incredible resource for anyone wanting to check into the “miasma of Eerie Publications,” as the blog promises.

Click on the picture to go to the site.