Eerie Comics was a one-shot full-colour, 52 page horror comic book dated January 1947 and published by Avon Periodicals as Eerie #1. Its creative team included Joe Kubert and Fred Kida. The contents comprised six full-length horror feature stories and a two-page humorous tale. It holds the distinction of being the first true, stand-alone horror comic book and is credited with establishing the horror comics genre. The comic book’s glossy cover depicts a red-eyed ghoul clutching a dagger and a rope-bound, voluptuous young woman in a derelict moonlit ruin.
The issue featured six stories that were fairly tame in their depiction of the gore and violence generally found in horror fiction. ”The Eyes of the Tiger” follows a man haunted by the ghost of a stuffed tiger; ”The Man-Eating Lizards” (with a script by Edward Bellin and artwork by Joe Kubert), tells the story of an island infested with flesh-eating lizards; and another, “The Strange Case of Henpecked Harry” (with art by Fred Kida), follows a man spooked by the bloody corpse of his murdered wife. Other feature stories include “Dead Man’s Tale”, “Proof”, and “Mystery of Murder Manor”. A two-page humorous tale starring Goofy Ghost rounds out the issue. Members of the creative team included Fugitani, and George Roussos.
Following the 1947 issue, Eerie disappeared from newsstands shelves. In 1951, Eerie #1, cover-dated May/June 1951, was published by Avon and saw a run of seventeen issues. The first issue reprinted “The Strange Case of Henpecked Harry” as “The Subway Horror”, and issue 12 printed a Dracula story based on the Bram Stoker novel. Several covers featured large-breasted women in bondage. Artists Joe Orlando and Wallace Wood were associated with the series. The title saw a run of seventeen issues, ceasing publication with its August/September 1954 issue. Eerie then morphed into Strange Worlds with #18, October/November 1954.
