Warren’s Eerie No 1

In the late 1960s I was the proud (?) owner of the first 20 issues of Warren’s “Creepy” magazine. I also had most issues of “Eerie”. Eerie No 1 however eluded me. I didn’t know then that there hadn’t actually been an Eerie Number One as such. The series had officially begun with issue No 2 !!!

Due to the success of “Creepy” Jim Warren was planning a companion magazine. He heard rumours that a rival company (Perhaps Myron Fass ?) were about to launch a horror comic/magazine using the name Warren had chosen. The story goes that to beat them to the punch, Jim  Warren hastily assembled an “Ashcan” edition of Eerie No 1 containing reprints from earlier issues of Creepy. Enough copies were printed and “distributed” to supposedly secure the trademark of the title “Eerie”. 

This all seems odd to me as there had already been at least two comic books in the early 1950s in the USA and another in the UK that had used the title “Eerie”. It wasn’t until Creepy Issue No 81 when I saw this editorial that I discovered the story of the missing Eerie No 1 and that pirate copies had been produced. I admit I’ve still never seen one.

 

PS: As of March 2009 you can purchase a hard back book collecting the first six issues of Warren’s Eerie (with presumably more volumes to follow). This book surprisingly contains Eerie Number One.