The Weird World of Bill Alexander – Latest TIH Column

My latest column for This Is Horror:

“There is a lot of talk amongst the Horrorati at the moment about Quiet Horror. A sub-genre that seems to mainly concern itself with timid vampires and shy werewolves whose worst crimes would appear to be dropping a thigh bone in the school library or letting one rip during the two minute silence on Remembrance Day. However, the subject of this month’s column is an exponent of anything but Quiet Horror. The work of cover artist, cartoonist and illustrator Bill Alexander is best described as Gibbering, Screaming, In-Your-Face Horror of the highest calibre.

Unless you’re a fan of the now obscure publications put out in the 70s and early 80s by Myron Fass, or a collector of less than salubrious paperbacks from the 50s and 60s, chances are you’ve never heard of Bill Alexander. So, just in case you didn’t know, to my mind, Bill Alexander is the greatest horror-comic cover artist to have ever put blood-soaked brush to gore-stained canvas, even though he has some stiff competition in Lee Elias, Bernard Bailey, L B Cole, Don Heck and Jack Cole.

Alexander’s main claim to this fame comes from the covers he did for a group of titles known as Eerie Publications. These were put out by the aforementioned Myron Fass, a former horror comic artist who became the king of pulp-exploitation quickies and fly-by-night publications. With titles like Weird, Terror Tales, Tales from the Tomb and_Witches Tales_, Eerie Publications magazine were the horror comics equivalent of the gore-ridden grindhouse movies they used to play between porn movies in the 70s ..”

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