Fantastic Fears

Robert Farrell had been kicking around for a while. In the 30's, he cut his teeth writing the popular syndicated newspaper strip Scorchy Smith. It was around this time that he befriended Will Eisner and Jerry Iger, who had just opened their freelance comic book studio. He honed his craft writing stories for them, which subsequently were sold to various outlets.

In 1940, after working as an editor for Fox, he decided to start his own publishing house, Farrell Publications, and started putting out comics in all sorts of genres under different imprints. Ajax is probably the imprint that is most remembered, releasing hero books like the Black Cobra and, in somewhat of a coup, obtaining the rights to Phantom Lady - a character made very popular at Fox, with provocative art provided by Matt Baker, an Eisner/Iger alumnus. Disappointingly, Ajax/Farrell’s four issue run presented a more sanitized version of Phantom Lady, and promptly ceased production. But we are getting ahead of ourselves…

The area that Farrell really cooked in was the horror genre, and in the late 40’s - early 50’s produced the high-quality, much beloved titles Haunted Thrills, Strange Fantasy, and Fantastic Fears.

The stories and art for these titles were for the most part supplied by the S.M. Iger Shop (the name which Jerry Iger was operating under after the departure of Will Eisner). Unfortunately, although very top-notch, well done material, the Iger Shop material was notorious for not including any credits - leaving readers and scholars to study and speculate as to who actually wrote and drew particular stories.

However, it is highly suspected, and in some cases confirmed, that artists such as Robert Webb, Myron Fass, Howard Nostrand and Jack Abel did contribute to Fantastic Fears.

Most notably, this title - and Ajax/Farrell - will forever be known as the book and the publisher that gave a very young Steve Ditko his first published work, in the January 1954 issue (#5), with a macabre 5-page story titled “Stretching Things,” written by Bruce Hamilton. This is an extremely collectible issue, for as we know, Ditko went on to practically revolutionize the comic book industry with his groundbreaking work for Marvel a few years later…

Many of the covers of the Ajax horror books are particularly revolting, with an editorial leaning toward the liberal use of skeletons; hooded skeletons nailing a still-alive man into a coffin, a skeleton swami manipulating two snakes with human heads, a skeleton puppeteer with human skeleton puppets, even a skeleton werewolf! All told, 5 covers out of the 9 issues of Fantastic Fears featured images of skeletons (it’s parent book, Haunted Thrills, featured skeletons on the covers on 10 of its 18 issues).

All of Farrell’s horror titles fell victim to The Senate Subcommittee On Juvenile Delinquency’s crackdown on graphic content, and ceased publication months before the Comics Code Authority “rules” went into effect in the spring of 1955.

Farrell’s “pre-code” horror titles are revered by aficionados of that genre, and trade hands on the collectors marketplace for big money!