Strange Fantasy #1

History

The series was published under the Ajax-Farrell imprint, one of several corporate names operated by founder Robert W. Farrell through his company Excellent Publications; the books typically carried an Ajax logo alongside the words 'A Farrell Publication.' All editorial and art production was handled by the S.M. Iger Studio — Jerry Iger serving as art director — with Ruth Roche credited as editor and Iger as art editor on later issues, and script contributors including Bruce Hamilton. The title grew directly from the publisher's single-issue science-fiction comic Rocketman (June 1952), whose numbering Strange Fantasy inherited, creating a catalog discrepancy — some databases list Strange Fantasy as beginning with issue #1, others as #2 — that has never been definitively resolved across collector references. Later in the run, a then-unknown Steve Ditko contributed art pages, an early professional credit for the artist before his work at Atlas and eventually Marvel.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Cover-dated October 1952 and published by Ajax-Farrell (Excellent Publications), with the series running bi-monthly until October/November 1954.
• The entire series was produced by the S.M. Iger Studio, giving all 13–14 issues a unified house style consistent with the rest of Farrell's horror line.
• Strange Fantasy #1 is a 36-page, 10-cent anthology containing multiple short horror and adventure strips per issue, typically four long comic strips plus a two-page prose story.
• Issue #1's cover depicted a Mad Scientist in his laboratory; early story content included 'The Captain Who Wouldn't Die!' and 'Primitive Peril!' — the latter a story reprinted from Ellery Queen #1, in which crash survivors must outwit captors using their knowledge of an upcoming solar eclipse.
• The series was one of four horror anthology titles Farrell published simultaneously: Fantastic Fears, Haunted Thrills, Strange Fantasy, and Voodoo — all produced by the Iger Shop.
• Steve Ditko contributed art to issues during the run, representing some of his earliest professional published work in comics before his later prominence at Atlas/Marvel.
• The series folded in 1954, a direct casualty of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency's campaign against horror comics that led to the adoption of the Comics Code Authority.
• Stories from the series were later reprinted by Eerie Publications across the 1970s and again by IDW/Yoe Books in their Haunted Horror reprint series in the 2010s, as well as collected in hardcover by PS Art Books in their Pre-Code Classics line.