The Image of the Beast

(Last Gasp, 1973, 1979)
™ and © Last Gasp Publishing

Before there was Verotika, there were underground comics like this one to scare you out of having sex. Based on a novel by classic science fiction and horror writer Philip Jose Farmer, this creepy story begins with police detective Herald Childe watching a tape of his partner engaging in sex that results in his sickening and brutal murder, and it doesn’t get much cheerier from there. As Childe fights to get to the bottom of the mystery, he runs afoul of vampires, ghosts, wolves, and possibly even creatures from a parallel universe. Along the way there are several more sexual encounters, many of which turn out only marginally better than the one that opens the story.

It’s hard to imagine Farmer’s novel being much less pleasant than this adaptation, and the textured black-and-white artwork by “Grisly” is appropriately intense and gruesome. Published by Last Gasp.

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Notes

Writer

Artist

#1

October, 1973
Cover Price: $0.75
1 copy available for $34.98

Tim Boxell

#1 (2nd Printing Cover)

March, 1979
Cover Price: $1.25
2 copies available from $24.95

Philip José Farmer

Grisly, Tim Boxell