Comic Book Cats, number 187: Eerie #10 cover drawn by A. C. Hollingsworth, published by Avon Periodicals in December 1952.
Eeerie was a horror anthology that ran for 17 issues. The first issue was a one-shot published in January 1947, and the next 16 issues were released between May 1951 and July 1954. As with a great deal of material from the Golden Age of comic books, quite a bit of the work that was published in this series ran without credits. Fortunately this cover is signed by the artist, A. C. Hollingsworth.
This bizarre cover features a weird green, um, thing and a scantily clad beautiful woman riding through a dank cave on the back of a giant black cat. This cover came to my attention when it appeared on the Comic Swipes group. The green guy and the general composition were taken from the cover artwork for Avon Fantasy Reader #2, which was published in April 1947. That cover artist is unidentified, although it has been suggested that the style of it is similar to A. R. Tilburne. Whatever the case, the giant black cat itself appears to be the work of Hollingsworth himself.
Alvin C. Hollingsworth was born on February 25, 1928 in Harlem, New York City to West Indian immigrants. Hollingsworth was one of the earliest African American artists to work in the comic book industry. At the young age of 12 he was already an art assistant on Cat-Man Comics for Holyoke Publishing. Hollingsworth attended the High School of Music & Art in Manhattan. He worked on comic books in a number of genres in the 1940s and early 50s. The mid 1950s saw him working on several comic strips.
After leaving comic books Hollingsworth went into fine art painting. He was involved in the Civil Rights movement. Hollingsworth also taught at his alma mater the High School of Music & Art in the 1960s and at Hostos Community College from 1980 to 1998. He passed away in July 2000 at the age of 72.
Eerie #10 and the other issues in the series can be read on the public domain comic book website Comic Book Plus.
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