Chas was among the early wave of underground mini-comics publishers, during the Clay Geerdes era, before mini-comics were so essential to the post-underground comix scenes in the 1980s. Chas was working with comix distributor George DiCaprio and their amigos on titles like Spaz Comix and Mighty High Comix. He self-published most of his work prior to his 1980s relationship with FantaCo.
Before his FantaCo years, Chas had the seminal The Connoisseur’s Guide to the Contemporary Horror Film under his belt, along with The Gore Score and the first issue of Deep Red (self-published with Chris Amouroux). FantaCo did well as one of Chas’s distributors, hustling copies of all Chas’s horror movie books via FantaCo’s growing mail-order outlet and major ad presence in Fangoria. Horror Holocaust was the first of Chas’s book FantaCo published, which led to Deep Red continuing and briefly flourishing, culminating in the Deep Red Alert and The Deep Red Horror Handbook. It was the Fantaco run on Deep Red that first brought Chas and I together, via my submitting capsule reviews to his excellent, attitude-packed zine. Chas was the first editor to cultivate my writing skills, and for that I owe him for life.
That said, Chas always found comics somewhat – daunting. “I tell you though, after I realized how long it took to draw a comic, that sort of turned me off to whole experience,” Chas says. “It took way, way too long. And comic books never pay dick. I’ve talked to Bernie Wrightson and he said, ‘Chas., I felt like I was really smoking if I could just ink a page a day.’ And at a time when people were paying between $40 and $100 a page… I mean jeeze! You might as well go mow lawns or wash cars or something! Drawing is just too hard. And there’s no way to do it quickly…”. That’s what Chas told John Szpunar on the Barrel Entertainment site
Taken from Steven Bissettes Gore Shriek Memories blog post: Link
IMDB Page: Link
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