Weird Worlds was a kid’s horror and fantasy magazine that ran for eight issues from 1978 to 1981. Much like other Scholastic magazines, many issues featured a detachable poster. I would love to scan the whole run, because it’s a great example of the kind of advanced, somewhat esoteric material kids expected at the time. There were stories by sci-fi luminaries like Bradbury and Asimov, features on UFOs and paranormal phenomena, weird and disturbing facts and Forteana, fantasy art portfolios (Frazetta, the Brothers Hildebrandt). I particularly remember the wonderfully graphic comic book strips by Steve Bissette, best known now for illustrating Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing in the ’80s. You can read a few of these strips at The Horrors of It All.
Also check out this Monsters of the Greek Myths poster, a Scholastic giveaway from the same year. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: 1980 was a hell of a year to be a kid.
(Image via Donald Deveau/Flickr)
2 Warps to Neptune 
Oh man, I loved Weird Worlds. I bought it from the premiere issue on. It introduced me to one of my favorite sci fi authors Jack Finney which in turn lead me to a novel by him which became my favorite sci fi novel of all time, “Time and Again”. I can’t believe it only ran 8 issues. What a crime.
Jack Finney! The Body Snatchers!
I remember Weird Worlds! I only had one issue (#7 with Gil Gerard as Buck Rogers and Sam J Jones as Flash Gordon on the cover) and had never seen any other issues before or since.
I probably ordered Weird Worlds because I’d already had the issue of Dynamite that was being offered. (I was a subscriber and usually got my Dynamite before it was offered in the book club order forms.)
I avoided actually reading the magazine for about a year. Despite being in the gifted program in elementary school, I felt that the writing was slightly above my reading level. So I kept setting it aside. However, I kept the magazine and finally read it one boring summer afternoon when my friends were elsewhere and had no arcade money.
You’d think I wouldn’t remember a single issue of a short lived magazine I owned as a kid. But issue 7’s horror comics story about environmentalists and oil companies drilling for oil in a swamp completely freaked me out. And I never forgot it. It was great.
Huh. After a bit of nostalgic web surfing, I’ve come to find that Weird Worlds was intended for the junior high school market. No wonder I had difficulty reading it initially. I was 10 years old and in the 4th grade at the time.
(As for having access to it in the first place, teachers often let gifted program students have the higher level Scholastic order forms.)