Rock Bottom Comics: The Pirana!
Phew. The Pirana only appeared twice, in two issues of THRILL-O-RAMA (both in 1966) but there was also this promo for him. Harvey had tried super-hero strips and horror before (the original Black Cat remains a favorite of mine), but by the 1960s the company had settled into the comfortable rut of titles like RICHIE RICH and LITTLE DOT, which always put money in the bank and never caused controversy. But then there was that nationwide Campmania inspired by the BATMAN TV show, and the newsstands groaned under a flood of shoddy hastily rushed-out comics. Almost anything with super-heroes sold for a while, no matter how poor it was,
Harvey put out a few anthology titles with a variety of features in each one. The main stars weren't what you could call good (Jack "Quick" Frost, the ice-throwing secret agent), but some of the back-up strips were reprints from the 1950s with art by Al Williamson or Simon and Kirby. Some of the new material had art by Gil Kane or Wally Wood. So sinking a quarter for an issue of UNEARTHLY SPECTACULARS was not necessarily a bad idea.
Art here is by Jack Sparling, whose finished style always seemed to me to be like the quick doodles that artists do for fans at conventions.
I don't suppose we're likely to see a huge-budget film of the Pirana, directed by James Cameron and starring Ryan Reynolds *ACK*, but I've been wrong before.