Warren

James Warren founded the Warren Publishing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1957. Warren Publishing´s first magazines were FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND an MONSTER WORLD. The editor in chief for both titels was the legendary science fiction/horror grandmaster Forrest J. Ackerman.

FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND was orginally supposed to be a one shot published in 1958, but when it went to it´s second printing Warren and Ackerman decided to continue it. Magazine started when Warren noticed that baby boomer children wathcing old horror movies in television shows that each had a monster host, were actually rooting for the monsters. He wanted to create similar thing in magazine format. The first number sold out in days and later on the magazine had a print run of 200 000 copies.

In 1960 Warren started to publish Help! magazine. It employed many former MAD artists and was edited by Harvey Kurtzman. During it´s five year run, Help! had many collaborators who later on became famous, Terry Gilliam, Gloria Steinem, John Cleese and Woody Allen. It also featured underground comics by Robert Crumb and Gilberts Shelton.

The monster comics Warren published in MONSTER WORLD expanded to two legendary horror comics, CREEPY and EERIE. Warren was able to avert the Comics Code cencorship by claiming that his publication was not in fact a comic, but due to pricing and format a magazine. This was also to protect James Warren from the fate that EC publisher BILL GAINES suffered in front of a Congressional committee.

Warren also published openly anti-war war comic, BLAZING COMBAT in 1965-66. He later said that from everything he published, he was most proud from these four issues. Because of the content of BLAZING COMBAT, the U.S. Army PXs refused to sell it, and when other wholesalers were threatening to drop every WARREN publications from their shelves because of BC, it was ended.

In 1969 Warren launched it´s third classic horror comic, VAMPIRELLA. It was a hit and ment end to a dry season that had followed company´s move to New York and a cash flow problem. During this period Warren also started to use more and more Spanish artists mainly in production of VAMPIRELLA.

In 1971 the company changed it´s name to WARREN COMMUNICATIONS and the orginal company was dissolved. In 1974 Warren started to publish Will Eisner´s legendary THE SPIRIT in magazine format.

In 1983 James Warren declared banckruptcy and the HARRIS PUBLICATIONS bought the companys assets same year. This was followed by a lawsuit that eventually gave back the rights of EERIE and CREEPY to James Warren in 1998.