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James Warren, Empire of Monsters: The Man Behind Creepy, Vampirella. SC edition.
In Empire of Monsters, the award-winning biographer Bill Schelly digs beneath the hype and myth-making to tell the true story of James Warren, one of the 20th century’s most influential and independent publishers. Featuring numerous eye-opening, often outrageous anecdotes about the colorful, larger-than-life figure, this book covers Warren’s childhood in the slums of south Philadelphia, a traumatic military injury during the Korean War, the hardscrabble origins of Warren Publishing, its great success and ignominious end — as well as his reemergence on the public scene in the 1990s, and the lawsuit to regain ownership of his literary properties.
For this impeccably researched biography, Schelly offers insight from new interviews with Warren’s colleagues, editors, and friends, augmented by unpublished interviews gathered in past years with Frank Frazetta, Archie Goodwin, Al Williamson, Bill DuBay, Tom Sutton, Bernie Wrightson, Richard Corben, and Warren himself.
Originally published in 2019, Empire of Monsters quickly sold out. Fantagraphics is pleased to make this groundbreaking biography of one of comics’ central historical figures available again in an affordable paperback edition.
For this impeccably researched biography, Schelly offers insight from new interviews with Warren’s colleagues, editors, and friends, augmented by unpublished interviews gathered in past years with Frank Frazetta, Archie Goodwin, Al Williamson, Bill DuBay, Tom Sutton, Bernie Wrightson, Richard Corben, and Warren himself.
Originally published in 2019, Empire of Monsters quickly sold out. Fantagraphics is pleased to make this groundbreaking biography of one of comics’ central historical figures available again in an affordable paperback edition.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2019
7 people are currently reading
234 people want to read
About the author
Bill Schelly
45 books21 followersBILL SCHELLY is the Eisner Award-winning author of HARVEY KURTZMAN, THE MAN WHO CREATED MAD AND REVOLUTIONIZED HUMOR IN AMERICA, voted Best Comics-Related Book of 2015. He began researching the history of comic fandom in 1991, resulting in the book The Golden Age of Comic Fandom (1995), then became associate editor of Alter Ego magazine, a post he holds to the present day. Schelly has written several biographies of film and comics artists, including movie comedian Harry Langdon and comic book scribe Otto Binder, co-creator of Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. In 2008, he authored Man of Rock, a biography of celebrated comics writer-artist Joe Kubert. Schelly's American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1950’S (2013) was nominated for a Harvey Award. He has received acclaim as the premier historian of comic fandom, and perhaps the top biographer of comic book creators.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
July 15, 2019
Having been a huge comics fan,growing up during the Warren era,and also just finishing Terry Gilliam's biography,this book was of enormous interest to me.Warren was quite the entrepreneur and a personality to boot.Gloria Steinem worked on Help!,a Mad magazine knockoff.Warren was/is a smart aggressive businessman,kind and ruthless at different times.While reading this book,I spent a lot of time lamenting that my mother threw out all my original Marvel comics and Creepy and Eerie magazines.
October 23, 2019
My first issue of Famous Monsters was #169 (dated November 1980) with that delicious Basil Gogos cover painting of Norman Bates' mother! I was definitely a latecomer to that magazine which ended in 1983 and would have only been 7 years old when that issue came out, but I was a fan nonetheless! I also have memories of my mother buying me issues of Creepy and Eerie off the racks at our local grocery store.
This book was a fascinating journey through the history of Warren Publishing. As mentioned, I loved the magazines but knew nothing of the overall story of the company. This book was a fascinating and quite readable journey through the company's ups and downs and the people involved.
Great fun and well worth the read! Highly recommended.
FYI: Warren Publishing Archive: https://archive.org/details/warrenpub...
This book was a fascinating journey through the history of Warren Publishing. As mentioned, I loved the magazines but knew nothing of the overall story of the company. This book was a fascinating and quite readable journey through the company's ups and downs and the people involved.
Great fun and well worth the read! Highly recommended.
FYI: Warren Publishing Archive: https://archive.org/details/warrenpub...
September 7, 2021
In September 1957, Forrest "Forry" J Ackerman spent a few days in New York City on his way home from the World Science Fiction Convention in London. He didn't often get to Manhattan, so he wanted to take advantage of the stopover to do a little business (he was the agent for about one hundred authors) and meet some people. One of those persons was James Warren, who had published some of Ackerman's work in the last issue of After Hours.
James Warren was publisher of horror magazines in his youth. Read about the rise and fall of Warren Publishing in New York. Many comic book artists worked for Warren, such as Carmine Infantino, who was fired from DC Comics. Sometimes Roy Thomas would help around... Even Will Eisner, who in the 1940s created The Spirit.
In 1969, just as his business was sinking, he came up with a heroine that is still around today in comic books: Vampirella.
Nearly a decade later, he fell into a depression
Originally, I was told that she first appeared in a magazine back in 1969... Fortunately, nowadays I see her in comics, sometimes crossovers.
Speaking of Vampi, she should team-up with Harley Quinn (DC Comics).
July 2, 2019
A co-worker of mine loaned me this book to read and I am very grateful he did. Jim Warren was some kind of guy. On one hand he was generous, a consummate businessman and perhaps his own worst enemy and on the other hand he was a son of a gun who made some bad decisions and often let his ego get the best of him.
But the publishing business is a cutthroat one and Warren had to crack some eggs in his time in order to achieve perfection.
Filled with great pictures, quotes, and history the book covers it all and was very hard to put down.
The quote of the book is "And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars" from Dante via author William Styron.
But the publishing business is a cutthroat one and Warren had to crack some eggs in his time in order to achieve perfection.
Filled with great pictures, quotes, and history the book covers it all and was very hard to put down.
The quote of the book is "And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars" from Dante via author William Styron.
September 10, 2019
Bill Schelly's book chronicles the life of publisher James Warren, whose magazines like Famous Monsters Of Filmland, Creepy, Eerie, Monster World, Blazing Combat, and Vampirella changed the face of popular culture and the history of cinema, made a household name of Forrest J Ackerman, and helped shape the view of comic books as an art form. Warren was an artist, copy writer, inventive business man, advertising innovator, and his magazines were a showcase for some of the most original artwork and stories from the 1960's into the late 1980's. He was a controversial and complicated figure and this biography tackles him in all his complexity. A valuable contribution to the history of film and popular culture. - BH.
December 13, 2025
An interesting, thorough look at an era and branch of the comics world that had a major impact on the industry starting in the late ‘60s, but which I knew little about.
March 26, 2019
Just finished Bill Schelly's James Warren: Empire of Monsters. Let me put it this way. There are books I tend to dawdle over and books I have trouble putting down, once I start reading them, because something about them, maybe it's the style or the content or it's just the nature of the beast, so to speak, keeps my eyes glued to their pages. Schelly's book reached out and glued my eyes to its pages.
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May 2, 2019
Movies, music, comic books… There is something fascinating about the forms of popular culture which inflame our passion when we are young and, perhaps, remain a source of obsession. The magazines and comics produced by Jim Warren’s publishing company didn’t play that role for me, but they could have. I loved the old horror movies, and I was, for a while, a devoted reader of a magazine no doubt inspired by Warren’s - The House of Hammer. My awareness of Warren’s magazines was slight. I remember browsing through a copy of Creepy or Eerie. The titles were familiar to me, but I’m pretty sure I never bought it or read a whole issue. Reading this book about Warren and the literary monsters he brought to life in his laboratory has increased my enthusiasm to immerse myself in his output. This is very easy today as you can read many of his comics and other magazines on-line at Archive.org.
The event which really sparked off Warren’s dream of becoming a magazine publisher was the appearance of the first issue of Playboy in 1953. Hugh Hefner had come out of nowhere to revolutionise American culture with a magazine he reputedly pasted together on his kitchen table. In 1957, Warren tried to imitate him with a short-lived girlie magazine called After Hours. This led to him being indicted for obscenity along with the publishers of many other such magazines. It was thrown out of court, but caused him significant embarrassment. While horror rather than sex would become his stock in trade, he would continue to aspire to the Hefner playboy lifestyle. Hugh, however, would not have needed to put a personal ad looking for a sex partner in Al Goldstein’s Screw, something Jim Warren did, using the same reply address that kids were writing to to order their monster masks.
Like any great entrepreneur, Jim Warren saw an unmet need and set out to fill it. Someone had come up with the idea of broadcasting the classic Universal monster movies on television as part of a regular show called Shock Theater. Suddenly, children were discovering the appeal of the creatures who had scared their parents twenty years before in the cinema. Warren came across a French film magazine which had republished stills from these movies and that gave him the idea of doing something similar for the U.S. market. Forrest J. Ackerman, a collector of film memorabilia and agent for many of America’s great science fiction authors, had contributed some writing to After Hours. He was an inexhaustible source of film stills. He was also an inexhaustible source of really bad puns. Together they created a magazine called Famous Monsters of Filmland in 1958.
Monsters weren’t just a source of scary thrills for the readers of the magazine. Young readers would identify with the monsters. Like Frankenstein’s creation, they were misunderstood residents in a world which didn’t accept them, because they were different.
Warren had lots of dramas dealing with unscrupulous distributors, but it was not only newsstand sales which provided the magazine’s income. He created a mail order business called Captain Company whose ads took up a number of pages in each issue. They sold posters, masks, model kits, and much more.
Once he had found success with Famous Monsters, it was time to branch out. He made a brief attempt to do for westerns what he had done for horror films with the magazine Wildest Westerns, which made comical use of stills from western movies. Fellow film fan Sam Sherman, who would later go on to found Independent-International Pictures and produce films like Satan’s Sadists (1969) (dir. Al Adamson) and Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971) (dir. Al Adamson), took on the job of editing the magazine. As a serious western fan, he insisted that it take a more respectful approach. All the same it didn’t last long.
Meanwhile, Warren teamed up with Harvey Kurtzmann, the man who created Mad, to create a humour magazine called Help! Rather than being a Mad-style comic, this new title used photographs with captions and dialogue balloons to express anarchic humour, often sending up political leaders. Future feminist leader Gloria Steinem got her start in the media working for Kurtzmann on Help! It wasn’t a big seller, but it published some of Robert Crumb’s earliest work, including an appearance by Fritz the Cat. Terry Gilliam and John Cleese would also each do some work for Help! before later teaming up in Monty Python. Warren would continue with this unprofitable project for a number of years because he believed in the quality of the work Kurtzmann and the others were doing with it.
While these projects didn't pay off commercially, Warren would achieve a major success with his first entry into the world of comics. Creepy began in 1964. A company called E.C. had had tremendous success with horror comics in the 1950s, but their gruesome and anti-authoritarian stories had helped to inspire strict censorship of the medium with the establishment of the Comics Code. Because Warren was working in the larger magazine format he wasn’t bound by the Comics Code, but his idea was to bring together some of the artists who had made their name at E.C., along with newer talents, to produce a black and white horror comic which emphasised monsters and spookiness rather than the gore which which attracted so much criticism to E.C.’s colour comics. Creepy was so successful that it was joined by Eerie at the end of the following year.
E.C. had also had great success with the war comics Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, so Warren decided, in 1965, to create a comic in a similar vein - Blazing Combat. Warren was fascinated by the phenomena of war and military strategy, but he also realised that war was hell and a terrible waste of human life. American military involvement in Vietnam had just begun and Warren did not think it was a good idea. His comic magazine brought to life tales of war from different historical periods, but the stories related to combat in Vietnam concentrated on the moral ambiguities and devastating impact on the lives of the local civilians. Army-bases refused to carry the title and a prominent member of the fan community accused those behind it of “contempt for humanity.” It only lasted four issues, but Warren had not given up on his anti-Vietnam stance. From 1970 to 1972, Warren carried a full-page advertisement in his magazines in the form of a letter to the President of the United States and members of congress protesting against the continuation of the war. Earlier he had turned down full-page advertising offers from cigarette companies and instead carried a half-page anti-smoking ad written by his editor and chief writer Archie Goodwin and illustrated by legendary fantasy artist Frank Frazetta (who painted many covers for Warren publications).
Warren’s last great creation was Vampirella, a sexy vampire from the planet Drakulon, who was inspired by Barbarella, as portrayed by Jane Fonda in the 1968 film of that title directed by Roger Vadim. She wasn’t the only inspiration though. Warren insisted that the sexy vamp have a face which resembled his childhood sweetheart. Vampirella first appeared in 1969. The magazine would feature one Vampirella story supported by several more stories similar to those in Creepy and Eerie.
Bill Schelly has done a great job of paying tribute to the Warren phenomena. He explains how the magazines came together, the financial struggles, the personal conflicts and the friendships. And, along the way, he highlights what he feels were particularly fine stories in the comics, something which will be very useful to those wishing to sample some of the magic. There are also plenty of amusing anecdotes about the craziness of working for Warren, including wild practical jokes and two FBI investigations. It’s a fascinating read which is sure to speak to your inner monster.
The event which really sparked off Warren’s dream of becoming a magazine publisher was the appearance of the first issue of Playboy in 1953. Hugh Hefner had come out of nowhere to revolutionise American culture with a magazine he reputedly pasted together on his kitchen table. In 1957, Warren tried to imitate him with a short-lived girlie magazine called After Hours. This led to him being indicted for obscenity along with the publishers of many other such magazines. It was thrown out of court, but caused him significant embarrassment. While horror rather than sex would become his stock in trade, he would continue to aspire to the Hefner playboy lifestyle. Hugh, however, would not have needed to put a personal ad looking for a sex partner in Al Goldstein’s Screw, something Jim Warren did, using the same reply address that kids were writing to to order their monster masks.
Like any great entrepreneur, Jim Warren saw an unmet need and set out to fill it. Someone had come up with the idea of broadcasting the classic Universal monster movies on television as part of a regular show called Shock Theater. Suddenly, children were discovering the appeal of the creatures who had scared their parents twenty years before in the cinema. Warren came across a French film magazine which had republished stills from these movies and that gave him the idea of doing something similar for the U.S. market. Forrest J. Ackerman, a collector of film memorabilia and agent for many of America’s great science fiction authors, had contributed some writing to After Hours. He was an inexhaustible source of film stills. He was also an inexhaustible source of really bad puns. Together they created a magazine called Famous Monsters of Filmland in 1958.
Monsters weren’t just a source of scary thrills for the readers of the magazine. Young readers would identify with the monsters. Like Frankenstein’s creation, they were misunderstood residents in a world which didn’t accept them, because they were different.
Warren had lots of dramas dealing with unscrupulous distributors, but it was not only newsstand sales which provided the magazine’s income. He created a mail order business called Captain Company whose ads took up a number of pages in each issue. They sold posters, masks, model kits, and much more.
Once he had found success with Famous Monsters, it was time to branch out. He made a brief attempt to do for westerns what he had done for horror films with the magazine Wildest Westerns, which made comical use of stills from western movies. Fellow film fan Sam Sherman, who would later go on to found Independent-International Pictures and produce films like Satan’s Sadists (1969) (dir. Al Adamson) and Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971) (dir. Al Adamson), took on the job of editing the magazine. As a serious western fan, he insisted that it take a more respectful approach. All the same it didn’t last long.
Meanwhile, Warren teamed up with Harvey Kurtzmann, the man who created Mad, to create a humour magazine called Help! Rather than being a Mad-style comic, this new title used photographs with captions and dialogue balloons to express anarchic humour, often sending up political leaders. Future feminist leader Gloria Steinem got her start in the media working for Kurtzmann on Help! It wasn’t a big seller, but it published some of Robert Crumb’s earliest work, including an appearance by Fritz the Cat. Terry Gilliam and John Cleese would also each do some work for Help! before later teaming up in Monty Python. Warren would continue with this unprofitable project for a number of years because he believed in the quality of the work Kurtzmann and the others were doing with it.
While these projects didn't pay off commercially, Warren would achieve a major success with his first entry into the world of comics. Creepy began in 1964. A company called E.C. had had tremendous success with horror comics in the 1950s, but their gruesome and anti-authoritarian stories had helped to inspire strict censorship of the medium with the establishment of the Comics Code. Because Warren was working in the larger magazine format he wasn’t bound by the Comics Code, but his idea was to bring together some of the artists who had made their name at E.C., along with newer talents, to produce a black and white horror comic which emphasised monsters and spookiness rather than the gore which which attracted so much criticism to E.C.’s colour comics. Creepy was so successful that it was joined by Eerie at the end of the following year.
E.C. had also had great success with the war comics Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, so Warren decided, in 1965, to create a comic in a similar vein - Blazing Combat. Warren was fascinated by the phenomena of war and military strategy, but he also realised that war was hell and a terrible waste of human life. American military involvement in Vietnam had just begun and Warren did not think it was a good idea. His comic magazine brought to life tales of war from different historical periods, but the stories related to combat in Vietnam concentrated on the moral ambiguities and devastating impact on the lives of the local civilians. Army-bases refused to carry the title and a prominent member of the fan community accused those behind it of “contempt for humanity.” It only lasted four issues, but Warren had not given up on his anti-Vietnam stance. From 1970 to 1972, Warren carried a full-page advertisement in his magazines in the form of a letter to the President of the United States and members of congress protesting against the continuation of the war. Earlier he had turned down full-page advertising offers from cigarette companies and instead carried a half-page anti-smoking ad written by his editor and chief writer Archie Goodwin and illustrated by legendary fantasy artist Frank Frazetta (who painted many covers for Warren publications).
Warren’s last great creation was Vampirella, a sexy vampire from the planet Drakulon, who was inspired by Barbarella, as portrayed by Jane Fonda in the 1968 film of that title directed by Roger Vadim. She wasn’t the only inspiration though. Warren insisted that the sexy vamp have a face which resembled his childhood sweetheart. Vampirella first appeared in 1969. The magazine would feature one Vampirella story supported by several more stories similar to those in Creepy and Eerie.
Bill Schelly has done a great job of paying tribute to the Warren phenomena. He explains how the magazines came together, the financial struggles, the personal conflicts and the friendships. And, along the way, he highlights what he feels were particularly fine stories in the comics, something which will be very useful to those wishing to sample some of the magic. There are also plenty of amusing anecdotes about the craziness of working for Warren, including wild practical jokes and two FBI investigations. It’s a fascinating read which is sure to speak to your inner monster.
April 5, 2019
Highly entertaining bio of the Warren Publishing impresario, who made my nerdish adolescence that much more fun.
May 8, 2023
It's probably odd that I not only read this book, but I devoured it. I've never been a big horror fan (though I do love the Universal Monsters). I've only ever read a handful of Warren magazines over the years. They were obviously still being published while I was a young comics fan, but I never purchased any at the time. I seldom ventured beyond the spinner rack to the magazine stand. And on the rare occasion that I did I ended up with a Marvel mag (and one issue of Heavy Metal). Now I did have a nearly full run of mid to late 70s Mad Magazine and a fair number of issues of Cracked, but those all came from garage sales. I don't recall ever seeing a Warren magazine at a yard sale. Or maybe I did and I didn't pick them up. And I had and read the Warren issue of Comic Book Artist. How much more did I need to know? Quite a bit it turns out.
I had read Schelly's bios of Joe Kubert and of Otto Binder and they were both very good. And there's no doubt that Warren was not just an important publisher but also an iconoclast. Really the only successful comics publisher to start up in the era between the implementation of the Comics Code and the rise of the direct market. Obviously Warren did it different. He started out by cashing in on the "monster craze" of the late 50s and 60s with Famous Monsters of Filmland. He then bypassed the spinner rack and went to the magazine stand with something that wasn't already there, and that couldn't be put on a spinner because of the CCA. Creepy and Eerie harkened back to the EC days with short horror stories, many of them, in the beginning, by EC artists. Blazing Combat, even though it only lasted four issues, is still one of, if not the, best American war comics ever. Vampirella was a phenomenon for a while. I don't think that it's unreasonable to say that the Warren publications certainly influenced the underground comic movement, particularly considering Gilbert Shelton and R. Crumb both had work in Warren and Harvey Kurtzman's Help! magazine.
This is the story of the success of a small-businessman who built a publishing business and was a true eccentric. And as long as Jim Warren was interested in the business it survived and frequently thrived. And when he lost interest, apparently through a combination of different interests and mental health issues, it quickly died. It's a story well worth telling in depth and Schelly does it very well.
I had read Schelly's bios of Joe Kubert and of Otto Binder and they were both very good. And there's no doubt that Warren was not just an important publisher but also an iconoclast. Really the only successful comics publisher to start up in the era between the implementation of the Comics Code and the rise of the direct market. Obviously Warren did it different. He started out by cashing in on the "monster craze" of the late 50s and 60s with Famous Monsters of Filmland. He then bypassed the spinner rack and went to the magazine stand with something that wasn't already there, and that couldn't be put on a spinner because of the CCA. Creepy and Eerie harkened back to the EC days with short horror stories, many of them, in the beginning, by EC artists. Blazing Combat, even though it only lasted four issues, is still one of, if not the, best American war comics ever. Vampirella was a phenomenon for a while. I don't think that it's unreasonable to say that the Warren publications certainly influenced the underground comic movement, particularly considering Gilbert Shelton and R. Crumb both had work in Warren and Harvey Kurtzman's Help! magazine.
This is the story of the success of a small-businessman who built a publishing business and was a true eccentric. And as long as Jim Warren was interested in the business it survived and frequently thrived. And when he lost interest, apparently through a combination of different interests and mental health issues, it quickly died. It's a story well worth telling in depth and Schelly does it very well.
October 21, 2022
An outstanding biography of a complicated individual. Ultimately, I wish it was a little more focused on James Warren instead of his publishing company, but I don't know if that's even possible when you're writing about someone this inscrutable.
The other thing I was hoping it would contain was literally any information about Billy Graham, Warren's art director around the launch of VAMPIRELLA and one of the only Black creators working in mainstream comics at the time. How did he find him? Did he feel like it was a big deal hiring him? Given how badly Warren took it when someone left for a competitor, how did he feel about Graham jumping to Marvel to work on LUKE CAGE, HERO FOR HIRE? It seems like there must have been some interesting anecdotes about any of this, but Graham is literally only mentioned a couple of times in passing, and I don't think it's ever noted that he was Black.
But these are minor quibbles. I sat down with this book Thursday morning, and I finished it before lunch on Friday. It's a tremendously valuable account of an underappreciated figure in comics history — and it's a very smooth read.
The other thing I was hoping it would contain was literally any information about Billy Graham, Warren's art director around the launch of VAMPIRELLA and one of the only Black creators working in mainstream comics at the time. How did he find him? Did he feel like it was a big deal hiring him? Given how badly Warren took it when someone left for a competitor, how did he feel about Graham jumping to Marvel to work on LUKE CAGE, HERO FOR HIRE? It seems like there must have been some interesting anecdotes about any of this, but Graham is literally only mentioned a couple of times in passing, and I don't think it's ever noted that he was Black.
But these are minor quibbles. I sat down with this book Thursday morning, and I finished it before lunch on Friday. It's a tremendously valuable account of an underappreciated figure in comics history — and it's a very smooth read.
February 23, 2026
I've always been as interested in the business and economics of comic book publishing as I have been in comic books themselves, so this lively biography of James Warren, whose horror comics empire revolutionised the American comics industry in the early 1960s, was especially fascinating. Warren himself is described in the book as the comics industry's equivalent of Sammy Glick (protagonist of What Makes Sammy Run, by Budd Schulberg), and it's a pretty apt description - he was fast-moving, ambitious, sometimes mercurial, and a consummate dealmaker equipped with a keen understanding of popular tastes. I grew up reading years-old copies of Warren's stable of horror magazines - Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, 1994, The Rook, et al - and Warren's ability to marshal the best editors, writers and artists to produce some of their best work for him attests to his publishing acumen. Schelly's biography draws on lots of previously unpublished material which gives us an insightful portrait of a man who spent much of his life showing different sides of his personality even to those closest to him. Highly recommended to fans of horror literature, comic-book fans, and pop culture enthusiasts alike.
March 8, 2021
An entertaining and sometimes fascinating biography of James Warren, the publisher who gave us Famous Monsters of Filmland, Eerie, Creepy and Vampirella. Warren himself is an interesting and talented man--he had an often P.T. Barnum-esque personality and was sometimes charming and friendly, sometimes angry and ill-tempered and often letting his ego get the best of him.
The book also gives us a really neat look into the business of magazine and comic book publishing in the 1950s through the 1980s, with the rise of direct marketing, comic book stores and changing tastes throwing Warren Publishing into bankruptcy in the early '80s. But before that happened, James Warren and his talented staff gave us magazines containing superb graphic storytelling and--with Famous Monsters of Filmland--providing many of us who were nerdy kids with some wonderful childhood memories.
The book also gives us a really neat look into the business of magazine and comic book publishing in the 1950s through the 1980s, with the rise of direct marketing, comic book stores and changing tastes throwing Warren Publishing into bankruptcy in the early '80s. But before that happened, James Warren and his talented staff gave us magazines containing superb graphic storytelling and--with Famous Monsters of Filmland--providing many of us who were nerdy kids with some wonderful childhood memories.
December 7, 2019
Impeccably well written and researched biography of mercurial personality and creative force James Warren and his influential pop culture publishing empire. A book that grabs you from the opening paragraph and is user-friendly for anyone interested in comics, horror and “famous monsters.” While legends such as Frank Frazetta, Steve Ditko, Berni Wrightson, Archie Goodwin and Forrest J. Ackerman are given their share of the story at hand, the man who holds it together is Warren. Author Bill Schelly crafted one of the must read books of 2019 for genre fans. and with his untimely passing this year, a great final piece of work. Highest Recommendation!
October 27, 2023
I was really looking forward to this book and I hate to say it but I was a little let down. I'm not sure what I was expecting but I found it to be a bit dull, I like a lot of Warren's accomplishment but the story of it just seems to kinda be like well he liked monsters so he made a magazine about them then he made some comic books, sometimes people would quit or be fired. If you really want to hear about the fine minutia of publishing then it might be interesting but I was kind of bored throughout it. On the plus side though I have been getting into a lot of Creepy and Eerie comics and they're great!
December 8, 2023
This is about as niche as biographies get. James Warren was a publisher of magazines from the 60s to the 80s, most notably Famous Monsters of Film Land, Creepy and Eerie. He seems to have led an interesting life but you don't get that much information about that here, as he was a pretty private person. Instead, most of the book is taken up with a history of the magazines he published. Now, if you're a fan of comics and grew up reading these magazines, like I did, you will probably find this book to be fairly interesting. But if you have no knowledge or interest in comics or horror movies, then you will probably not much here to keep you interested.
June 7, 2019
This is a fascinating book. If you have any interest in any of the Warren magazines like Famous Monsters, Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, etc. this is required reading. It takes you from Jim Warren's early life to the rise and fall of his publishing empire and his life afterwards. The behind the scenes stories are great. Reading about what went on behind the scenes to produce these classic magazines gives you a whole new perspective on the writers, artists, and the characters and stories they created.
July 28, 2019
As someone who read Warren Magazines as a kid growing up in the sixties, this was a fascinating and nostalgic book for me. I loved the illustrations and photos scattered throughout the book. Bill Schelly's has done job in researching Jim Warren and his publishing company. My favorite Warren magazine was Blazing Combat. Bill Schelly provides the answer to why there were only four issues. This a must read for anyone who was fan of Famous Monsters of Filmland, Creepy, Eerie, Blazing Combat, etc.
May 15, 2019
I admit it. FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND was an important part of my childhood. VAMPIRELLA was a big factor in my adolescence. Now we have this book that documents not only James Warren, but the artists, writers, editors, and others who made the magazines that were an important part of pop culture before it all became corporate intellectual property. It wasn't all DC and Marvel. This is an important chunk of history.
August 10, 2019
interesting look at the history of the creators and publishers of Famous Monsters, Creepy and many other popular magazines under the Warren label. Lots of interviews, testimonials and excerpts form various interviews are showcased here along with some full color reproductions of popular covers.
An enjoyable look at the history of popular magazines.
An enjoyable look at the history of popular magazines.
September 30, 2025
Just finished the biography of James Warren, Empire of Monsters, by Bill Schelly, the editor and creator of Famous Monsters of Filmland, Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella. Its an awesome read, from his youth abd military service to how he discovered writers and artists and created fundational texts for us monster kids. A must if you’re a fan
May 29, 2023
Any devotee of Warren Publishing's output needs to read this book. It is a surprisingly engaging read due to the superior writing skills of it's author, Bill Schelly, who breathes a great deal of life into what could have been a very boring tome about an arcane subject.
March 11, 2024
If you're a fan of monsters, comics, and publishing history, do yourself a favor and read this bio of James Warren. Thoroughly enjoyable insights and very cool to learn how many famous writers and artists passed through the doors of Warren Publishing over the years.
April 21, 2025
Bill Schelly was such a good comic book historian. This came out only a few years after his passing. I really liked the way he told the story of im Warren and Warren magazines. You get a sense of the hustle needed to put out a line of comic magazines.
January 19, 2019
review forthcoming.
April 18, 2019
Well-written & well-researched book about an enigmatic pop culture icon.
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December 8, 2019Full review: https://supermonsternovels.com/2019/1...
April 30, 2020
Great focus on an iconic magazine publisher from the heyday of print comic art.
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