James Warren, Empire Of Monsters: The Man Behind Creepy, Vampirella, And Famous Mons

Ever since, at age 8, I bought a copy of FAMOUS MONSTERS #7 off the newsstand in Santa Monica I've been a great fan of James Warren's publications. He struck a note with the baby boomers as they grew up in the '50's and '60's and '70's. Having enjoyed his magazines over the years, Bill Schelly's new book goes behind the scenes and presents a fully explored biography of the man behind the magazines. Warren's business practices, artistic attitude and general outlook on life as he went from the bottom to the top to the bottom again is well presented. So many photos of people contemporaneous with the time that have never been seen before really add a special note to the book which is, appropriately, visually rich with art, photos and more. Bill's prose flows smoothly and his style and subject matter keeps the reader going and going until suddenly the book ends. This is definitely Bill's best book yet, IMHO. Congratulations to Bill and thank you to all the people that opened up their life stories and information that related to James Warren, a very unique and complex character. Any person who enjoys the history of comic books and magazines from this era and the behind-the-scenes business machinations is in for a treat. Buy it now!

This book is great; and while I was intrigued by the information about James Warren himself and the monster magazines he created, I enjoyed even more the tales of the goings-on at HELP!; a magazine that has fascinated and confused me for nearly 60 years.That said, the book can be a tough read at times. Bill Schelly has done yeoman service to his material and I stand in awe at his research skills, but his writing is often awkward and perplexing and, to say the least, inelegant; and whomever copy edited EMPIRE OF MONSTERS ( if indeed, there WAS a copy editor) let plenty of misspellings, poorly-worded paragraphs, and typos get by.But even with these few faults, I wouldn't have missed EMPIRE OF MONSTERS for the world. It's a real gift to anyone who ever thrilled to an issue of CREEPY, leered at VAMPIRELLA, or groaned at the awful puns of Forrest J. Ackerman in FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND.Schelly says that Jim Warren is writing an autobiography. He'll have to work hard to surpass the picaresque tales contained in EMPIRE OF MONSTERS. But then, I guess we shouldn't worry: it seems Jim never had any problem making stuff up.

This is a great book on a legendary figure in pop culture of the 60s and 70s-- to many of us Boomer kids Famous Monsters was our gateway to classic monsters and more. Creepy and Eerie were Monster Comics when there was a drought of them and all of this thanks to James Warren. Warren also introduced many of us to Will Eisner's SPIRIT which was innovative in the 40s and nearly forgotten when he reprinted them. All brilliant work.The book is well researched, entertaining and loaded with photos and illustrations-- this is a terrific read and if you love the spirit of the old Warren Magazines you'll dig this.Schelly keeps the text moving and you'll be rooting for Jimmy throughout the ups and downs of his publishing empire.Highest recommendation!

I could not put it down, it is so engrossing and well-written. I read and collected Warren magazines since childhood and had a close association with “Famous Monsters of Filmland” editor Forrest J Ackerman. I always knew Forry’s side of the story of the birth, life, death and re-birth of “Famous Monsters” — now I see the whole picture and understand the foresight, ingenuity, creativity, leadership and risk-taking that publisher James Warren contributed. But here we have much more than the FM story - it covers all of Jim Warren’s publications and ventures and paints a wonderful and engaging portrait of the life of this entrepreneurial publisher. If you lived in the times of the heyday of Warren magazines and were engrossed in his unique pop culture style as a reader, fan or collector, I promise this book is for you. And for those who are too young to have been along for the roller-coaster ride of the ups and downs of Jim Warren’s many magazine enterprises, this captures the exciting and often inspiring life of a man who helped define the popular culture of America from the 1950’s and for decades that followed, as well as insight into the massively talented artists, writers and editors who worked for him. Thank you author Bill Schelly for writing this book, and thank you James Warren for living it.

This book is a must for every Baby Boom monster kid. This voluminous tome revealed to me an era of publishing closest to my childhood heart. When I was a kid I loved Famous Monsters of Filmland but for me the holy grails of magazines were Spacemen and Screen Thrills Illustrated. I never saw the actual magazines, only the ads for them, but I can still remember the images of the covers. I viewed this book with the same sense of wonder. James Warren had a knack for publishing almost every magazine I ever wanted when I was a kid.Warren was quite a guy. With Hugh Hefner as a contemporary and an alleged affair with Jane Fonda, he was quite the bon vivant around the big city. I will thumb through this book several times before I get serious and read it from cover to cover, and I will savor it in the same way I once savored the tattered pages of Famous Monsters.

At 300-plus of those pages (though I wish there were more pictures), it flew by in a good way, a wonderful way. Schelly is not the kind of author who's better to read a Kindle edition of his book because you spend a lot of time looking up ten dollar words when a buck's worth would have sufficed--which I find very annoying (but enlightening, of course)--and his sentence structures aren't the academic jargonese, dog-eat-tail variety that takes turns scratching your head for you as you try to understand what the author is saying. Empire of Monsters leaves those complications for its subject matter: James Warren and the creative people he alternated between loving and hating and loving again, and the influential magazines they created.

It's Fantagraphics - - so the hardback binding, printing quality and paper stock are top of the range.There's some centre colour plates but 98% of illustrations are b/w. It's a thick book - - but the book dimensions are much smaller than,, say, a copy of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, and most of the illustrations are diminutive and so have no impact and no telling detail. Visually the book is disappointing, something to forget about as soon as you shelve it.When a book is, graphically, this modest, to justify the price, the writing had better be excellent, the prose needs to be fluent with some style and the research should take the time to deepen and find creative patterns. But the writing is pedestrian, has no character. The research is a straight line with no imagination, no tangential associations that more ingenious researchers pattern intriguing cultural connections from. And so the information has a So What? feel.Fantagraphics ought to look for stylish writers to match their high print quality, especially when they reduce the dimensions of their books that puts the pressure on the text.Disappointing. The money would be better spent any number of elsewheres.

Bought many Creepy / Vampirella / Eerie etc over the years but know very little about Warren, James Warren as well as Warren Publishing and this book is a fairly chunky read with a lot of background information about the issues, artists, attitudes, the closure, the beginnings with Filmland etc and much more. There are a few other books on the subject of Warren but they are fairly expensive, so this is a decent book to add to my comic history bookshelf. Only issue being the lack of pics. Don't get me wrong, there are a number of the comic art pages / covers etc but surely the book could have had a few more pics of his life, James Warren at conventions, etc. Still, definitely recommended.

Warren was a fascinating character. His comics were interesting in the early days because they featured the art forms' best artists. Then the featured newly professional but talented artists. Then they featured Spanish and Filipino artists who were very capable and unlike anything his north american fans had seen before. Meanwhile, stories came out about Warren being a very strange man, what we would today call a narcissist. Back then he was just an overblown creep who published a handful of black and white comics.Well, Bill Schelly investigates this and puts down the details. There are very few books about comics that are so engrossing that I can't put them down. This is one of them.

I love biographies like these because most fans think working on the horror fiction field is a #walk on the park# nothing further from the truth. The real horror is dealing with distributors, the press, colleagues that cat as friends but want you bankrupt. loved the book and I still keep my 70s Vampirella collection

An interesting and detailed look back at the Warren empire and the history of magazine publishing.