Illustrators: The Illustrated Story of Warren Magazines

Here's a confession for you. For most of my life, my only exposure to the Warren magazines was a single issue of Vampirella that I had picked up years ago (the circumstances lost in the mists of time), which has lived in various boxes over the years. Eventually the cover came loose, but I still have it—somewhere—because... well, who knows when it might turn out to be of some use. (The collecting bit of my brain insists that, one bought, you keep everything. That way you have it and never need to seek it out again.)

I came to Warren later in life, my obsessive chronicling of British comics not allowing much time to look elsewhere despite the recommendations of friends and fellow fans. It was only in the early Nineties, while I was editing Comic World that I was able to dedicate more time to researching American comics and started to look more closely at Warren, whose comics not only contained the works of some of America's top comics' talent, but were in black & white, which, growing up on British weeklies, was the way comics should be.

I probably didn't know much about their background until The Warren Companion, a must-have book co-authored by my pal David Roach and Jon B. Cooke, who edited Comic Book Artist, which was full of fascinating history and illustrations, including a long interview with Russ Jones (issue 14, a Wally Wood special) that filled in many details of the early history of the Warren magazine Creepy and how it came to be. A biography of James Warren, Bill Schelly's James Warren: Empire of Monsters (2019), swiftly joined the others in going out of print...

... which makes the latest Illustrators Special (#14 for those counting) all the more welcome. Heavily illustrated with covers and other artwork, in many cases taken from the original boards, Peter Richardson, tells the complex and engaging tale of how James Warren's magazine empire rose and fell — or more accurately ebbed and flowed like a tidal basin, sometimes filled with richly inventive and well-paid creators and earning a fortune for its publisher, and at other times barely more than a trickle of unpaid printers, distributors, artists and writers.

The creative well was constantly emptied and refilled, with Warren's fortunes often rescued by good fortune, often the arrival of a creative editorial talent. Built on the success of Famous Monsters in Filmland, the Warren magazines had patchy start, adapting B-movies into fumetto-style photo strips. There was a high as Creepy and its companion Eerie came under the editorial hand of Archie Goodwin, who was able to attract the likes of Frank Frazetta as a cover artist. Sales fell, as they did periodically. Goodwin was out, Bill Parente was in, working on a budget a fraction of the size of his predecessors. Then he was out and Goodwin was back, launching Vampirella, which helped stabilize Warren's finances, as did the arrival of Josep Toutain and his stable (no pun intended) of Spanish artists.

Warren didn't help matters by being fractious and argumentative with his writers, artists and editors. 18-year-old Bill DuBay was hired as editor in 1971, coinciding with a relatively successful period for Warren, despite heavy competition from Marvel and Skywald. DuBay burned out, Louise Jones filled the post, at first for little reward while she proved she could handle the job. Science fiction became popular in the wake of Star Wars, leading to another revival in fortunes, but it could not be sustained, even with later titles like The Rook and 1984 publishing some fine artists.

The artists are nowadays the main focus of fan attention, and pretty much every major talent worked for Warren in his two decades: Wally Wood, Will Eisner (there was even as Spirit magazine), Steve Ditko, Bernie Wrightson, Pepe Gonzalez, Alex Toth, Neal Adams, Richard Corben, and too many etceteras to list here.

Every page of this book could have been used to illustrate this review. I picked one — an astonishing splash panel by Reed Crandell for an early Creepy story — and the other was a random opening at some Frazetta covers (top of column)... and I couldn't resist putting in some Vampirella! Fans of the magazines will relish the artwork on display, while anyone with a passing interest, myself included, will want to know more on the strength of this history. Richardson weaves a fascinating story around many fascinating characters (I particularly like the description of rival Myron Fass as being "like a squirrel on crack"), all beautifully illustrated by some of comics' greatest talents.

Illustrators Special: The Illustrated History of Warren Comics by Peter Richardson
Book Palace Books ISBN 978-191354820-9, 19 August 2022, 143pp, £30.00. Available via Amazon.

Also available as a limited edition (100 copies) hardcover

Book Palace Books ISBN 978-191354829-2, August 2022, 143pp, £95.00. Available from Book Palace.