Although Eerie Publications added extra blood to the tales, and later had the same stories redrawn and updated by cheaper Latin American artists.įass allegedly named his company Eerie, after he lost the right to use the name for a magazine. These companies simply reprinted pre-code horror comics from the 1950s as black and white comics.
As soon as Warren’s success became known to the publishing industry, several of the less reputable outfits, like Stanley Publications and Myron Fass’s Eerie Publications, rushed out cheap imitations. Jim Warren single handedly created an entirely new market, one that could circumvent the Comics Code authority and attract a more mature audience, because his publications were magazines, not comic books.Įvery successful market breeds competitors and Warren was no exception. Creepy was soon followed by sister magazine Eerie and eventually Vampirella. Goodwin was, without any doubt, one of the greatest comic writers and editors of his generation. When Warren subsequently hired Archie Goodwin to edit the magazine, several issues later, Creepy really hit its stride. Warren was encouraged to release a 68 page bi-monthly comic entitled Creepy, drawn by many of the original artists from EC comics. The response to the comics was phenomenal. Warren had tested the waters by running comic strips in the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland, the now legendary magazine that Forrest J Ackerman edited for him. Warren’s stroke of genius was repackaging horror comics as black and white magazines, in much the same way that Bill Gaines had done with Mad Magazine back in the late 50s, thereby ensuring the survival of EC Comics.
Then, in 1965, Hugh Heffner wannabe – Jim Warren pulled the stake out of their undead hearts and horror comics rose from the grave once again. They’d been outlawed by the British government, and driven out of business in the US by the Comics Code authority. To begin, I’d like to set the background with a little bit of horror comic history, forgive me if you know most of this already.įrom the mid fifties, to the mid sixties horror comics were deader than a horny teen in Camp Crystal Lake. This time around I want to focus, not just on an artist, but a whole line of black and white horror comics from the 1970s, known to the horror comic cognoscenti as the Skywald Horror Mood.
It’s been a while since I did a ‘Who the Fuck Is…? feature in this column, focussing on writers and comic artists who aren’t anywhere near as celebrated as they should be.
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