After looking over a number of the retrospectives I have done on old horror magazines, I am surprised that I did not take a look at the classic Warren Magazines from the 1960’s. This is a gross oversight on my part considering that Warren released what were essentially the only successful horror magazines during the entire decade of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Sure, others tried to jump into the magazine game in the 1970’s but their success was limited if not outright failures.  While many of these magazine were fine, they all looked like rip-offs of the Warren line. In some cases, Marvel actually possessed better writing than what was in the Warren line yet could not attract large readerships.

The birth of the Warren line came with the legendary magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland which debuted in 1958 to enormous success. As the popularity of horror films continued to grow through the 1960’s as the monster boom of the 1950’s remained a strong UHF staple well into the 1960’s. By the 1970’s, the fad waned from its peak although it did remain popular enough to sustain a following. A smaller number of kids would be added to the audience for old horror reruns and the kids from the 1950’s turned into  adults who still enjoyed watching these same classic films over and over again.

Obviously, the powers to be at Warren Publishing never forgot the glory days of EC Comics. EC had been earning enormous profits from their horror comics until public pressure forced the company to cancel its line. Ironically, the final issue of Tales from the Crypt was actually written as the debut issue of a FOURTH monthly horror title to be called The Crypt of Terror. Most publishers were scared of doing a solid horror comic (Marvel had a few but they, well, stunk) but Warren knew that it could publish its books in magazine form and avoid having to deal with the useless comics code.

So, they debuted three monthly horror titles that would forever endure as classic of the monster/horror comic cycle:

CREEPY – Uncle Creepy was the host of this anthology magazine and he was clearly influenced by the Crypt Keeper of EC Comics fame. The comic primarily dealt with traditional horror monsters such as vampires and werewolves and was very close in tone to the horror movies of the 1930’s and 1940’s.

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EERIE – Cousin Eerie was Uncle Creepy’s relative and his book was pretty much identical to Creepy. When sales would start to flag in the 1970’s, the book became a monthly serial featuring gothic heroes and heroines and characters in continuing stories. The concept was AWFUL and was mercifully scrapped.
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VAMPIRELLA – This originally started out as yet another monthly anthology until the hostess, Vampirella, would become a heroine in her own stories. Let the truth be told: Vampirella was a sexy vampire woman designed to appeal to the lust of the nerdy readers of the books. She played to male fantasies so powerfully her book survived well into the 1980’s. The character’s influence still exists to its day as evidenced by the (sexist) images of busty heroines and villainesses in Marvel and DC Comics.
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More on the Warren line of comics to come in future installements.