James Warren (b. July 29, 1930) is a magazine publisher and founder of Warren Publishing. Magazines published by Warren include Creepy, Vampirella and Famous Monsters of Filmland. He was the first publisher to put a magazine devoted expressely to monsters on America's newsstand in 1958.
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An art student during his grammar school and high school years, he came in second in the Pennsylvania State Scholastic Art Competition. Motivated to be an architect by the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright, he attended the University of Pennsylvania School of Architecture, where Louis Kahn, another architect whose work he admired, served on the faculty. Warren served in ROTC, leaving college his junior year to enlist in the United States Army when the Korean war broke out. Accepted into Armored Infantry Officers Training, he was deafened six months later in a night training operation when he got too close to the .50 caliber heavy machine gun. He was medically discharged a few months later.[1]
Instead of returning to Penn, Warren pursued his childhood interest in comic strips, his favorites of which were Buzz Sawyer and Captain Easy by Roy Crane, and The Spirit by Will Eisner.
In the 1950s, Warren worked in advertising as an artist and writer. Inspired by the publishing efforts of [Hugh Hefner]], he launched his own men's magazine, After Hours, which lasted four issues and led to his arrest on charges of obscenity and pornography for featuring bare bosoms on the inside and Bettie Page on the cover. The Philadelphia Inquirer headline read "Pornographer Arrested", with a photo of him in handcuffs. Later, inspired by an issue of the French movie magazine Cinema 57 devoted to movie monsters, he founded Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine with After Hours contributing writer Forrest J Ackerman, an avid collector of movie memorabilia including stills and horror-movie props. Securing newsstand distribution through Kable News, he launched the magazine in 1958.
In the mid-1960s, inspired by the EC horror comic books of the 1950s, Warren launched the black-and-white horror-comics magazines Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. He continued to publish a variety of magazines until the 1980s, when he left the field due to health problems.
Horror Biz Magazine #4 - 1999