Read James Warren Empire Of Monsters The Man Behind Creepy Vampirella And Famous Monsters Bill Schelly 9781683961475 Books

Product details Hardcover 272 pages Publisher Fantagraphics; 1 edition (March 19, 2019) Language English ISBN-10 1683961471

James Warren Empire Of Monsters The Man Behind Creepy Vampirella And Famous Monsters Bill Schelly 9781683961475 Books Reviews

• 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 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!
• 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 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 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.