This site is primarily devoted to the various series produced by the terrific but sadly defunct Warren Comics during the nearly 20 years that Warren Publishing produced comic magazines (the company itself existed from 1957-1983, a very respectable run, though it didn't get its start with comic magazines). The product of an influential gentleman by the name of James "Jim" Warren, he began his publishing line in a rather inauspicious manner back in 1957 with the PLAYBOY knock-off, AFTER HOURS. It failed to last more than four issues, but an article on the great monster film expert Forrest J. Ackerman in the fourth and final issue of AFTER HOURS led to a collaboration and idea between the two men that quickly culminated into Warren's most enduring success...the youth-friendly horror cinema magazine FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, first published in 1958. With this title, Warren Publishing officially hit its stride in a major way, producing a magazine that endures to this day (following a decade-long hiatus after the demise of Warren Publishing; the mag is currently owned by horrorphile Phil Kim as an online zine and there has been talk of relaunching it as a print mag in the future...let's keep our fingers crossed!). Further, this famous title about famous monsters of cinema is a mag that has been endlessly imitated throughout its long trek on the newsstands. In fact, it can be cogently argued that without FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, there never would have been any of the later great horror and sci-fi film mags like CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN, FANGORIA, CINEFANTASTIQUE, and SCARY MONSTERS MAGAZINE.
FAMOUS MONSTERS (as it's often abbreviated) even spawned a ten-issue imitation title by Warren in 1964, MONSTER WORLD (not to be confused with the eight-issue monster mag published by Mayfair in the '70s, who quickly changed its title to QUASIMODO'S MONSTER MAGAZINE after two issues), and this FAMOUS MONSTERS spin-off was later incorporated directly into the numbering of its parent title. It should be noted that Warren's MONSTER WORLD is significant to the history of Warren Publishing in that it was the first mag in which Warren experimented with producing black and white [b&w] illustrated stories, in this case comic book adaptations of a few Universal and Hammer horror movies, specifically "The Mummy" and "The Mummy's Hand" from the former, and "Curse of Frankenstein" and "Horror of Dracula" from the latter. These initial Warren comic stories weren't well-received by the readers, not because they were poorly done (in fact, they were well-done, especially for their time), but because readers of an informational, article and picture based mag like MONSTER WORLD found the stories inappropriate for the format. However, and very fortunately for all of us, Jim Warren never gave up his dream of producing his own b&w illustrated horror stories, including entirely original stories (i.e., not adapted from films or prose). He simply realized that he needed to produce them in new magazines that were entirely dedicated to publishing such stories, outside of the pages of his movie mags like FAMOUS MONSTERS and MONSTER WORLD.
As it occurred, the wild success of FAMOUS MONSTERS encouraged Warren to publish and experiment with many different short-lived magazines, some informative with the distinctive flippant tone of FAMOUS MONSTERS and others pure unadulterated humor, which included (among many others) FAVORITE WESTERNS OF FILMLAND, which combined the Western genre with fumetti-style humor (and changed its title to WILDEST WESTERNS with issue #3, this making it more clear that it was a humor title); SCREEN THRILLS ILLUSTRATED, which dealt with the wider world of cinema; ON THE SCENE, a showcase title dealing with various aspects of pop culture, including music and super-hero cinema; and SPACEMEN, which attempted to cover strictly sci-fi cinema in the same way FAMOUS MONSTERS did for mainly horror cinema. There was even a special mag from Warren devoted to oddball singer Tiny Tim!; however, Warren didn't want credit for that bizarre oddity, so it was published under "Corncob Productions." Perhaps the best of all of these early '60s Warren experiments was HELP!, a scathing humor/satire mag in the vein of EC's MAD magazine edited by the legendary Harvey Kurtzman, which ended its memorable three-year run on the newsstands due to creative differences between Warren and Kurtzman. In fact, the first time Warren ever reprinted one of Will Eisner's terrific Spirit stories was in HELP! #13.
Jim Warren may resent me for bringing this up, but in the wildly experimental '60s, Warren Publishing even made a brief but ill-fated foray into the teen romance genre, which was also popular overseas in a digest format. The teen romance, and specifically the general young romance genre, was quite popular for a surprising number of years in the world of American four-color comics, beginning in the late 1940s with the wane of the once mighty super-hero genre in the post-war years. The romance comics were strong throughout the '50s and lasted in an ever-diminishing capacity into the early '70s, the product of many different publishing companies (including DC and Charlton). Though Warren was hardly suited for this genre, the company did make a go at it, beginning in 1967, by buying reprints from many popular teen romance digest comics in Great Britain, published there by Fleetway. The result was TEEN LOVE STORIES, with articles on teen love accompanying the strips, and it crawled along for three issues before Jim Warren put the mag out of its misery.
[Before someone complains that I left this out, I will now make a point to mention that in 1964, Warren published THE FLINTSTONES AT THE NEW YORK WORLD'S FAIR, the only true four-color comic that the company ever produced, and the only time it ever took on a licensed property. This comic was sold exclusively at the New York World's Fair of 1964 and 1965, and no mainstream newsstand edition ever appeared, nor was it ever sold via mail order from Captain Company. Jim Warren didn't make it obvious on the cover of this comic book that it was published by his company, however; the comic was instead credited to J.W. Books (the initials standing for "James Warren," of course), a subsidiary of Warren Publishing that Jim set up for this very purpose. It had the look and feel of a Gold Key comic, rather than a Warren Magazine, since it was printed by Western Publishing, who printed all of Gold Key's comics from the '60s until the company's demise in the '80s. This was quite a risky but lucrative deal for Warren, Hanna-Barbara, and Western Publishing, but it paid off handsomely for all parties involved, and it was remarkable at the time that Warren won the two-year deal with the New York World's Fair over that of the better established Marvel and DC Comics, who failed to get the deal with one of their many established properties (i.e., Spider-Man or Superman, respectively), especially since all concerned assumed that DC would be a shoe-in for winning the contract with the World's Fair, as they had in the past, with Marvel their only possible rival bidder for the deal. Warren also made a wise decision to go for a licensing deal rather than try to create their own unestablished character and attempt to market it to the World's Fair, as the Flintstones were a hot property at the time (at this point in 1964, Warren had not yet made a major foray into publishing their own comics, and Vampirella was then five years away from being created). The comic consisted of several different Flintstones stories, all of which revolved around Bedrock's favorite quasi-Stone Age family hanging out at the New York World's Fair, and featured cameo appearances by many other Hanna-Barbera characters. The Flintstones had a rather lengthy career in comics, but this was the only time they were published by Warren. During the '60s they were published by Dell and Gold Key, and during the early '70s their license was carried by Charlton Comics and finally by Marvel for a spell later in the '70s, with the quality of the books varying wildly. At this writing, DC has the rights to the Flintstones.
This comic is now a very rare collector's item. It had two printings for each of the two years of the New York World's Fair in the '60s, with the twin printings distinguished on the covers by a 25 cent price tag on the first and a 29 cent price tag on the second printings. At the time, this was a fairly hefty price tag for a four-color comic book, even though it was much larger than a standard 30-page comic, as the retail price of a typical four-color comic at the time was 12 cents (about 24 cents for one of DC or Marvel's Annuals). Nevertheless, the comic book sold quite well at the Fair both years, despite costing a few pennies more in the second year.
The whole story behind Warren winning the comic book licensing deal for the New York World's Fair of 1964 and '65 was entertainingly told in an interview of Jim Warren himself in THE WARREN COMPANION by David A. Roach and Jon B. Cooke.]
As noted above, the '60s decade was a wildly experimental time for Warren, as it also brought us a short-lived series of one-shot fumetti-style filmbooks, which were very popular in Italy and south of the continental border, and Warren wanted to introduce this format on a wide scale to American readers (fumetti was a magazine format that used actual screen captures from the movies accompanied by inserted word balloons to tell a story rather than illustrations) . This was done by Warren under the FAMOUS FILMS showcase banner, and three issues were produced. The first two books in the FAMOUS FILMS showcase series were fumetti-style productions of American B-movies such as "The Mole People" and "Horror of Party Beach" respectively, and the third and final issue gave the fumetti treatment to Hammer's popular "Curse of Frankenstein" and "Horror of Dracula," both in a single issue. Despite Warren's efforts and hopes, however, fumetti-formatted filmbooks never caught on in America. The only time you generally find fumetti in American publications is for short features in comedy mags (you see fumetti used today in various issues of MAD magazine, and Warren used them extensively for comedic effect in issues of HELP! and WILDEST WESTERNS).
By the '70s, the three fumetti-style issues of FAMOUS FILMS were familar oddities offered via mail order in the Captain Company ad's seen in the back issues of Warren mags (this author regrets never acquiring them back then, though if I did, they would now likely be lost amidst the pile of old comics and magazines I have in my basement).
But as great as the publishing history of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND is, not to mention the many spin-off titles mentioned above, and as much as it was initially responsible for putting Warren's name on the map, it's of only academic interest to the main subject(s) of this site.
What this site will primarily be focusing upon is the content of Warren's great history of non-Comics Code approved, b&w horror anthology magazines, when Jim Warren finally realized his dream of producing his own illustrated stories.
Warren's small but dynamic comic mag empire began in late 1964 when CREEPY #1 hit the stands in horror-ific fashion, and then expanding to include EERIE in 1966 and VAMPIRELLA in 1969. Although CREEPY, EERIE, and VAMPIRELLA (along with FAMOUS MONSTERS, of course) combined to form the cornerstone of the Warren publishing empire, they did not represent the entirety of Warren's comic mag output. During the '60s, Warren also gave the world the excellent and controversial war mag BLAZING COMBAT (partially inspired by the classic '50s EC title TWO-FISTED TALES, briefly revived in the early '90s by Dark Horse). Later, beginning in 1974, Warren went on to publish the first 17 issues (along with an all-color one-shot special) of Will Eisner's creator-owned mag THE SPIRIT, featuring augmented reprints of his classic 1940s and early '50s tales of one of the greatest heroes to ever appear in comics, and for a few years, when THE SPIRIT was under the Warren banner (before Kitchen Sink Publishing took over the mag with issue #18, a run that lasted, with some format changes, into the early '80s), it was a respected member of the Warren publishing empire.
In fact, Warren reprinted two colorized Spirit stories in EERIE #54 & 55 just prior to launching THE SPIRIT #1. As such, the Spirit, despite the fact that he wasn't a Warren creation, can be said to be the first Warren published character to appear in an EERIE series and then gravitate to his own book, something only the Rook and the Goblin (both definitive Warren creations) would do after him.
As briefly noted above, however, the Spirit would make his Warren debut a decade earlier than his appearance in EERIE #54, in a story reprinted in HELP! #13. His only original Warren appearance would be a cameo in the Vampirella and Pendragon story featured in VAMPIRELLA #50 (which I plan to index in the future).
In 1976, Warren brought us COMIX INTERNATIONAL, an all-color title which reprinted the sporadic color stories that appeared in various issues of CREEPY, EERIE, VAMPIRELLA, and THE SPIRIT, and was sold primarily through direct mail order from the Warren mags themselves rather than on newsstands or in the newly appearing comic book shops.
In 1979, Warren brought us the pulpish action hero title THE ROOK, its lead feature being the titular time-traveling hero that was second only to Vampirella as the most popular series character that Warren ever created (first appearing in EERIE #82) and the outrageous sci-fi HEAVY METAL knock-off mag, 1984 (its title was changed to 1994 with the 11th issue after the George Orwell estate complained). The last of Warren's titles came to us in 1982, during the final year of the company's existence, to attempt to fill the niche left by THE ROOK, which had recently been cancelled due to Warren's growing fiscal woes; THE GOBLIN was an oddball super-hero/adventure anthology title, its titular character and lead feature having first appeared in EERIE #71 and having a series in the last few issues of THE ROOK. It had a devoted little following despite the fact that it came on the heels of the company's demise, and ran for only three issues.
During the '70s, Warren also had a reprint showcase title called WARREN PRESENTS, which reprinted a variety of b&w Warren stories (both stand-alone and series) under one cover that were based upon a common theme, e.g., aliens, sword and sorcery, vampires, or compilations of popular Warren series characters, such as the Rook and Pantha. This title was produced fairly frequently, but sporadically, much like Marvel's Treasury Edition specials and DC's similar large-sized reprint specials (albeit Warren published each issue of WARREN PRESENTS in a standard magazine format). The later issues of WARREN PRESENTS were all sci-fi, horror, or fantasy film themed, entirely composed of original articles and screen captures to give the full skinny on various then contemporary films such as "Alien," "Meteor," "Moonraker," and Ralph Bakshi's ill-fated 1978 "Lord of the Rings" animated film (the latter special featured an extensive prose filmbook for that movie), and were thus designed to be one-shot extensions of FAMOUS MONSTERS, but each devoted to coverage of a single film within its pages.
It should be noted that during the '70s, Warren also published a line of Vampirella prose novels.
And who can forget the wonderful insanity of those terrific products (both Warren-oriented and otherwise) brought to us by Captain Company, Warren's product-producing corporate adjunct that entertainingly took up several pages in the back of almost every Warren comic? Fans read and enjoyed those classic Captain Company adverts as much as the stories themselves, and diligently ordered the products and items advertised therein, with many of those products now considered highly sought after collectors' items that can garner high prices on eBay. Captain Company ad's still appear in the back of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, though the company appears to be owned by any publisher who holds the legal patent for the FAMOUS MONSTERS title, logo, and distinctive format at any given time; these ad's were last seen in the back of the mag when it was published by Ray Ferry but it remains to be seen if Phil Kim will revive it himself (we can only hope!).
CREEPY, EERIE, and VAMPIRELLA are often described as following the tradition of the classic EC Comics horror anthology line of the early 1950s, which included the famous TALES FROM THE CRYPT (made into a popular TV series along with a later animated spin-off, "Tales From the Cryptkeeper," during the late 1980s), and its somewhat lesser known spin-offs, VAULT OF HORROR and THE HAUNT OF FEAR. These, along with the true crime comics also proliferating during that era (beginning with Lev Gleason's graphic but moralizing CRIME DOES NOT PAY), were largely responsible for the formation of the Comics Code Authority that effectively ended the true crime and horror anthology genre as published by EC and its many imitators during the early part of that decade.
This right-wing government intimidation, which ultimately pushed the comics industry into forming an oppressive self-censorship code to avoid outside censorship, so devastated the EC line that only MAD magazine remained when the battlefield cleared (MAD remains a fixture on the newsstands to this day, of course, now owned by DC Comics, where it routinely takes revenge on the government with its brutal, generally left-wing political satire, accompanied by its popular TV spin-off, "MAD TV").
[Important Interlude: In regards to the above paragraph, one of my readers, Robert Hubbard, took issue to my above statement via the guest book that the Comics Code Authority (CCA) was formed by the comics industry in response to what I called "right-wing intimidation," because the two main instigators of the ensuing subcommittee hearings in the Senate that erupted in the early '50s, Dr. Frederick Wertham (psychiatrist and author of the infamous tome SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT, where he blamed comic books for directly causing juvenile delinquency) and Estes Kefauver, were both Democrats and liberals. Further, Robert points out, two of the four members of the United States Senate Subcommittee who investigated the case were likewise Democrats. Hence, Robert felt that my above comment came off as blaming only the Republicans of the era for the series of events that led to the comic book companies establishing the CCA. Robert made a valid point, so I am going to respond to his concerns here, even though I am loathe to tackle politics at length on this particular site, as I do not want to totally alienate or unreasonably anger my right-wing readers who share my enjoyment of the Warrenverse, but at the same time I do want to always remain true to the principles I do follow while at the same time honoring the truth, the latter of which is one of the foremost principles I adhere to.
Regarding the truth of this matter, Robert is entirely correct. As hard as it is for many to believe, Wertham and Kefauver were liberals. Many people today will act utterly astounded that the author of SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT in particular could possibly be a liberal, especially when you consider the rampant homophobia in the book--he accused Batman and Robin of being gay, and questioned the reason why three males lived alone together in Wayne Manor; this caused DC Comics to temporarily kill off series fixture Alfred Pennyworth and replace the loyal Wayne butler with Dick Grayson's Aunt Harriet (one wonders what Dr. Wertham must have regularly imagined to be going on in the numerous college frat houses across the nation, and if he would have preferred opposite sex roommates in the dorms)--he also expressed great concern over Paradise Island in Wonder Woman's comics since an atoll with entirely female inhabitants may suggest that some same sex hijinks were occasionally going on there amongst the all women inhabitants (which today we have no problem with admitting to be the truth). Since when do liberals have problems with gays? Keep in mind that this was the 1950s. During that era, the general public had no accurate knowledge about homosexuality, and this ignorance clearly extended to the mental health industry of the time. All sorts of nasty stereotypes pervaded society regarding gays, and few gays of the era were out of the closet to prove that it's perfectly possible to be simultaneously gay and a decent person with humane values who leads a life that is productive to society. So, in that era, it was not yet politically "safe" for liberals to openly support gays as they do today. In fact, copies of SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT should be preserved in time capsules and be required reading for liberals of both today and the future as informative guides to the way political attitudes change over time and how what was unacceptable in one era is better understood and very acceptable in succeeding eras once the veil of ignorance is lifted. Wertham and liberals of his era did not see themselves as being bigots with their homophobic attitudes, because they implicitly believed the stereotypes to be true and that it was therefore "bad" to portray gay characters or the gay lifestyle in a positive manner in any medium, though one may presume they had no great interest in understanding a truth that may have been damaging to their careers were they to have publicly acknowledged it back then anyway.
Hence, in the 1950s, the idea that homosexuality was non-pathological and wasn't the source of much evil in the world but a fully acceptable attraction base wasn't considered a liberal idea but rather a radical idea that few people of the time understood or cared to understand in the first place. This is why gay celebrities of the time, such as Rock Hudson and Liberace, went out of their way to hide and/or deny their sexual preferences for sake of maintaining their careers; no equivalent of Ellen Degeneres existed back then. That was true in the same sense that today the youth liberation movement is considered a radical idea that has not yet achieved mainstream liberal acceptance, and liberals of today have no problem with making blatantly ageist comments and assumptions. Almost all principles and ideas espoused by liberals of today were considered radical in the past, before it became politically "safe" to accept them in a widespread manner by the mainstream. These were examples provided to make my point crystal clear, and not intended to kiss the ass of the gay community.
So, to sum up the gist of this interlude, and to attempt to clarify my statement, the type of ideas behind the self-imposed formation of the CCA--e.g., the belief that certain types of censorship were acceptable and maybe even desirable if they were perceived as benefiting family values--was indeed right-wing as we would define this ideology today. However, Robert was correct in pointing out that it wasn't only Republicans of the '50s who supported those hearings, and in fact the two main instigators were liberal Democrats. There is no doubt that the reign of right-winger Joe McCarthy made it far easier to justify such things, but in honor of the truth it must be said that a sizable number of liberals and Democrats of that era were just as quick to jump on the McCarthyism bandwagon to censor and suggest government control over anything they felt to be offensive enough to them just as much as any right-winger who did the same, and they were just as quick to claim things such as the safety of the nation or the well-being of children to make these justifications. This situation is definitely no different today, as one can see by the liberals and progressives in office, including President Obama himself (who helms the Oval Office as I type this interlude), who routinely cave into extreme right-wing demands to support and enact the same type of legislation and policies they and their supporters admonished the Bush/Cheney administration for initiating during their eight years in the White House. So I am going to acknowledge the truth and give credit where it's due: as much as I may often knock heads with those of the right-wing ideology--particularly those of the extreme Right--I do have to commend them for far more often than not sticking to their beliefs and voting accordingly, and their willingness to fight for those beliefs, something the progressives and liberals of today--as well as previous eras, as the above example makes clear--all too often refuse to do if they believe it's expedient to vote or act contrary to their principles ("when in high political office, one must be 'pragmatic,'" they will often say in their defense after doing this). And this despite the fact that I much more often sympathize with progressive ideals than conservative beliefs (with a few rare notable exceptions, such as my unwavering support for the Second Amendment and my dislike of political correctness). I just wanted to make that clear, even though it did require me to "get political" for a bit, and I do want to thank Robert for expressing his concern and to make it clear that I try as hard as I can to be as neutral as possible when discussing this hobby out of respect for my many fellow hobbyists who lean to the Right. End Interlude]
It can indeed be said that Warren's trio of horror anthology titles that appeared during the 1960s were bona fide successors to EC and largely followed its story format, even to the point of employing several of the EC writers and artists to produce its early tales and to set the tone for the mags. Due to his publishing these mags in a b&w magazine format, which was a mode of publishing that Warren was quite familiar with, it also allowed him to technically consider these books to be magazines rather than comic books; hence, they could circumvent the Comics Code and appear alongside other magazines on the newsstands. Not only did Warren's horror anthology titles provide us with morality and lesson-based horror stories, often with much more violence and sexuality than we saw in standard four-color comics, all trademarks of the late EC books, but we also received EC's former stock-in-trade of surprise endings and ghoulish horror hosts who added pun-laden dark quips to the tales. In fact, EC's horror hosts, the Crypt Keeper, the Vault Keeper, and the Old Witch (all of whom had pretty much identical personalities) were arguably a major factor in the popularity of those stories, and Warren made sure that Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie were equally prominent, only falling into abeyance as a presence in the books during the latter half of the 1970s. Vampirella often served as a horror host of the stand-alone horror tales that appeared in her mag, particularly during the first year of publication, when she didn't even appear in any stories of her own from issues #3-8, coming out of exclusive horror host duty during this time only for a guest appearance in the Evily story from VAMPIRELLA #3.
Nevertheless, I fully believe that Warren put much more strength, personality, sheer unpredictability, and innovative experimentation in its stories than EC generally did, and this showed as time passed and Warren's mags gained even more fans than EC's great old horror anthologies did, even though EERIE and VAMPIRELLA would begin moving away from the stand-alone story format in favor of limited continuing series to a large extent by the early '70s (with the exception of Vampirella and the Rook, the most popular series to ever be introduced in the pages of EERIE, who both had ongoing series without a finite life span; the Rook eventually gravitated to his own mag for a few years).
As noted above, however, this site will have a very narrow focus on the Warren output. Specifically speaking, we will be focusing upon the many interesting, offbeat, and even compelling characters who appeared in the horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and action suspense series published by Warren outside of their two most popular, longest-running characters, Vampirella and the Rook, both of whom have had their histories covered quite well in other sources, especially since Vampirella is still published in a successful line of comics today by Harris Comics, who has since acquired most of the Warren copyrights (save for the FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND logo and distinctive format, and there is good evidence that Warren legally wrested back control of all of his copyrights save for Vampi from Stanley Harris during a legal battle in the late '90s).
Most of these series (outside of Vampi's series in her own mag) appeared in EERIE, beginning in the early '70s with "Prince Targo", which was unsuccessful and short-lived, and almost immediately following with "Dax the Warrior", which was EERIE's first hit series and which also enjoyed an extended run. Also covered where relevant, of course, will be the series that appeared in VAMPIRELLA (outside of Vampi's own series, which is just too long to cover in an index, at least one that I compose while working alone, and whose history has been extensively documented elsewhere), THE ROOK (other than the Rook's own series, begun two years earlier in the pages of EERIE, which will not be indexed here at present for the same reasons as Vampi), and THE GOBLIN, though the great majority of these series either began in EERIE, or began elsewhere and were later picked up there.
Save for an early adaptation of the Adam Link stories from the sci-fi pulp mag ASTOUNDING STORIES during the early 1940s and the early two-part "Coffin of Dracula" story from CREEPY #8-9, CREEPY mostly remained full of stand-alone horror, sci-fi, and fantasy tales throughout the entirety of its run from late 1964 to early 1983, even though a few of its stories introduced characters who later went on to continuing series in EERIE and VAMPIRELLA (such as It the Dead Thing and the Fox, respectively). It should be noted that Harris published a single issue of both CREEPY and VAMPIRELLA shortly after their Warren demise, continuing the numbering of the defunct mags, but they were all-reprint. Later in the '80s, Dark Horse made attempts to revive CREEPY and EERIE, and in the '90s to the present, Harris has been publishing numerous Vampirella series, each with all new numbering, along with reprinting some of her old Warren tales. Harris also made abortive, unsuccessful attempts to revive Pantha, the Rook, and "Night of the Jackass" as HYDE-25, along with Dark Horse and Harris collaborating on an Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie/Vampirella crossover (VAMPIRELLA'S SUMMER NIGHTS). Further, Harris brought back Warren's version of Dracula.
A bit more specifically still, we will be focusing (at least for now) on the Warren characters who are established denizens of the Wold Newton Universe [WNU]. This amazingly detailed and complex fictional universe is perhaps the largest shared fictional universe in existence, and is comprised of numerous characters from a myriad assortment of creators, sources, and mediums, including a large chunk of fantastic Victorian literature (a.k.a., 'Fantastic Victoreana,' a term coined by WNU researcher Jess Nevins); even older literature; the great pulp magazines of the 1930s and 1940s; the broad world of cinema, old-time radio, television, prose novel series, comic books or mags; and even fictional mediums as outre' as the ever-more complex video games, trading card series, role-playing games, and TV commercials.
The WNU was born out of the research by the renowned sci-fi writer and parascholar Phillip Jose Farmer, and began with his pseudo-biographical novels from the early '70s, TARZAN ALIVE and DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE, incorporating and detailing the shared lineage and origins of two of the pulp era's greatest literary creations to those of several others who had their ancestry with a few families who were exposed to the strange radiations of a mystery meteorite that crashed near the small town of Wold Newton, Yorkshire, England in the year 1795. Farmer's explorations into parascholarship continued into his various novels, short stories, and articles, including THE ADVENTURE OF THE PEERLESS PEER, a Sherlock Holmes/Tarzan crossover featuring guest appearances by other pulp characters, and A BARNSTORMER IN OZ, giving the WNU treatment to one of the greatest realms of fiction ever created, and uniting it to the Earth that is part of the greater WNU.
The specific field of parascholarship connected to Wold Newtonry is often called creative mythography, a term appearing in print for the first time in Win Scott Eckert's 2005 book MYTHS OF THE MODERN AGE: PHILLIP JOSE FARMER'S WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE (highly recommended reading!), which features the essays of several creative mythographers who work within his framework, a framework often referred to as the "consensus" WNU by those who work within it. Of course, many other creative mythographers work partially or wholly outside of this framework as their personal preferences and sense of aesthetics dictate.
There are many different interpretations of the general idea of the WNU, and many creative mythographers have their "personal" WNU in addition to working within another prominent creative mythographer's general framework of guidelines. Personally, as noted above I work within the framework established by Win Scott Eckert, which is an extrapolation of the framework begun by Farmer, and adhered to by other prominent creative mythographers who (like Win) oversee extensive websites dedicated to timelines and/or incisive articles detailing their observations and conclusions based upon their parascholarship research, including that of Jess Nevins, Dennis Power, Chuck Loridans, and Dr. Pete Coogan. The process of officially uncovering evidence, most often through discovering either a blatant or subtle (and therefore often debatable) crossover, to bring a certain story or series into the "consensus" WNU, is sometimes referred to as wolding the story or series for obvious reasons.
All of the above is not to say that creative mythographers working within a single specific framework always agree on every single thing, since debate and conjecture is a continuing and necessary dynamic of any WNU schema, but I still try to stay within their framework in regards to the guidelines established by Win and others.
To find out what Win's guidelines are, a terrific introduction to the fundamentals of the WNU concept, and to take a look at his extensive and painstakingly produced all-inclusive WNU Timeline, a continuing work in progress that has already spanned nearly ten years at this writing, as well as articles by himself and many other creative mythographers in regards to wolding certain characters, go here. Win's timeline includes the history of Vampirella, the Rook, and other Warren series characters who have provided sufficient evidence to include them in the WNU.
Dennis Power's site, the Secret History of the Wold Newton Universe, as its title suggests, extensively covers some of the more incognito aspects of the "consensus" WNU, and it can be found here. Also very relevant to the Warren indexes, particularly those dealing with Dracula, werewolves, and man-made monsters, one should check out the MONSTAAH web site, which deals with the more monstrous aspects of the "consensus" WNU, particularly Chuck Loridan's extensively detailed Children of the Night Timeline, which has since been greatly updated by yours truly.
The aforementioned important WNU sites feature the general framework in which my Warren Indexes are intended to fit within, even though certain disagreements will crop up from time to time, but always with the hope of reconciling them.
This site will be composed of a growing number of detailed indexes to series published by Warren Comics (usually, but certainly not exclusively, within the pages of EERIE), providing an introduction to what the series and its feature character or characters were about; detailed synopses of each story in the series [often accompanied by my quips and observations in brackets]; the inclusion of an incisive analysis and deconstruction of various aspects of the individual stories; the presentation of an explanation and opinions by this author as to how they fit into the greater world of the WNU for the benefit of creative mythographers who may be using this site for research purposes; and a listing (sometimes an educated conjecture on my part) as to when the time frame of this story occurred, also for the benefit of researchers.
Hence, the reasons I put this site online and took all the time and effort to compose those indexes are twofold:
First off, I grew up reading the Warren mags (or, more specifically, having the stories read to me at first), and they, among many other things, were an important and cherished part of my childhood. They provided me with one of the chief inspirations to become a writer and enthusiast of the more fantastic aspects of fiction in every conceivable medium. I was quite surprised and saddened when the venerable Warren Publishing empire suddenly closed up shop by the time the first months of 1983 came upon us (I was quite young at the time). Warren's abrupt departure from the pop culture scene was a slap in the face that much of fandom never really recovered from, even though it seemed as though Warren Comics was losing its relevance in a then burgeoning market that was becoming less appreciative of horror and fantasy in the illustrated story format and more and more focused upon exclusively super-heroes (this is not to say that I don't like super-heroes; quite the contrary!). Super-heroes represented a sub-genre of science fiction that Warren had little real experience in, and proved ill-suited to tackle, as evidenced by their awkward but memorable attempts to break into that sub-genre with THE ROOK, THE GOBLIN, and an increasingly super-hero-centric focus in EERIE during the mag's last few years.
The disappointment over Warren's departure didn't end there, however. Once I first learned to use the great new communications and informational dissemination medium that we call the Internet, I seeked out information on the Warren series and characters for purposes of both research and for renewing some fondly remembered old acquaintances. After all, with the veritable multitude of websites out there in the vast fulcrum of cyberspace, there had to be at least one great and detailed site covering the Warren characters, right? Much to my surprise and consternation, I discovered that I was absolutely wrong in that bold assumption. Except for a few good websites dealing exclusively with Vampirella (Warren's most popular character), a few sites dealing with some general words about Warren's publishing history in a very general sense, and a few sites displaying Warren cover galleries, along with one that featured scans of the unconnected stand-alone 'Queen Kong' stories that appeared in EERIE #81 (each of which focused around the central theme of a Frank Frazetta cover painting originally intended for Warren's never-realized adult sci-fi title POW!), I found nada on the Warren series characters. The relative paucity of info on the Warren output was utterly perplexing to me, rivaling the terrible disappointment I felt when one of the news vendors in my home town where I so often purchased EERIE and THE GOBLIN during my elementary school years told me that the titles had been canceled (actually, my grandmother was told that when I asked her if she would pick up the latest issue of EERIE for me as a favor). Of course, just before that I had already seen indications of Warren's mounting financial troubles in their bullpen pages, when they announced that THE GOBLIN, a new title of theirs that I loved, was abruptly canceled the same month that the fourth issue was announced, and with the frequent number of reprint issues that EERIE was churning out during its final year, sans the promised four-color comic book inserts. Be as it may, EERIE followed THE GOBLIN into oblivion just two months later, with 1994 dying that same month, and with CREEPY, VAMPIRELLA, and FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND ending a month later, despite the fact that FAMOUS MONSTERS announced its apparently completed 192nd issue, even showing an advert for its cover in the back of various Warren mags.
This dearth of online info about the Warren characters (which still befuddles me to this day) seemed to be yet another uncalled for injustice inflicted upon Warren Comics fans.
So, as is often the case when such perceived injustices occur, and because I felt that the Warren stable of characters deserved something more than a mere cover gallery of every Warren comic, including treatment amounting to a detailed coverage of their exploits, I resolved that I would have to act upon countering that injustice myself. And this site is the end result of that attempted remedy.
Thus, The Warrenverse is partly intended as a resource for all net-surfing fans of Warren Comics, be it for the purpose of research for those who currently lack the time/and or funds to hunt down and purchase the appropriate Warren back issues, or simply to afford my fellow Warren Comics fans a nice, nostalgic visit with some cherished old friends who walked out of our lives all too quickly and unexpectedly.
Secondly, these Warren indexes are intended to serve as another de facto Wold Newton site, as each one has a strong focus on connecting the Warrenverse to the greater WNU, and I hope for this site to (at least when it expands further) serve as the definitive resource for creative mythographers who are seeking info on how the various Warren series intertwine with the larger framework that formulates the "consensus" WNU, or for present and future creative mythographers who are in the process of building their own conception of the WNU, and would like to include the Warrenverse characters within that conception. Info on Vampirella can be found rather readily online (note Mike Grace's terrific site on Vampi), as can certain info on the Rook, but at the time I put this site up, there was virtually nil available on the other Warren characters. Now you have a place to find such info, with more added as time passes, assuming that this site attracts a respectable number of visitors to warrant all the work that I put into producing these indexes.
Though my strongest focus will be on the Warren series characters, I do intend to index various Warren stand-alone stories that are either obviously in the WNU, or are good candidates for wolding. I will also index some stories from Harris Comics, Warren's unauthorized quasi-successor, that are relevant to the history of the Warren series character in question, though this site is not intended to cover the Harris output as a whole or in any type of detail, as said output mostly concentrates on Vampirella, along with aborted attempts to revive Warren stalwarts such as CREEPY, the Rook, Pantha, and "Night of the Jackass." Specifically, relevant stories from the Harris chronicles will appear in my Warren indexes to "Dracula" and "Night of the Jackass," and will likely also appear in the projected "Pantha" index that I am eventually hoping to compose.
Also covered from time to time will be stories published under the Dark Horse banner that dealt with Vampi, Uncle Creepy, and Cousin Eerie.
More indexes will be added as time passes, so please be patient, people. Your letters and guest book entries will be welcome, of course, assuming that they are polite. However, please understand that these indexes, particularly the ones dealing with series that enjoyed a long life span, take up a vast amount of work researching, writing, and editing, and this is a large amount of time that I sometimes do not have to spare. I have a personal life, a professional life, chronic health problems, and other websites that I maintain (including The Godzilla Saga), and all of these things require varying degrees of my attention every single month. Hence, any letters or guest book entries I receive that solely consist of questions like, "Do you plan on composing an index on Hunter soon?" or "Are you ever going to cover Pantha or Peter Hypnos?" or "I think adding an index for Hard John or the Horizon Seekers is really important because those were great series and...blah blah blah..." will, unfortunately and by necessity, be ignored, since I am already answering those questions here and now:
Yes, I will be adding indexes to other Warren series (and stand-alone stories) that are already established, either directly or via my conjecture based upon subtle crossover refs, to be part of the WNU. These other series that fit the above criteria definitely include the following: Schreck, Hunter, Hunter 2, the Spook, Darklon the Mystic, the Goblin (and the Hobgoblin), Mac Tavish, Dax the Warrior, Peter Hypnos, Pantha, Coffin, Marvin the Dead Thing, Sherlock Holmes, and Scallywags. Other candidates for indexes may be considered afterwards, if sufficient evidence is uncovered to justify including them.
In time, I may put up an adjunct to this site that will cover Warren series that do not readily suggest evidence to include them in the WNU, because many of those series were terrific and fondly remembered (while others were not). I'm sure that many Warren fans who do not have a particularly great interest in researching Wold Newton material may be resentful of the fact that I exclusively focus upon Warren series and stand-alone stories that (definitively or arguably) take place in the WNU. I am well aware that many series and stories that cannot be definitively placed in the WNU are also worthy of being indexed, and were quite excellent (such as Rich Corben's "Mutant World" series). So fear not, I am considering such an adjunct Warren site if this one is well-received :-)
To answer another somewhat related question that will likewise be ignored if received in any correspondence for the same reasons as the one above: yes, I do intend to add some scans of the various Warren characters relevant to this site in the future, but I wanted to get the site up as quickly as possible before I go through the fairly drawn-out process of making scans.
I will add new indexes, beginning with those mentioned above, as well as adding some scans of interior art from the various Warren mags, as my time and health permits. I am hoping that eleven indexes and several pics of classic EERIE covers featuring the relevant characters indexed on this site (all of which I found elsewhere online) are a sufficient number for which to launch this site and to tide you good people over for a while, and I do plan to add some indexed Warren stand-alone stories soon. It took me an entire year to compose enough indexes for which to launch this site, so except for the few indexed stand-alone stories that I intend to add soon, I think I am entitled to a break from this project for a time *breathes a huge sigh of relief*
Thank you for your understanding in this matter :-)
With that said, I would like to thank a few people for their invaluable advice, factual corrections, and anecdotes for this project: Win Scott Eckert, Dennis Power, Dr. Pete Coogan, Ivan Schablotski, Jay Lindsey, Mike Ongsingco, Henry Covert, Doug Sulipa, Gordon Long, Dimadick, Matt Ruscala, and Nicole Ernst, along with the entirety of the MONSTAAH crew. I thank all of you for taking the time to critique the various indexes, and for offering your much needed advice, corrections, and anecdotes; more thank-you's will surely appear here when more good advice and corrections are sent my way. Also, of course, my heartiest thanks goes to the man himself, Jim Warren, whose editorial vision and tireless work ethic, coupled with some great writers, artists, and editors such as Archie Goodwin, Louise Simonson (then Jones), Rich Corben, Forrest J. Ackerman, Bill DuBay, Budd Lewis, Steve Skeates, Manuel Sanjulian, Ken Kelly, Frank Frazetta, Doug Moench, Esteban Maroto, Leopold Sanchez, Jaime Brocal, Al Milgrom, Bruce Bezaire, and many others, largely made the Warrenverse a printed reality and a tremendous source of inspiration and fond memories for so many different horror and sci-fi writers, artists, and general fans of the genre.
The Warrenverse is a continuing work in progress, and with a work this extensive errors will unfortunately but inevitably creep into the texts here and there. They will vary from grammatical errors and inadvertent HTML formatting errors to occasional factual errors, and I regret every single mistake of any nature that the textual content may contain, now and in the future. However, the already posted indexes will be periodically reviewed and fact checked, with updates and corrections being added regularly. I will always strive to keep the information you will find on the Warrenverse as accurate as humanly possible, and as close to professional as you can find on the Net. Suggestions, opinions, and corrections will always be welcome (as long as they are polite and do not solely consist of "do you plan on adding an index for [series X] anytime soon?" or "will you be putting up scans of the Warren characters in the future?"), and you can either post brief missives in the guest book or send me your letters at the following addy: warrenverse[at]lycos[dot]com.
I am a busy person, but I will try to respond to the various missives I receive, either via the guest book or e-mail, as soon as I can, so please do not get discouraged or feel slighted if a response may sometimes take a while.
All visitor participation and suggestions will be greatly appreciated :-)
Now it's time for another important disclaimer: This web site is not authorized by any of the current copyright holders of the Warren characters and their supporting cast or distinctive likenesses. This site is simply the work of a fan writer who is seeking to provide information about what he considers to be great characters and series to both older and newer generations of fans who may share his interests, and for providing research information to interested parties. This author is in no way, shape, or form receiving any sort of monetary compensation for any of the information provided on this site. This online work is strictly the product of a fan provided for other fans, at no cost to the latter, and all quoted info and scanned works are well within the bounds of fair use.
All of monster fandom mourns the loss. As one of the two founding fathers of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND it's not an exaggeration to say that Warren Publishing may never have taken off in 1958 if not for his contributions. He was also the initial writer of Vampirella, Warren's first continuing character, so without Uncle Forry there may never have been a Warrenverse. His contributions to sci-fi and horror fandom are too numerous to mention here, but for a good overview of all he accomplished in his 92 years check out the following obit.
The father of the field of creative mythography, Phil's contributions to the worlds of parascholarship and fantasy fiction will be remembered forever by his numerous fans throughout the world. He was the creator of what is today known as the Wold Newton Universe, perhaps the greatest and most detailed fictional universe in the history of fantasy fandom. All of fandom mourns the loss of this great writer.
I suffered a great personal loss a few days before Halloween of 2012 when my maternal grandfather passed on at age 89, after a long, productive, and memorable life. He may not be famous, save to the many who knew him well in my home town, but despite the combative relationship I had with him through the many years we shared together, and despite our many differences, much of who I am is owed to him, and he and my grandmother had a very major hand in raising me due to my mother having me out of wedlock while only 16 and still living at home. I will never forget him and the many things he taught me, and I am grateful that our relationship improved so much during his last decade of life, just as we were best buds during the early years of my life. I believe his name deserves to be commemorated here in perpetuity along with the other great people whose memory I honor in this section of my site for being so inspirational to me. For those of my followers who may be interested, you can read my memorial to my grandfather on my blog.
Update 3/21/07: I have just added indexes for Schreck and Darklon the Mystic. I want to thank everyone who has visited The Warrenverse and read the indexes, and I especially wanted to thank T. Casey Brennan and Budd Lewis for dropping by and leaving me a note. I had a lot of fun putting The Warrenverse together, but the site hasn't exactly become popular, despite the number of Warren fans out there. As such, my subsequent updates will feature one new index, rather than two. Dax the Warrior is probably up next. Thank you again to all who has frequented this site!
Note 10/11/07: Stop the presses! As of early 2008, Dark Horse will be reviving CREEPY and EERIE. Not only will Dark Horse be issuing archival reprints of the old material but also two new ongoing series featuring new material. Contributors of the new material will include artists Bernie Wrightston and Steve Niles. Yes, Dark Horse unsuccessfully tried to revive CREEPY and EERIE in the late '80s, but they seem very psyched for this second attempt. And they have quite a bit of talent at their side to make this second attempt successful. I'm not yet certain at this point whether the two mags will stick to stand-alone stories or do a combination of that and also revive some of the series (it would be wonderful to finally see resolutions to EERIE's "Dracula" and "The Mummy Walks"), and there is always the possibility of Dark Horse participating in a crossover with Harris, as they have in the past, so that Vampirella can once again team up with Demian Hunter and other old Warren characters. Let's show Dark Horse some support for the relaunches of CREEPY and EERIE!
More info can be found here.
Thank you to artist Lucio Rubira for this info!
Update 5/14/08: I have reviewed several of the indexes and added some new info to them, particularly to the Introductions to "Exterminator One" and "The Mummy Walks." Just to keep you updated, I am hoping to get the Dax the Warrior index online at some point during the summer of '08. I will be quite busy this summer so expect it later in the season. Right now I am shooting for one new index per season, though I can't guarantee this, as I will be researching and writing them as time and my health permits. But don't worry, the Warrenverse will receive more updates in the future.
Update 5/29/08: Big update! I know I originally planned to give Dax the Warrior his due in late summer before adding any other indexes first, but I have since had a change of plans. I didn't want my readers to wait too long for another update, so I have added indexes for The Spook and Coffin today. Hopefully, that will tide you guys over for a while. Look for the Dax the Warrior index sometime in the Fall of 2008 or Winter of 2009.
Update 1/22/09: Update! Today I added an index for Dax the Warrior. Next up is most likely the space adventurer Mac Tavish. Look for that index in the spring or early summer of '09. These indexes are a lot of work to produce, but I am thankful to everyone who has visited this site and benefited from my work. I am particularly thankful to those who left me a message in the guest book...they were all much appreciated.
Note 8/16/09: I would like to apologize to my site visitors for being late on the promised index for Mac Tavish. This summer has been much busier than I expected and I plan to be busy well into the early autumn. But don't worry, I have not given up on my plans, and I hope to have the Mac Tavish index done by some point in late autumn or early winter of '09 (maybe a bit sooner). Though I originally intended to compose only one new index for the next update, as a bonus for your patience and understanding I will now be composing an additional index for you guys. Most likely the other new index that will debut at the same time as the one for Mac Tavish will be covering what is perhaps Warren's most wonderfully bizarre and offbeat series ever published, Tales of Peter Hypnos. Thank you again for your patience and keep those guest book entries coming. I am also going to make an effort to e-mail several of the people who left me missives in the guest book, even if they were left a few years ago (provided that the e-mail addy's you left me then are still good now), especially since one or two of you left me a question.
Note 09/26/09: Finally, after four years on the Web, The Warrenverse gets some positive recognition in print! This site was mentioned in FROM THE TOMB #26 (p. 82) in an article entitled, "Warren Done The Marvel Way: The Serial EERIE" by author Peter Enfantino. In the article, Peter says, "Those wanting to read more about the EERIE series are encouraged to seek out the website http://angelfire.com/zine2/warrenverse for an enormous amount of intriguing commentary and information about the 'Warren Universe.'" I was pleased and appreciative to get such a positive comment about the site in print, all the more so since Enfantino's opinion is that most of the series in EERIE were of low quality, and that Warren writers basically aped material then being published by Marvel for its serial ideas. For example, in Peter's opinion, Warren's "Dracula" aped Marvel's TOMB OF DRACULA, "Curse of the Werewolf" aped Marvel's WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, "The Mummy Walks" aped Marvel's Living Mummy series from SUPERNATURAL THRILLERS, and Marvin the Dead Thing aped Marvel's MAN-THING. Though I concur that there are certainly similarities between the above series from both companies, tropes like vampires, werewolves, animate mummies, and swamp monsters have appeared in many mediums before (and Dracula was a popular character in the public domain), so it's natural that both companies would create series about similar creatures, especially during the monster craze then infiltrating comicdom (remember the Swamp Thing/Man-Thing debacle during the same time period?). There have been many different interpretations of Dracula over the past four decades in the comics due to his public availability. Also, as I pointed out in my indexes, Warren took its "Dracula," "Curse of the Werewolf," and "The Mummy Walks" series in different directions from the Marvel series that they seem to have imitated, as Warren writers didn't feel consigned to adhere to the heroic ideal with their characters like the writers for Marvel did (I compare and contrast the Warren series with their 'counterpart' series at Marvel in my indexes to the above serials). Peter also contends that the stand alone stories published by Warren, particularly those that appeared in CREEPY, were of much better quality in a general sense than the series stories that appeared in EERIE and that CREEPY, by and large, was the better of the two titles. Nevertheless, despite our disagreement on the quality of the series stories that appeared in EERIE, I respect Peter's opinion and I recommend his article to all Warrenphiles who may be interested in the EERIE serials, as he includes brief descriptions of many of the series to appear in that mag, including several serials with no direct connection to the Warrenverse (i.e., the Warren Universe) and which will not be indexed on this site for that reason, and it was very gracious of him to give my site an acknowledgement.
Since one of the writers for FROM THE TOMB gave me some much needed publicity, I would like to return the favor by introducing the mag here to my site visitors; its subject matter would likely be of great interest to fans of Warren Publishing. FROM THE TOMB is a print mag published in England by Peter Normanton which has since made its way to the shores of the U.S. and probably other countries as well. It's devoted to coverage of vintage horror comics going back to the Golden Age of Comics to the present and has some great articles from a variety of knowledgeable writers, as well as some great cover art. Many of its pages are in full color. Of special interest to Warrenphiles would be the aforementioned FROM THE TOMB #26, which has the bulk of its articles dedicated to coverage of Warren Comics and has a beautiful cover rendition of Uncle Creepy by Pete Von Sholly.
For those who may be interested in acquiring a sample copy of FROM THE TOMB and would like to peruse some of its back issues, go here.
And let's not forget FROM THE TOMB's MySpace page, where you can learn more about the mag and its publisher.
Once again, my thanks and appreciation to Peter Enfantino and FROM THE TOMB.
Note 09/29/09: Stop the presses again! The new CREEPY #1 is finally available from Dark Horse. The first issue of this new quarterly comic features five stories, four new and one classic tale from Uncle Creepy's archive vaults. And unlike the beautiful but overpriced CREEPY and EERIE archive editions now being published by Dark Horse the new comic is 48 pages and not much more than the price of a regular comic.
Dark Horse made the controversial decision to publish the new series in the format of a standard comic book (though the stories are in traditional black and white) rather than a magazine (editor Shawna Gore explains the reasons for this in her interview for Newsarama, linked below). Though I fully admit that I really wanted to see the title back in its old magazine format, I do understand the reasons why this didn't happen, and I do realize that one of the benefits of this is that the cost of the book won't be too high.
I encourage all of us Warrenphiles to support the new CREEPY (and at least give the first issue a chance). If this book is successful there is a good chance that Dark Horse will also revive EERIE, and this may mean new Warrenverse stories.
Go here to see the preview for the new CREEPY #1 on Dark Horse's website, including a color pic of the cover.
Go here to see Newsarama's interview with Dark Horse editor Shawna Gore about the new CREEPY.
Note 3/3/10: Okay, once again I must apologize to the good readers of mine for further delays in new updates. After all, I did promise you guys indexes for Mac Tavish and Tales of Peter Hypnos for around this time, and so far I have not delivered. The reason for that is because I have been busy with editing my newest submissions for the guest section of The Godzilla Saga, as well as working on numerous other projects of a totally different nature. So I have been one busy dude lately. But I did promise this update, and I do promise to give those updates some serious attention within the next couple of months. So you can expect the two new indexes here by early summer of 2010.
After that, I am going to take some time off of producing new indexes for this site and concentrate more on some updates for The Godzilla Saga: I am hoping that latter site of mine is next to get some positive recognition in print, as so far (at least to my knowledge) G-fandom has been silent about it offline. Nevertheless, I am not going to totally abandon The Warrenverse after the next major index update, because it did receive some positive recognition in print last year, so I want to keep it active in some capacity. As such, I am open to suggestions, and you can leave them for me via e-mail. As long as they are polite, I will consider every single one of them received. I am going to make it a point to check my e-mail as often as possible over the next six months.
One of my suggestions is the possibility of doing something similar here as to what I did at The Godzilla Saga...create a guest section where I accept articles about various Warren characters, the different Warren series indexed on this site, the Warrenverse in general, the many and varied themes within the horror and sci-fi genres that Warren tackled in its many series, or even some on Warren Comics or Warren Publishing in general. This could include reviews, analyses in any type of detail that you want, or standard editorials about the world of Warren, or even what you may think of the recent revival of CREEPY as a joint effort from New Comic Company and Dark Horse Comics. I would even be happy to post images of any artwork involving the Warren characters that any of you submitted. If I get at least a few submissions from you guys, I will indeed create a guest section for this site so that Warrenphiles other than myself will have a voice in cyberspace.
If this guest section does happen, then please make sure you edit your own submission at least twice before sending it to me for final editing. Most writing programs have spell checkers these days, but if you are very bad with grammar, then perhaps you shouldn't be submitting an article. I don't want to sound petty, but I do want any guest submissions I post on this site to look as literate and professional as possible for an online zine. I can only do so much myself to make it look like that, so please only send submissions if your talent with grammar is on a reasonable level. If English is not your first language, I will work with you, of course, but please make sure your comprehension of the English language is at least reasonably competent before sending a submission. All submissions must be in English, as, regrettably, I am not fluent in any language other than my native lingo. If you submit artwork about the Warren characters, make sure it's more than just chicken scratch and make sure it's sent to me only in a jpg or gif file (no other type of files can be uploaded to this site and I am not going to convert any to jpg or gif for you). Oh, and please remember that the main focus of this site is on the characters and series that are part of the shared universe that is the Warrenverse, rather than the many other series published by Warren Comics in general which may or may not be a part of it, so (as an example) a submission featuring an analysis of the Hunter Timeline will receive precedence over a review of "The Horizon Seekers" (but both will probably go up if they meet the above criteria; the more on topic one will simply go up first). I will make an exception to that rule for any article or artwork dealing with FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND as a lasting tribute to the late, great Forrest J. Ackerman or any type of biographical info about James Warren (please include relevant citations and links for such articles, people). Articles relevant to the Wold Newton Universe will also be accepted, especially if they deal with wolding some character or series published by Warren. All articles or artwork submitted for this site will remain the property of the writer or artist who submitted it, they are always free to post or publish it anywhere else they want, and I will remove your property from my site if you ever e-mail me and request for me to do so. Please DO NOT use the guest book for such requests; send me an e-mail at the above addy to that effect and your property will be removed immediately after I read your letter. Please be patient in such an instance.
So, let me know what you guys think of the idea of a guest section for The Warrenverse, or any other suggestions you may have at warrenverse[AT]lycos[DOT]com about how I can keep this site active following my next big update in the summer of '10. I will continue to add more indexes periodically, of course, as well as other relevant things from time to time.
Update 3/8/10: Just to keep you guys happy until I complete and post the upcoming indexes to Mac Tavish and Tales of Peter Hypnos I added a new section to this site featuring my reviews of the first year's worth of Dark Horse's new quarterly CREEPY title. Reviews of the first two issues are up now. A link to that section is just below the links to the indexes.
Note 3/17/10: It has just been announced on the Newsarama website that Vampirella and her supporting cast have now been purchased by Dynamite Entertainment, the publishers of such cool comics as RED SONJA and ARMY OF DARKNESS. I have my friend and esteemed colleague Crazy Ivan Schablotski to thank for this bit of info. It would have been nice if Stanley Harris sold Vampi to New Comic Company, the current owners of most of the rest of Warren's creations so as to get all the Warren characters back under one publishing house, but Dynamite is still a really great company and they are certainly not adverse to crossovers. Hence, it's quite possible in the future that we will again see Vampi cross over with other Warrenverse characters who are now being published by Dark Horse. This is really something to look forward to! The article announcing Dynamite's acquisition of Vampi can be found here.
Update 5/21/10: The long-awaited update is finally here. I have just added indexes for Mac Tavish and Tales of Peter Hypnos, which brings the number of indexes I have online to date up to 20. Now that this update is complete, I am going to take a break from creating new indexes for a while, but I will continue to add them periodically in the future. In the meantime, I am going to spend some time composing a few updates for The Godzilla Saga, as well as putting time into a novel I am now writing. I will continue to add reviews for Dark Horse's new CREEPY title (including the last two issues making up the first year of its publication), and as noted above, I plan on creating new sections for The Warrenverse, including a guest section for articles and artwork submitted by you, my readers (no submissions received to date; send all submissions to warrenverse[AT]lycos[DOT]com, and follow the guidelines I mentioned in detail in my previous Note for 3/3/10). I am certainly not going to abandon The Warrenverse, so fear not, I will maintain this site and keep it active. Thank you again to everyone for visiting The Warrenverse, and your guest book entries are always welcome.
Update 5/28/10: My review for the new CREEPY #3 is up, and it can be found here. A review for CREEPY #4 will be up in a few months, as soon as the fourth issue is released.
Note 5/31/10: Though I am taking a break from creating new indexes for a while to work on other projects (including a novel, two big updates for The Godzilla Saga, and some new sections for this site), I just wanted to remind my readers that I will periodically add new indexes to The Warrenverse in the future. I just cannot justifiably set a date for them at this time. What is likely coming next are indexes for Warren's super-hero series that are definitely part of the Warrenverse, and thus the WNU, particularly The Goblin and Fighting Armenian. Also up for the future are indexes for Scallywag, Fleur, Evily, and The Protectors, and quite possibly El Cid and Merlin. Sherlock Holmes certainly deserves an index, since he is a major player in the WNU, but his Warren series consisted entirely of one original story (covered in my index for "Dracula") and a 3-part adaptation of the first Holmes prose story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study In Scarlet," so I am not certain he will warrant an index of his own for this site (maybe I can be persuaded otherwise via letters and guest book entries). Then I will get to indexing certain stand-alone stories from the Warren chronicles that I believe to be part of the WNU, such as "LycanKlutz," "Anti-Christmas," "Footsteps of Frankenstein," "Muck Monster," "Monster Rally," "Duel of the Monsters," "Where Satan Dwells," "Wardrobe of Monsters," and "The Raven"--a special section will be dedicated to these stand-alone stories. If any of you readers of mine with an interest in creative mythography can think of any other stand-alone stories from the Warren chronicles that deserve to be included in that section, please feel free to let me know about it via e-mail, and you will certainly be credited if I end up indexing that story.
Update 10/20/10: I just made an informative update to my Darklon the Mystic index, specifically in the Comments section for the story indexed from EERIE #121.
Update 11/11/10: I just added a review of Dark Horse's CREEPY #4, which you can jump to from here. With that review posted, I have fulfilled my commitment to evaluate the first year of the revived CREEPY title. With this update completed, I am now going to take a break from this site to work on other projects, including a few important updates I have planned for The Godzilla Saga and more work towards my goal of becoming a published author. Worry not, however, as I have no intention of leaving The Warrenverse to collect cyber-dust, as I will return to it in time to add more updates, and I also still hope to get a guest section off the ground so my readers can keep this site active with updates of their own. Thank you once again to all of you who have visited this site, especially those of you who took the time to drop a note in my guest book. Your support and words of encouragement are greatly appreciated, and they made all the hard work I put into this site more than worth the time and effort.
Update 11/8/12: Yup, we have an update today! The Capsule Timeline of Dracula-Mordante in my index to "Dracula" has been updated to reflect new information about this powerful soul-clone of the Lord of Vampires, specifically info culled from his recent appearances in comic book series published by Dynamite Comics since 2010(including the initial "Crown of the Worm" story arc from their ongoing VAMPIRELLA title [i.e., VAMPIRELLA Vol. 2], their VAMPIRELLA VS. DRACULA mini-series, and their awesome PROPHECY mini-series). I think it's safe to expect big things from the modern iteration of Warren's Dracula in the future.
Announcement 1/7/11: The cool folks who run the Old School Heretic blog just posted an interview of yours truly about all things Godzilla, including my thoughts on what's behind the enduring fame of the Atomic Titan, the origin of my interest in dai kaiju eiga, my feelings about the upcoming 2012 G-film from Legendary Pictures, and my ideas for bringing Godzilla and his fellow dai kaiju into the realm of role-playing games. This is the first of what we hope to be a regular series of collaborations between moi and the awesome Old School Heretic blog, including several involving the great characters of the Warrenverse and the Wold Newton Universe in general.
Important Announcement: Now available is the latest awesome offering from author and creative mythographer extraordinaire, Win Scott Eckert: CROSSOVERS: A Secret Chronology Of The World Volume 1 and Volume 2. These two volumes are both packed with an extraordinary amount of painstakingly researched information about one of the most fascinating concepts in fantastic fiction - the crossover between two or more characters from entirely separate series of prose novels, comic books, movies, TV shows, old time radio, and other mediums, thereby establishing the idea of a shared universe where characters from multiple different series that sometimes span the spectrum of disparate mediums co-exist together in a single reality, and are therefore capable of crossing paths with each other as readily as you can do the same with anyone who happens to share the world outside your window with you. A huge multitude of crossovers that have appeared in countless sources throughout the history of genre fiction are presented on a coherent timeline that establishes what Win has christianed the Crossover Universe. Volume 1 covers a herculean number of crossovers compiled from a vast variety of source material that chronologically take place between the Dawn of Time and the year 1939, while Volume 2 covers a multitude of recorded crossovers that chronologically take place between the year 1940 and well into the Future.
Important Announcement: Hitting book shelves and online digital inventories of book-sellers this coming December (of 2011) will be the eighth volume of Black Coat Press’ popular TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN anthology series, featuring new tales of pulp adventure starring many classic heroes and villains from French literature. The eighth volume will be sub-titled AGENTS PROVOCATEURS, and amongst the many authors who penned stories for this latest volume will be the debut published work of yours truly. My offering is the tale “Patricide,” which features a very unfriendly family reunion as the Phantom of the Opera battles Ghoroull, the French version of the Frankenstein Monster, in a deadly and bitter war between two monstrous killers who share a nightmarish lineage. My thanks and appreciation to Jean-Marc Lofficier, the finest editor anyone could ask for, and for my fellow creative mythographers such as Crazy Ivan Shablotski, Jay Lindsey, Win Scott Eckert, Chuck Loridans, Henry and Sarah Covert, Mike Ongsincgo, Matthew Baugh, Brad Mendel, Gordon Long, Dennis Power, Prof. Pete Coogan, Art Bollman, Jess Nevins, Kim Newman, Jonah Heim, Dimadick, Jean-Marc Lofficier and his wife Randy themselves, and several others who provided heaps of support and inspiration to make this move into the ranks of published authors possible for me. A finer and more gifted set of genre writers and researchers could not be found in this or any other reality, and I am proud to be among them, and to have my byline appear in an anthology featuring such an august body of authors.
Oh, and did I mention the truly incredible cover for this volume provided by artist Jean-Claude Claeys? Don’t take my word for it, check it out yourself:
Important Announcement: The world of Wold Newtonry and monsterphiles are receiving a very important gift this Halloween, i.e., October 31, 2011! Going "live" today is the long-awaited, triumphant return of MONSTAAH, and the new version will be helmed by none other than yours truly until such time as its founder and true owner, Chuck Loridans, is able to reclaim the helm himself. With Chuck's gracious approval and blessings, I now carry the torch of one of the greatest sites in the horror genre to ever be created, and you can rest assured I take such a great honor quite seriously (but not so seriously that myself and viewers alike will not have heaps of fun with the return of MONSTAAH--boo-yaah!). It was a great honor to be entrusted with the curatorship of MONSTAAH as the org enters a new era, and I look forward to doing Chuck's legacy proud. The new site, complete with a heavily updated Children of the Night Timeline, can be found here. The new site is still a work in progress, so expect much more from it in the coming weeks.
I also wanted to announce that since I have been slow in getting the intended Warrenverse Guest Section up and running as I originally planned, to keep this site moving I will be creating two new indexes in the near future, which will be "The Goblin" and "The Black Dragon's Sword" (formerly entitled, "Scallywag"). Originally planned for the spring of '12, they will more likely appear sometime in the fall of '12 or the early winter of '13.
Important Announcement: Now available on Amazon.com and at your local bookstore is the latest item of interest from Moonstone Books, SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE CROSSOVER CASEBOOK, a great anthology featuring new stories by an august body of modern pulp fiction writers like Win Scott Eckert, Matthew Baugh, Will Murray, and many more, all featuring the Great Detective teaming up with the likes of other literary greats or famous real life personages like Auguste Dupin, Prof. George Challenger, Lawrence of Arabia, Sexton Blake, Colonel Savage (Doc Savage's father), Calamity Jane, and Harry Houdini. Don't miss it, copies are going to go fast!
Important Announcement: Now on sale is a new anthology from Black Coat Press, NIGHT OF THE NYCTALOPE, which features the classic titular tale of the Nyctalope's creator Jean De La Hire, plus 16 new tales of French pulp literature's foremost super-hero of the 1920s and '30s by various authors--two of which were penned by yours truly! My second published work features "Power and Justice," a tale from the dark days of World War I that pits an emotionally disturbed Leo Saint-Clair (a.k.a., the Nyctalope) against early French cinema's lethal vigilante, Judex; and "Requiem for a Regime," a World War II tale where Saint-Clair journeys to Nazi Germany just before the Battle of Berlin on an important rescue mission of great personal significance--only to find himself facing off against no less a personage than Dracula himself.
Important Announcement: The great fan support for Dark Horse's revival of CREEPY has paid off just as we Warrenphiles hoped it would! Now on sale is the first issue of Dark Horse's revival of EERIE! The new EERIE debuts at a smaller size than its sister comic, and will feature two new stories in addition to two classic tales from the EERIE archives. The smaller size to start with means it will be 2 dollars cheaper than CREEPY, which should enable the fans to support it in addition to its sister mag without breaking their bank. Let's all thank the people at Dark Horse for giving us what we Warren fans have hoped for over the past few decades by throwing as much support behind the new EERIE as we did the resurrection of CREEPY. I will have a review up for the first issue of the new EERIE soon. A pic of the great cover for EERIE #1 from Dark Horse is just below.
Important Announcement 11/16/12:
11/16/12:
Today has seen the release, both in hard copy and e-book format, of another short fiction anthology featuring a story from yours truly. That would be CARNAGE: AFTER THE END Volume 1, published by the fine folks at Sirens Call Publications. This horror anthology features ten tales that all center on the common theme of scattered remnants of humanity struggling for survival in a world following a devastating apocalyptic event, the nature of said event varying with each story, but all depicting what is left of the human species doing their best to survive in a future world that embodies a never-ending nightmare. My own story, "The Scurrying," centers around a tribe of post-apocalyptic humans fighting to survive on an Earth overrun by a species of predatory giant rat who have displaced humanity as the top life form on the planet's food chain, and are relentlessly determined to hunt every last human being to extinction. My fellow writers in the first volume are Kimberly A. Bettes, Shane Cashman, Shane R. Collins, Laura Diamond, Rodney James Galley, Michael Griffin, Russell Linton, Adam Millard, and Julianne Snow, with the volume having been edited by Gloria Bobrowicz.
The e-book version is only $3.99, and you can get it at the following places, depending on your preference:
For those who may prefer to order a print copy of the book at $14.99, you can order it here: CreateSpace
Also on sale now is the companion volume, CARNAGE: AFTER THE FALL Volume 2, which features ten more tales centering on the above theme, also edited by Gloria Bobrowicz and featuring short stories by Angel D. Callido, Charlie Fish, Harper Hull, Magda Knight, Jason Lairamore, Harry Manners, Zachary O'Shea, Wednesday Silverwood, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and L.E. White.
And you can get the e-book version, also at just $3.99, at the following locales:
And for those who would prefer a hard print copy, you can get one, also for just $14.99, here: CreateSpace
You can check out the covers to both Volume 1 & Volume 2 right here:
Important Announcement 8/30/12: As of today, the hard copy version of the new pulp sci-fi anthology ALIENS AMONG US Volume 1 from Pulp Fiction is on sale, so look for it on Amazon.com; an e-book version is now available on Smashwords. The theme of this anthology, the latest of many from prominent pulp fiction publisher Nick Ahlhelm, is short stories from multiple authors featuring extraterrestrial beings arriving on Earth in familiar settings of either the past or present, and interacting with humans, both positively and destructively. The first volume of this newest anthology series from Pulp Empire is particularly noteworthy to regular visitors of this site because one of the ten authors whose work it includes is yours truly, with a short story entitled, "A Martian Warrior on Earth." Spinning off from the great sci-fi pulp oeuvre of both Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.G. Wells, the story features a Red Martian law enforcement officer of Barsoom arriving on the dark urban environment of the American Earth city Rochester, New York circa late 1980s, his mission consisting of a clandestine hunt for a genetically modified member of the predatory, fascistic octopoid alien race known as the Sarmaks, who had previously attempted to conquer both the Earth of the Wold Newton Universe and Barsoom of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe circa 1898. Fans of both Burroughs' classic "John Carter of Mars" book series (beginning with A PRINCESS OF MARS) and H.G. Wells' classic novel WAR OF THE WORLDS may want to check this out, as it features a further progression of both Mars-related mythos, further extrapolating upon the hidden connection between the two literary sci-fi pulp franchises first explored by other authors, including Alan Moore in THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN Vol. 2.
A shot of this anthology's cover is right below:
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Links to the Indexes are just below the guest book, so be sure to check 'em out!
BUDD LEWIS
One of the great writers who made Warren Comics what it was during its heyday of popularity; and what it remains today and forevermore to the many who cherish the memories and great creative passion that went into it. Budd recently passed away, and I want to honor his memory here, on a site that wouldn't exist if not for his major contributions to this medium and genre. During his last year of life, he became a friend, and I experienced his good humor and generous nature first hand. The inspiration he provided to me and so many other published authors is invaluable. He will be missed, and most certainly never forgotten. Wherever you are now, Budd, to paraphrase the gracious words you wrote in this site's guest book a few years back: may the good and cherished nightmares you brought us never die, but keep on being dreamed.
Read my DreamBook! Sign my DreamBook! |
LINKS TO THE INDEXES
DRACULA
The definitive coverage of Warren's version of the Lord of the Undead, a noble man at heart who struggles valiantly against his evil bloodlust...and inevitably loses. This index covers all the appearances of Dracula in the Warren Comics chronicles...from his days as an adversary and almost love interest of Vampirella, to his two solo series, and to his appearances in the pages of Warren's unofficial quasi-successor, Harris Comics, with his most recent appearances in Dynamite Comics since 2010 touched upon.
CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF
Arthur Lemming was a troubled man in a troubled marriage during early 20th century England...and a supernatural curse made him a hell of a lot more trouble to any human being unfortunate enough to cross his bestial path on the nights of the full moon. His entire tragic story and his bizarre final fate as he finds himself twice cursed is all here.
THE MUMMY WALKS
Jerome Curry is a corrupt and bitter man living in early 20th century Boston who feels he has been slighted by numerous women from his past...but what sets him apart from so many other young men just like him is his possession of an ancient Egyptian amulet that allows him to transfer his consciousness into the decaying but powerful body of an ancient cursed mummy...the perfect weapon to seek vengeance on all those who dared spurn him in the past. That is, until the amulet is stolen and Curry finds his psyche trapped in the body of a walking fetid corpse forever...unless he can find the amulet. His entire nightmarish story from the Warren chronicles is told and analyzed here.
NIGHT OF THE JACKASS
The streets of late 19th century London, well known as the home of numerous bloody murderers, are more bloody than ever when a drug called Hyde-25 is made available to the poor, the destitute, and the forgotten members of English society, a drug that will kill them 24 hours after taking it...but during those 24 hours, they are transformed into brutal superhumanly strong psychopaths who kidnap, rape, and slaughter helpless people without mercy. With Scotland Yard failing to stop the proliferation of this drug and the lethal groups of barbaric "jackassers" that it routinely spawns, a small group of unlikely heroes band together to oppose the marauding "jackass" gangs whenever they appear. But can they do what Scotland Yard cannot? This bleak, classic horror series is given an in depth coverage and analysis in this index, including its brief 1990s revival under the Harris banner.
CHILD
This excellent and eminently tragic series by illustrator Rich Corben is covered and deconstructed in this index. In full Frankensteinesque fashion, a lonely, heartbroken scientist pieces together and gives synthetic life to a towering, incredibly powerful man-made monster from numerous corpses...with the head and mind of a little boy...to be the son his deceased wife never gave him. All is well until the man is killed and the boy-monster aptly called Child is forced to make his way in the world all on his own...a world which he is completely unfamiliar with. Tragedy and death will not be far behind.
THE UNHOLY CREATION
Complete coverage of one of Warren's less memorable series, about a man-made monster harboring the brain of a recently killed man. 'Nuff said.
THE PIE
In 1930s Maine an alien spacecraft crash lands near a small farmhouse...and its sole occupant is rescued by a boy and his father. The touching but tragedy-filled friendship that forms between this family and the alien being they name the Pie is one of Warren's most fondly remembered series, and it's fully covered and analyzed in this index.
VAMPIRELLA AND THE TIME FORCE
This index features in depth coverage of the ultimate Warren crossover story, a book-length tale from the company's waning days. Vampirella teams with the Rook, Pantha, Demian Hunter, Derrick Schreck, Exterminator One, Child, Dax the Warrior, the Pie, and other Warren heroes and anti-heroes from across the spectrum of time against the evil sorcerer/scientist Ten Ichi.
THE DEMONS...of Jedediah Pan and Jeremiah Cold
This index covers the terrific, blood-stained series featuring an enigmatic man named Jedediah Pan and the twin silver wristbands he created...each one of which could summon three savage demons from the depths of Hell to do the bidding of anyone who wears one or both of the bands...and the most common order given these demons is tearing the wearers' enemies limb from limb. Pan is initially driven by bloody vengeance against a town who slew his family and unjustly threw him behind bars many years earlier...only to be opposed by his own son, the virtuous Jeremiah Cold. Are they destined to remain enemies forever?
EXTERMINATOR ONE
The year is 2014, and the U.S. government decides to create a deadly robotic assassin with the brain of a human being to eliminate anyone whom the system decrees to be undesirables...including various criminals, disabled veterans, and even children with the wrong genetic make-up. Peter Orwell, a man imprisoned for the crime of having a baby with his wife when the government deemed both of them genetically "unfit"...is designated as the first to have his brain transplanted into the cold metallic shell of such a cyborg killer. His poignant and tragic story is covered in depth here...along with three other stand-alone Exterminator stories published by Warren.
THE BUTCHER
The place and time, respectively, is New Orleans, circa early 1930s. Two powerful mob families are duped by the son of one of the dons into an extremely bloody gang war that tears the city to shreds...until the mysterious and ultra-deadly masked vigilante called the Butcher suddenly appears and begins tearing the warring mobsters themselves to shreds with his sawed-off shotgun. The identity of the Butcher, and his connection to the mob war, is at least as shocking as the amount of human entrails displaced from their victims in this awesome series by legendary illustrator Rich Corben and top Warren scribe Bill DuBay. And it's all covered and analyzed in this index.
SCHRECK
In an alternate future, a series of nuclear detonations on the moon turn the orb into a huge radioactive sphere, contaminating the people on Earth and transforming them into insane psychopaths. One man stands between them and the world...Derek Schreck. His name means "terror" in German, and he will be experiencing quite a bit of that in this blood-drenched series from Warren.
HUNTER
In a dystopic future, following a nightmarish war between the human race and a race of radiation-spawned mutants, human/mutant hybrid Demian Hunter stalks the remaining mutants left on Earth, determined to eradicate every last one of them...no matter what the cost to himself--or to the world. This popular series featuring the classic Warren hero is indexed here in its entirety.
HUNTER 2
Twenty years after the legendary Demian Hunter's era, a new hero arises to save the human race from a new race of mutants--Karas Hunter, taking the name and helmet of the original hero to bear that surname in this bleak alternate future landscape. Allying himself with the last of the Exterminator cyborgs, the two unlikely allies embark on a quest to find the wizard-scientist who created this new race of mutants...and to eliminate him. This popular series by Budd Lewis and Paul Neary--along with a later solo Hunter 2 story--is entirely covered in this index.
DARKLON THE MYSTIC
A ruthless, spacefaring sorcerer is suddenly besieged by assassins attempting to take his life...and all the guilt points to the one person in the galaxy whom the mage called Darklon the Mystic truly cares about. This interesting space epic by the great Jim Starlin is fully indexed and analyzed here.
THE SPOOK
The setting is New Orleans of the early 19th century, and slavery is still a blot on the American map. Who will champion the oppressed black people and take revenge on the evils of the white slavers who routinely mete out death and punishment to the human beings they hold in bondage? That champion will be the zombie giant known as the Spook, as he delivers punishment and death to the most brutal slavemasters of the pre-Civil War era. The saga of the Spook, and his voodoo master ally Crackermeyer, is fully detailed in this index.
COFFIN
It's the late 19th century in the dank Arizona desert, and Coffin the Living-Dead Man suffers as no other human being has ever suffered before...he is cursed by a Native American medicine man whom he wronged in the past, and now he cannot die, no matter what physical ordeal he suffers through. Will he finally be able to make amends and earn an end to his constant suffering? He will have many horrific experiences along his quest to find a way to die. This well-remembered series by Budd Lewis and Jose Oritz is covered here in its entirety.
DAX THE WARRIOR
In a period of time before recorded history, a great hero of that era struggles for survival in a savage world. It's a world filled with hideous monsters, beautiful femme fatales, and dark sorcery. Though a great and noble hero, Dax is damned to meet a most unpleasant fate in the end. This fondly remembered long-running series by the great Spanish artist Esteban Maroto is given an in depth coverage in this index.
MAC TAVISH
Sometime in the distant future, when humanity is a starfaring race, Earth is a powerful world in the galactic economy. A great celebrity hero in that far future era is Maximillian Myron Mac Tavish, space adventurer extraordinaire, and he is about to knock heads with his home planet in a major way. He and his best friend and ally, fellow adventurer Spider Andromeda, discover that a small and peaceful world they are both greatly fond of, Rara Avis, is being threatened with corruption, exploitation, and even total destruction by a powerful Earth corporation. As one might expect, Mac Tavish ends up involved up to his bootstraps in the conspiracy, as well as a very unusual romance. Not everyone will make it out alive in this grand, humor-filled sci-fi adventure by Jim Stenstrom, and the entire series is covered in this index.
TALES OF PETER HYPNOS
This is perhaps the most unusual and outright mind-boggling series ever produced by Warren. Writer/artist Jose Bea brings us a great series about a young boy named Peter Hypnos, who is much like other boys his age except for one major difference: he regularly finds himself swept into truly bizarre adventures in strange alternate realities where the laws that govern those universes defy every sense of logic and order that human beings are accustomed to. The entire Peter Hypnos series is indexed here, with a detailed analysis of the strange worlds and beings that this serial's protagonist routinely encountered.
Also, be sure to check out...
THE JFK/MK-ULTRA CHRONICLES
This sub-section of The Warrenverse details Warren author T. Casey Brennan's recent material, including his stories dealing with his Wold Newton Universe counterpart's involvement in the JFK assassination as a drone of the nefarious secret CIA-sponsored group known as MK-ULTRA.
THE NEW CREEPY BY DARK HORSE COMICS--MY REVIEWS
This section of The Warrenverse features my assessment of the first year of the new CREEPY that was launched by Dark Horse Comics on behalf of New Comic Company in 2009. The first four issues of the revived mag's quarterly run--plus certain subsequent issues that I deem particularly noteworthy--will be reviewed here.
LINKS TO OTHER COOL SITES
Phillip Jose Farmer's WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE---Win Scott Eckert's premiere site on the Wold Newton Universe, including his extensive timeline and a lot of other interesting Wold Newton related material.
The Secret History of the Wold Newton Universe---Dennis Power's great Wold Newton site detailing some of the more hypothetical and mysterious aspects of the "consensus" Wold Newton Universe.
MONSTAAH---the official revival of Prof. Chuck Loridans' amazing site detailing the monstrous aspects of the Wold Newton Universe, which covers much of the same broad territory covered by Warren Comics, now run by yours truly on behalf of Prof Loridans' legacy, and it was a great honor to acquire his permission and blessings in this endeavor.
Some Unknown Members of the Wold Newton Family Tree--this great Wold Newton site by author and creative mythographer par excellence Jess Nevins features several of Jess's articles about individuals and incidents in the Wold Newton Universe from across the world that have not been widely covered in other sources, and is more than worth a look.
French Wold Newton Universe---A terrific site featuring a wealth of information, including profiles and a detailed timeline, on the many fantastic characters who have appeared in the vast fulcrum of French literature throughout the decades, all of whom are part of the Wold Newton Universe, courtesy of Jean-Marc Lofficier. Also be sure to check out J-M's great sister site, Cool French Comics.
Therionthropology 101 (The Study Of Werewolves)---If you're a student of werewolf lore, or simply a person with a dark family curse that you would rather not discuss in public for fear of being stalked by a plethora of hunters with silver bullets in their rifles, this is the site for you! A painstakingly researched, all-inclusive timeline featuring everything you ever wanted to know about werewolves and other shape-shifters but were too terrified to ask, from prehistory to the future, brought to you by the inimitable Crazy Ivan Schablotski. [Important Note: This site is temporarily down now that its former host, Geocities, closed shop. The webmaster has told me that he will get this site back up as soon as he finds a new Web host, and when he does I will update the link here. We both apologize for the inconvenience.]
Henry Covert.com---This terrific blog is courtesy of creative mythographer, writer, and artist Henry Zeo Covert, whose work has long been a heavy inspiration to my own. This blog will keep you abreast of Henry's current and upcoming projects, along with his musings on the always interrelated worlds of literature, art, media, pop culture, and politics.
Wold Newton Vampires---Zahir Blue's totally rad blog on the nature of vampires in the Wold Newton Universe is a very welcome addition to the Wold Newton-oriented blogosphere, and should most definitely be checked out. Zahir's October 31, 2011 entry (a very welcome Halloween gift!) was an entry detailing his extrapolations of my own theories regarding Dracula-Mordante, with several theories of his own added, and much of his research will be incorporated into the timeline of this particular Dracula soul-clone that I constructed for his respective index.
Frankensteinia: The Frankenstein Blog---this truly awesome blog about anything and everything in popular fiction to do with one of the greatest fiends of horrodom ever created is a gold mine of information and musings on Mary Shelley's famous creature, brought to us via the eloquent cyber-pen of comic book writer and artist Pierre Fournier.
The Groovy Age of Horror---Curt Purcell's blog on horror and sci-fi material from the '60s and '70s novels, comic books, fumetti, etc., is a treasure trove of info on the subject that should not be missed by any serious horrorphile! Curt reviews these often obscure gems in an entertaining and very readable fashion.
Collecting Warren Magazines---this cool site from Warren magazine collector Allan Pollett contains some very good and useful info on the whole range of Warren collectibles, not only the mags but also important information on Warren's most unusual output, both in the print medium and in the spectrum of its classic, often highly outre and interesting products offered through its famous Captain Company adverts. If you're a Warren fan, you need to check this site out!
Crossover.Bureau42---a terrific cyberspace locale by author and critic JD Deluzio, which has articles about a variety of subjects that would be of interest to fans of the horror and sci-fi genres, including the concept of crossovers. Of particular interest to Warren Comics fans is his non-fiction article on the history of horror comics.
Monster Magazines---a terrific online blog helmed by the inimitable Michael Scott, this site features Mike's musings on various aspects of the horror genre as well as providing a great and informative trip down horrific nostalgia lane with its galleries of classic monster mag covers of those now long gone but fondly remembered print zines that haunted the newssstands during the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. More than worth a look!
Vampirella Revealed---this great site by Mike Grace is a detailed and informative history of Warren's most popular and enduring series character, Vampirella, including both her Warren and Harris years.
The Rook Chronology---this detailed timeline of the Rook, Warren's second most popular character after Vampirella, courtesy of creative mythographer extraordinaire Win Scott Eckert, will give Warren fans and other creative mythographers the skinny on the history of time traveling hero Restin Dane, including both the Warren stories and his Harris revival in the 1990s.
Scary Monsters Magazine---a great monster mag from Dennis Drukentis's publishing arm, this mag has been around since 1991 and, along with its annual Yearbook, MONSTER MEMORIES, it has proven to be one of the few monster mags with staying power on the newsstands. Dennis has also revived the classic mature horror mags CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN and JOURNAL OF FRANKENSTEIN, and you can order both current and back issues of these great mags from the official website.
Famous Monsters of Filmland---the original horror magazine, first created by Warren Publishing in 1958, continues to this day, courtesy of new publisher Phil Kim. After taking over ownership of the mag in 2008 Kim set up this online version of FM, and in 2010 it was relaunched as a print form publication, covering all aspects of both classic and modern horror in a light-hearted but more serious tone that the late, great editor of Warren's version of the mag almost until its end, the legendary Forrest J. Ackerman, always wanted to do. In May of 2011, a darker spin-off of the mag, FM UNDERGROUND, will be launched.
Win Scott Eckert.com---author Win Scott Eckert's personal site, which includes his blog, his musings on the Wold Newton Universe, info on the books containing his writing, and more...a must see for all of Win's fans!
The Omniverse---this awesome section of an excellent online locale known as The International Hero site is an awe-inspiring attempt to chronicle the relationships between the various different alternate realities and disparate multiverses they belong to, along with the numerous crossovers between the characters who inhabit these different realities in order to make the case for the existence of the Omniverse, where absolutely everything and every character who exist in any multiverse are connected.
SheNeverSlept---a terrific site for news and reviews about everything in the horror/strange fiction genre, courtesy of chief editor, publisher, and writer Sarah L. Covert and her staff of talented reviewers, this site deserves to be checked out in depth by all horrorphiles. Her review staff includes none other than creative mythographers such as her husband, Henry Covert, and Crazy Ivan Schablotski, both of whom have been a great inspiration to yours truly.
The Godzilla Saga---since I'm never one to avoid shameless plugging of my own work, check out this website by yours truly, featuring everything you ever wanted to know about the King of the Monsters.
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