Cover of Eerie #139

Just because it's a geek-tastic cover.

Mike Howlett Unleashes "The Weird World of Eerie Publications"

Lookie what the mailman just delivered from Amazon.com: A brand new copy of The Weird World of Eerie Publications (Feral House), a wonderfully illustrated history of a pulp magazine publisher. The 310-page oversized hardcover, written by Mike Howlett, is definitely going to be my holiday reading.

Longtime readers (or even half-awake casual visitors) of this site know that I devote more than is a healthy amount of time and attention to the now-defunct Starlog Group, a New York-based periodicals publisher that lasted from the mid-1970s until the early part of this century. Starlog produced a ton of magazines – regular ones plus zillions of one-shots and limited-run titles – in nearly every category, ranging from genre films to sports to women's fashion to ethnic music to automobiles and beyond. Like Starlog Group, Eerie (under its various names) produced a ton of magazines in a wide variety of categories, but unlike Starlog, Eerie's were usually on the quick-and-dirty-and-cheap side. Eerie was a true exploitation publisher, and just as it's usually more fascinating to read about the escapades of an independent exploitation filmmaker than it is to hear about a corporate studio filmmaker, I can tell from my first scan through the book that this is filled with interesting stories that will tell us a lot about a bygone era in publishing.

So I'm looking forward to reading Howlett's book on the company. I'm sure it'll be amusing to me as a magazine editor and publisher, and it'll be enjoyable to me as a genre reader.

I suppose it's time someone wrote a book about the Starlog company. Me, maybe?

James Warren Loses Famous Monsters Court Case

Abandoned. That's the ruling of a recent Philadelphia court hearing the case from legendary publisher James Warren, seeking to assert copyright over images of his former monster movie magazine, Famous Monsters of Filmland.

Famous Monsters ceased publication in 1983 when Warren's publishing mini-empire went out of business. Later, the title was revived by publisher Ray Ferry, who published it for a number of years before ending in a legal free-for-all. At issue in the court case was whether a book, Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos, had violated Warren's copyrights on the cover paintings by the famed Gogos by reprinting images of the covers in the book.

The court said no. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:

[The federal judge ruled] that James Warren - the publisher who created Famous Monsters of Filmland - had effectively abandoned any claim to the title of the magazine that began the horror-fan magazine genre 51 years ago.

Warren's association with the magazine ended in 1983, wrote U.S. District Judge Michael M. Baylson, and since then, "Warren has taken virtually no action to retain his common-law ownership of the mark. Indeed, for almost 25 years, he has not published another issue of the magazine, and has not engaged in a substantial attempt to sell memorabilia or anything else with the Famous Monsters name."

The Legal Intelligencer notes:

Baylson also rejected Warren's contention that publication of the book interfered with Warren's plans for a coffee-table book on his magazines, noting that Warren had taken no significant steps to produce a book until after Spurlock's book was published, and that witnesses had testified that Spurlock's book would not adversely affect the market for Warren's book if it were published.

Frankly, I hope Warren does plan such a book, especially if it only focuses on Famous Monsters. That could be quite a book. On a different track, other Warren titles -- the comics magazines Creepy and Eerie -- are being collected and republished by Dark Horse in a series of deluxe coffee table editions. Could Warren also (or instead) publish a collection of reprints of Famous Monsters? I think they'd have a good chance at finding an appreciative audience.

All of which does suggest I just might have been correct when I wondered on this blog many moons ago whether Starlog was keeping its claim alive to discontinued print titles (Comics Scene, Future Life, Cinemagic, Fantasy Worlds) by using them as headers for special sections of that magazine. Just wanted you to know how darned perceptive this blog is ...

After Magazines Die: What Would the Next Issue Have Looked Like?

When a magazine goes to periodicals heaven, the news often strikes readers and staff alike with a sudden blow. They may have seen the writing on the wall -- falling sales, skyrocketing costs, the loss of irreplaceable editors or a publisher -- but the final decision itself is often a sudden one. I've been through the process myself, as a reader (anyone remember Epic Illustrated? my all-time favorite, Future Life? Comics Scene? Car Design?) and as an editor (Internet World, which was dearly missed, and another smaller publication that wasn't). Assuming it's a magazine I enjoyed reading, I'm often left wondering just what the next, never-to-be-published issue of the magazine would have been like had it been published -- had the publisher's axe been stayed at the last minute. Often, that issue is all prepared, ready to ship to the printer, when the bad news arrives.

So I've got a suggestion. With the recent popularity of digital versions of magazines, either current ones or resurrected ones, comes the possibility of publishers dusting off those old pasteboards or CDs or whatever media they have the unpublished "post-final" issue in, and making it available. Intellectual property rights seem to be working out much more easily these days than they were in the early days of the internet, when it was still unclear how to treat reproduction rights to articles and artwork created years before the Web browser caught on.
And surely those publishers can make a small buck off a property they never thought they'd see again produce a penny.

So let's see issue #32 of Future Life, and issue #146 of Creepy, or #140 of Eerie, or issue #4 of Comics Scene 2000 (or issue #57 of the second series of Comics Scene or issue #12 of the first series of Comics Scene -- it gets complicated; don't ask)! Because in the digital age, old magazines never die; they can always find new life and old audiences.
What do you think?

Forrest J Ackerman, RIP

Back to the topic of magazines. A real path-breaker passed away this past week, Forrest J Ackerman. The founding editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, the creator of Vampirella, the literary agent who brought us Ray Bradbury and others, the man who (with his wife Wendayne) brought us the U.S. versions of the German Perry Rhodan science fiction novels, passed away at the age of 92.

There are obviously lots of fans of his in the filmmaking world -- Steven Spielberg, Steven King, etc. But there are also lots of fans of his in the magazine world, or at least in the science fiction and horror magazine world. That's because Famous Monsters was a groundbreaking magazine devoted to horror films, their stars, and not much else. It was presented in an unabashedly enthusiastic way, and I think people of a generation or two before me loved the magazine for that.

It's not an appreciation I can claim to share. When I got into reading science fiction books and magazines, there was a magazine called Starlog that captured my attention, love, imagination, and weekly allowance. Starlog also produced a sister publication, Fangoria, to cover horror movies and related topics. Starlog and Fangoria are still being published, though Famous Monsters died along with the rest of the Warren magazine publishing empire in the early 1980s.

I didn't pay attention to Famous Monsters much at the time, because whenever I took a look, I found it to be lacking in substance, intelligence, and quality. I've occasionally bought an issue (thanks, eBay) in recent years to test my original reactions, and if anything, my views then were overly charitable.

But Ackerman himself (in an interview in Fangoria after he was ousted from his Famous Monsters position just a couple issues before the magazine's death) has lamented the chains with which his publisher, James Warren, shackled him with the magazine, and he apparently couldn't produce the magazine he would have liked. That's a shame. Warren, after all, produced some incredibly fun and exciting magazines like Creepy and Eerie during the 1960s and 1970s. If Famous Monsters had been allowed more freedom, then perhaps Ackerman would be remembered not only as a groundbreaking editor but as a great one.

But Ackerman's triumph is most likely his ability to transmit his enthusiasm to young science fiction and horror fans, through his magazines, books, and personal appearances (for many years, he allowed fans to tour his legendary collection of science fiction memorabilia in his homes, on Saturdays). I never had the opportunity to meet him, but if I had, it wouldn't have been magazines of which we would have spoken, it would have been Rhodan, movie monsters, film directors, and deep space shows. I would have liked that a great deal, and I feel bad that we've lost such a personality and talent.

RIP