After Hours #3 - Jay Publishing, aka Warren!

I am now only one issue--#2--away from having a complete set of Jim Warren's first publishing effort, the nudie-mag After Hours. The person selling this copy of #3 on ebay didn't have any knowledge of its historical value, though the bidders sure did, and there was quite a bidding war, but I was determined to prevail. This copy is in astonishingly good condition--it's practically mint--and I'm amazed that someone would think to keep some old nudie-mag around for so long and with such care. But I'm so glad they did!

Like the previous issue I discussed, #3 here doesn't have any sci-fi/horror/comic content, so it's notable purely for having Jim Warren's name on the masthead:

(BTW, wanna bet that "Pete Twaddle" wasn't that guy's real name?)

This issue does feature gen-u-ine nudity, but its more of the nude-art-study variety. If these photos were in any other context than this magazine--with its sniggering articles on Las Vegas and pulpy short fiction stories--they'd probably be considered classy. There's also lots of Playboy-style gag cartoons, an article on hot Italian women like Sophia Loren and Gina Lollabrigida.

And like with the first issue, there's at least one centerfold featuring a woman who, er, probably got further in the world of nude modeling than she normally would have simply because she was willing to take off her clothes back then:


















...I know I'm probably ragging on somebody's Grammy now, and I know that tastes change over time..but not that much.

After Hours #1 - Jay Publishing, aka Warren!

I've managed to find something even more rare than the already-indexed fourth issue of After Hours--this, the very first issue of Jim Warren's first magazine!

When I came across it on ebay, I was a little disappointed that the cover logo was stripped off (a practice still done to this day, where the logo or whole front cover is ripped off and returned to the publisher for credit as an unsold copy), but these first three issues are so hard to find (even the fine folks at TwoMorrows, when they were compiling their Warren Companion book, couldn't find the first three issues for indexing) that I decided to get it anyway, since the rest of the issue was complete.

Of course, there is no connection to the world of black and white comic magazines other than this one name on the credits:

...no, not assistant editor George Novak, silly! James Warren!


Unlike the fourth issue, this inaugural volume has actual nudity, brief as though it is. It features lots of short fiction, cartoons, pin-ups, a Bettie Page centerfold(!), and weird articles like "Young Man with a Nightclub", about a guy that "turned a former stable into a thriving Supper Club." Former stable?

It's a profile of the club, and how its populated by comedians, actors, actresses, general men-about-town, and dancers like this:

...for God's sake, if this is someone you find attractive, seek medical attention.

Even though the other two issue are more like this one (i.e. no comic book, sci-fi, or related-genre content) I still plan to be on the lookout for them. Apparently Jim Warren himself doesn't even own a complete set, so maybe if I ever find #s 2 and 3, I'll give them to him if I'm ever lucky enough to meet him in person...

After Hours #4 - Jay Publishing...aka Warren!

This is a really rare treat--After Hours, Jim Warren's very first magazine, published in 1957(!) and is, by Jim's own admission, a Playboy knockoff (no pun intended).

As related in the too-oft-mentioned Warren Companion, it was this magazine that got Jim arrested in Philadelphia as a pornographer (horrors!), with his picture in the paper and all the shame that that brought with it in 1957.

Of course, when you look at it now, the magazine is just slightly dirtier than, say, Glamour. There's no actual nudity in any of the photos, and then poses are of the most standard kind. I know I'm judging it by 2007 standards, but it is funny to finally get a copy of this magazine and see what all the hoopla was about. It's kind of funny, going back to this, and seeing Mr. Warren's name on the masthead, knowing what a huge influence this horrible pornographer was about to have on pop culture:

Apparently the four issues of this magazine are so rare that Jim himself does not own a complete set, and when TwoMorrows was indexing all of Warren's output, they could only find this, the fourth issue, to review. I've occasionally looked for them on ebay, figuring maybe some unwitting seller who wasn't familar with the Warren name would sell one, simply thinking it was a vintage girlie-mag and leave it at that. So when this issue popped up, I knew I had to have it, price be damned (and it almost was)!

The reason the fourth issue surfaces at all is because it, unlike the first three, featured some non-girlie content and therefore attracts another type of fandom. Warren hired the legendary Forest J. Ackerman to write two articles totaling nine pages about behind-the-scenes sci-fi stuff. Clearly this was the first baby-step towards what would become a genre benchmark, Famous Monsters of Filmland:

...there's stuff on sci-fi pulps, articles on make-up (that's Karloff turning into Dr. Jekyll above), plus comments on films like Tarantula and This Island Earth. What anyone buying After Hours looking for some nekkid wimmen thought of seeing a Metaluna Mutant instead is probably beyond our comprehension--"Hey--I want to return this, Mr. Newsstand Vendor!--why is Boris Karloff in my nudie magazine?!?"

And you know, Jim managed to corral a lot of famous or about-to-be-famous girls for this humble little mag. You've got cover girl Anita Eckberg, Bettie Page (another unforseen sci-fi genre tie-in), plus a statuesque redhead named Tina Louise. There's also an "article" on some yearly event called The New York Art Students League Ball that seems to feature lots of scantily-clad women dancing with the artists, dressed in Caligula-esque costumes. Man, was I born at the wrong time:

(it's all right, you can say it...what the holy hell?!?)

There's an ad for the next issue, which sadly never came to be. It was going to feature an interview with Mike Wallace(!!) and, oh, some more nudity. Maybe I should't say sadly, since because of all the trouble Warren got into over this, he took a breather and looked for another genre to publish a magazine about.

And of course we all know he found one even more disreputable than pornography!