Although CREEPY complained about EERIE, the idea behind the publication of EERIE was to horrify readers with 12 issues of CREEPY and EERIE a year, instead of just 6 issues of CREEPY. As Creepy explained it, "Ol' chubby can whet your appetites during the off months until it's time for me to come through with the genuine ghoulish goods."

"We launched EERIE," explained Warren, "because we thought CREEPY ought to have an adversary. The Laurel and Hardy syndrome always appealed to me. CREEPY and EERIE are like Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre..."

EERIE was to have a troubled beginning. After Warren and his staff had settled on the title for the magazine, they began promoting it in CREEPY. But Warren discovered that a rival publisher who used his same distributor was bringing out an imitation of CREEPY and intending to call it EERIE.

The rival was planning on reprinting old horror comics from the 50's; and since all the stories for Warren's EERIE #1 were still with the artists and nowhere near completion; there seemed little chance that Warren could beat the other publisher into print. To make matters worse the distributor was after Warren to concede; since the other publisher had a much larger line of magazines and was considered more valuable as a customer.

Warren was not to be thwarted. One day before a scheduled meeting with his distributor and the rival publisher to plead his case; he had Archie Goodwin and letterer Gaspar Saladino meet with him. The three cobbled together a pamphlet-sized little magazine, sporting a b/w line repro cover and emblazoned with the EERIE logo already designed by Ben Oda. It was printed overnight; and by morning there were about 200 copies of EERIE #1 in existence.

When Warren went to his meeting, he arranged for the newwstand outside his distributor's building to have several copies of the freshly printed "magazine" on display. Entering the meeting he handed a shocked distributor and competitor copies of EERIE #1 and announced that it was on sale downstairs. The two capitulated, an instant collectors item had been created, and what actually was intended to be the first issue saw official distribution as EERIE #2.

Warren eventually used EERIE to break the established mold by featuring characters in their own continuing series, something that hadn't been done in CREEPY. What started out as an experiment with a Sword & Sorcery hero (the popular Dax the Warrior) became a full-blown strategy for EERIE when, by the early 80's it was running storylines for The Mummy, The Wolfman, Shreck, Hunter, Coffin and others.

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