I’ve spent a good part of my life in the wonderful world of the imagination. That’s a special place apart from the ordinary real world where people have to spend most of their time. For me the best way to penetrate into that special realm of the imagination has always been primarily through reading comic books and science fiction books; there are a number of pleasures in life but reading is the most sublime. However the world of the imagination is a really big place that includes far more than just comic books and science fiction books. Orbiting around these two main passions of mine are several more peripheral but still interesting areas of interest that tease the imagination. One of these sideline areas is monster magazines.

In the late 1950s old time monster and horror movies from the 1930s and 1940s were enjoying a revival on Late Late Show type movies on television or afternoon TV features where a spooky human host like Zacherle for instance would broadcast an old monster movie. A former adult magazine publisher, Jim Warren, decided to cash in on this current monster movie revival fad and hired a science fiction literary agent and movie fan named Forrest J. Ackerman to edit a new monster magazine. Thus was created the first important monster magazine – Famous Monsters Of Filmland.

The first issue of Famous Monsters I had was issue #30 from 1964. I don’t remember how I got it. I had it in my classroom at White Bluff Elementary School in Savannah, GA and was showing it to some of my classmates. I remember one of my classmates, Mike Cole, said something like “Yeah, it’s a good one!”  All of this interest created a minor disturbance that caught the teacher’s eye and she confiscated it from me. If I had created a minor disturbance with a book of Shakespeare’s plays or one of those dry Charles Dickens novels we all had to read in school in those days that wouldn’t have been confiscated. But I’m sure my teacher shared the general opinion of many adults in those days that monster magazines, like comic books, were just trash that you shouldn’t be reading anyway. What really burned me was she didn’t return my magazine at the end of the day with the usual warning not to bring anymore contraband to class. Instead she gave it to her daughter who attended the same school. I remember thinking to myself “If I’m not supposed to be reading this subversive garbage why did you give it to your young daughter to corrupt her”?

I didn’t see another issue of Famous Monsters until two years later in 1966. That’s probably because my usual source for comic books – Mr. Woo’s 7-11 convenience store near my home on Edgewater Road in Savannah – didn’t stock Famous Monsters. But one day I was at a drug or grocery store somewhere else in Savannah and suddenly this magazine cover with a flamboyant green monster named the Ymir jumped out at me. Thus Famous Monsters #37 burned itself into my teenage imagination. I hadn’t seen the movie this Ymir monster was from but I think I had heard of Ray Harryhausen who was noted on the cover and that piqued my imagination even more. I may have balked at the exorbitant cover price of .50 (you could buy four comic books for that price) but I had to have this magazine. 

Another early run-in with Famous Monsters came in the late 1960s. I usually spent our three month summer vacations from school at my grandmother’s home in Tarrant City, near Birmingham, AL. I made frequent trips to the best used bookstore in downtown Birmingham, The Birmingham Book And Magazine Co. to hunt for comic books of course. One of these trips I spotted two issues of Famous Monsters on a magazine rack. The only one I remember is the February 1963 issue showing Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein Monster and Elsa Lanchester as the Bride. I bought both magazines probably for no more than .25 each. 

Circa 1998 I was retired from the U.S. Air Force and setting up as a comic book and magazine dealer at the collector shows. So after nearly 30 years of hoarding this Famous Monsters February 1963 issue I took it to one of the Fanex conventions in the Washington D.C. area to try to sell it. I had it on my display wall and to my surprise it caught the attention of the big time monster magazine dealer Steve Dolnick. I thought he had multiple copies of every monster magazine in the world so why bother with looking at this one? I remember him looking it over carefully and admitting to me the magazine was priced fairly for a collector but then adding the terse comment “you’re not going to get it [that price] from me.”  I’m sorry now I eventually sold it at some other show instead of just keeping it for another 30 years.

Despite all these early flirtations with Famous Monsters there was never any reliable source of supply for newly published issues so I never made any attempt to seriously collect Famous Monsters. It wasn’t until after I was retired from the Air Force that I finally managed to buy an entire collection of Famous Monsters. A lady in New Jersey had a son who was a record disc jockey who had passed away and he had collected Famous Monsters as a sideline to his record collecting. I had to pay the lady $5.00 each for the hundred or so magazines. That was a great bargain price for the early issues but too much for the later ones. I sold all the issues after #30 on ebay or on the road and kept the first 30 issues for myself. I used 30 as the cutoff issue since the other big monster magazine dealer Mike Pierce of “Monsters Among Us” had told me that the first 30 issues weren’t heavily stocked in the Jim Warren warehouse like the later issues.

Another monster magazine that exploded into my youthful imagination was Castle Of Frankenstein published by Calvin Beck. One of my childhood friends in Savannah was Billy Barrett. I wrangled a decent collection of early 1960s DC comic books from Billy as noted here. On another occasion I was at Billy’s house and he showed me his recently acquired copy of Castle Of Frankenstein #6, 1965. I liked the cover and somehow got the magazine from him. I may have traded him something or maybe paid him a nickel or so. This was the only monster magazine I had ever seen besides Famous Monsters. I remember noticing at the time that the articles in Castle Of Frankenstein were were well written for an older audience as opposed to Famous Monsters whose corny puns (e.g. “You Axed For It”) had been designed for 10 and 11 year old boys. 

The next issue of Castle Of Frankenstein I saw hit me like a thunderclap. I was at Mr. Woo’s 7-11 store again on one of my frequent comic book buying trips and there on the magazine rack next to the comic book spinner rack was Castle Of Frankenstein #11, 1967. It had a sparkling nearly neon green cover showing Mr. Spock from the currently playing Star Trek television show. It was and is still unusual for a magazine to have a green cover. It was frequently mentioned on Star Trek that Mr. Spock had green blood and I remember that reading later that in some of the early TV episodes the makeup man gave Mr. Spock a tint of green in his face makeup. I wonder now if the editors of Castle Of Frankenstein gave this issue a green cover due to Mr. Spock’s connection to the color green?

I wasn’t yet a Star Trek fan so the “thunderclap” part of my fascination with this issue wasn’t Mr. Spock but the cover blurb “New Feature – The Men Behind Marvel Comics.” That’s why I bought this issue. I was a little disappointed to see that most of the Marvel article focused on their new hot shot artist Jim Steranko and not their top artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko that I preferred. I can’t remember what happened to this beloved childhood issue. I do remember in the late 1990s I wanted it back and ordered a copy from Steve Dolnick who I had net yet met in person on the collector show circuit. I think I have that copy still squirreled away in a box but I’m not sure. I may have sold it on the road. I keep looking on ebay for another high grade but affordable copy but so far as of now in 2022 no luck. 

I never saw another copy of Castle Of Frankenstein at Mr. Woo’s 7-11. If the distribution of Famous Monsters in Savannah in those days was spotty, then Castle Of Frankenstein’s distribution was nearly non-existent. Plus this magazine seemed to have an irregular publication schedule. It may have suspended publication for a long time in the late 1960s or early 1970s. However by the mid 1970s I had a car to range beyond Mr. Woo’s 7-11 and there were more bookstores and malls in Savannah by then so I was able to pick up some a few more copies including the last issue I ever had, #25 in 1975. 

Sometime in the mid 1970s this excellent magazine faded into history although in recent years, like Famous Monsters, it still appears with a new publisher but with little of its former glory. Since there are less than 30 issues of the original Castle Of Frankenstein I’ve set myself the task of getting a complete run of the original run in high grade but pickings on ebay and the current comic book shows are slim. We’ll see what the next few years will bring.

The only other monster magazine I have any real interest in had to wait until the late 1970s for me to discover it. At that time I was stationed at Mather Air Force Base near Sacramento, CA. I drove into Sacramento quite often to visit  the Sacramento store of Comics And Comix which was the corporate name for  a chain of stores in the big cities in California. These were among the first comic book speciality stores in the country. That’s where I first saw a few of the first issues of the magazine Cinefantastique. This magazine had only started a few years earlier so these few issues were still in high grade condition. I bought all they had. I think I still have them tucked away. The only ones I remember for sure buying that day is the Fall 1971 issue with The Time Machine with Rod Taylor cover and the Summer 1972 issue with the iconic Planet Of The Apes cover that shows pieces of the top of the Statue of Liberty in the foreground with Charlton Heston in the far background looking up at it. That issue brings pretty big money on ebay these days. I was impressed at the time to see that Cinefantastique was printed on quality slick paper unlike all the other monster magazines in those days were printed on newsprint paper. The articles were ever bit as well written as those in Castle Of Frankenstein and even a bit more scholarly. 

Cinefantastique was published for many years up through at least the late 1990s. But I think when it finally died it stayed dead. It was never brought back by a new publisher like Famous Monsters and Castle Of Frankenstein were. I don’t intend to try to put together a complete run of Cinefantastique since there are too many issues and many of the later issues are about newer movies I don’t care for. But I do spend time on ebay these days trying to pick off here and there a few of the older issues I like at an affordable price. I recently picked up a nice copy of issue with The Time Machine with Rod Taylor painted cover for instance. One of these days another copy of that Planet Of The Apes with Charlton Heston cover issue is going to fall into my lap but I expect it will be a long wait.