Castle of Frankenstein #15 - Gothic Castle Publishing

1970 - Castle of Frankenstein was another one of those influential magazines that came and went before I was ever reading horror stuff, so I had always wanted to get a copy and see what it was like.

This issue features a cover by Frank Brunner, so I figured that was a good place to start!

The main thing I was struck by was the diversity of the magazine's contents--there's modern horror, classic horror, sci-fi, comics, even some humor. The conventional wisdom has always been that the fans of these genres/mediums don't always mix, but I guess COF wanted to give it a shot.

Inside this issue is an article on the new film Beneath The Planet of the Apes, a still from the very silly Lugosi film Voodoo Man, and then we have COF's "Slaymate of the Month":

This kind of thing was pushing the envelope a bit. I could imagine a parent getting apoplectic if they had seen something like this inside of junior's monster magazine.

There's a piece on the film Witches' Brew, and then an article called "Al Manner of Fantasies" that focuses on the causes and effects of horror films, concentrating on Golden Age of Hollywood horror, like London After Midnight, Murders on the Rue Morgue, and (one of my favorites) I Walked With A Zombie.

There's a piece on Karloff's last great film Targets, and then, oddly enough, two pages of Little Nemo in Slumberland! Following that is more movie stuff, on Marooned (more famous now for being the "biggest" film ever spoofed on MST3K) and The Oblong Box.

Next is two pages of Brunner's "Smash Gordon" strip, as well as a profile of the artist, including his samples of a proposed Star Trek newspaper strip:

...Star Trek The Newspaper Strip drawn by Frank Brunner? I woulda read that!

Following that is film news, comic book, magazine, and book reviews, and all wrapping up with a few pages of Captain Company-style ads for assorted bric-a-brac.

For more info on Castle of Frankenstein, check out this page, which is a loving tribute to the mag.

Hammer's House of Horror #19 - Top Sellers Ltd.

April 1978 - I always get this magazine confused with Warren's Hammer-themed magazine, and with good reason. But that's a story for another day(maybe tomorrow).

In any case, this is a British magazine, Hammer's House of Horror, a sort of combo FMOF and comics. I bought it mostly because of the superb cover by Ramon Sola--I love the use of very atypical colors for a horror cover, and I also like how, minus the monster, the painting would work as a completely different kind of image. Nice.

The credits list the editor as Dez Skinn, with writers Alan Brycem Tony Crawley, John Fleming, Alan Frank, Steve Parkhouse, and Tise Vahimagi, with artists Sola, Brian Lewis, and Parkhouse. Skinn and Parkhouse are the only names I'm familiar with at all.

First up is a comic adaptation of The Reptile, one of Hammer's less-famous films(though still pretty good, from what I remember), and featuring some pretty nifty art by Brian Lewis:

The adaptation runs twelve pages, and by eliminating most of the most talky parts of the movie, makes for a pretty good read!

Next is the text feature "Media Macabre", featuring reviews of horror/sci-fi films and books, like the upcoming, sure-to-be-smash-hit Meteor!

Next are two movie reviews, Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds(?) and The Mighty Peking Man(??), followed by an astonishingly-complete filmography of Peter Cushing.

Next is part two of a history of Hammer(this is issue #19, and they're only up to part two?), discussing the years 1957-1958, featuring this awesome photo:

I would see any movie, any movie, that featured this kind of slam-bang advertising nowadays--Rambo, Fool's Gold, anything.

Next is an article on Roger Corman's Revenge of the Blood Beast(which really can't hold up under this kind of scrutiny), a letters page called "Post Mortem"(clever!), and then wrapping up the issue is another comic book sequence, this time a series called "Van Helsing's Terror Tales", this issue featuring "The Witch at World's End" by Steve Parkhouse, running only four pages.

The inside cover features an ad for those Super 8 films for sale you saw in the back of a million Warrens, but with an, er, unusual accompanying graphic:

Yikes!

A pretty cool magazine, I liked it--the Reptile sequence is especially fun(the back cover features the movie's poster, a nice touch). Now I have to try and check out Warren's version to compare and contrast!

Movie Monsters #2 - Atlas

This is the other issue of Atlas' Movie Monsters magazine, having already discussed the one other I own back in July.

Since I was never that big a fan of Famous Monsters of Filmland, I never saw the point of getting Atlas' knockoff version. I bought #4 because it was famous for being thrown together as the Atlas offices crumbled around the staff(metaphorically). I bought this issue because it concerns the only other notable moment in this series run, one that was indictative of the company's problem as a whole.

Apparently, this nice cover of Dr.Zaius was commissioned from Greg Theakston, and the cover text was done in a cool blue by Jeff Rovin(Atlas' EIC) and Steve Mitchell. They thought(correctly) that it would contrast nicely with warm browns and oranges Theakston had used for the painting.

Well, apparently son-of-the-editor Chip Goodman stopped looking at Swank nudie photos long enough to stick his nose in the production of this issue, and demanded the blue text be changed to an almost neon-y magenta. Rovin and Mitchell argued you wouldn't be able to read the text that way, and it would hurt potential sales. But Chip insisted and the issue went out like this. When the color proofs or whatever came back, everyone could see it was a bad choice. But it was too late to change it, and to make things worse, Chip tried to deflect the blame to the staff! Sheesh, what a dick.

Anyway, there are articles on some fun stuff, like 2001, Ray Harryhausen, Superman movie serials, "Giant Bug" films, Frankenstein, Planet of the Apes, Rodan, Bela Lugosi(including a plug for Atlas' Planet of the Vampires comic so shameless it would've made Stan Lee wince), and Doc Savage. But there was only so many of these types of magazines the market could support, so after four issues Movie Monsters went belly-up(making it one of Atlas' longest-lasting titles!).

There clearly wasn't quite enough text, since there are some giant empty spaces in this issue. At least when DC had an empty half-page you'd get a "Henry's Household Hints" strip or something.

Movie Monsters #4 - Atlas

Atlas, in its attempt to copy every successful idea from other comics companies, left no stone unturned. One fine example of that is Movie Monsters, Atlas' lookalike to the groundbreaking Famous Monsters of Filmland.

These magazines never did much for me as a kid--even FMOF--so I don't have that sense of wonderful nostalgia for these like a lot of others have, but I wanted to see for myself what Atlas' version looked like. I went after this issue, #4, because, among the Atlas staffers themselves, this is an infamous issue.

I say infamous because it was one of the last publications prepared in the offices before Atlas was closed down, and that whole one-foot-out-the-door feeling of people looking for other work pervades this issue.

Amid the articles on Star Trek, Disney films, The Loch Ness Monster, Lon Chaney jr., The Thing, Flash Gordon, and Ray Harryhausen films, there are spelling mistakes, factual errors, and odd sentences. Most egregiously is a page in the Loch Ness Monster article, where two boxes where graphics were supposed to be are blank. I can picture the proofs for this issue, sitting on someone's desk, collecting dust.

To be fair, from what I've read about the inner workings of Atlas(mostly the superb history done in Comic Book Artist #16), the staffers like Jeff Rovin and Steve Mitchell were trying their best, but owners/publishers Martin Goodman and his, uh, less interested son Chip kept undercutting them, slashing budgets and micromanaging at random times. It must have made working at Atlas a harrowing experience(indeed, Mitchell tells a story in CBA about being so stressed one day he went into the bathroom and cut off all his hair--and this was the seventies!), so the fact that some cheesy monster mag went out with some mistakes is hardly a Crime Against Humanity.

This issue stands as more of an example of what can be produced when not all of a company's oars are going in the same direction.