Showing posts with label Famous Monsters Of Filmland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Famous Monsters Of Filmland. Show all posts

14 November 2017

Famous Creepy Eerie FreakOut

We're running out of year pretty soon, did you notice that?

Any 50 years ago in 1967 sort of things must be tended to in the next several weeks. There was a lot happening in '67 - in fact, it was A Happening in '67. But i'm not in an overly wordy frame of mind, so let's take in something visual - I trust not too abysmal. And let's intersect with another subject i've had on the back burner for quite a while - Warren magazines.

We'll later be talking about what goes on inside the magazines, but today, let's just take a look at Warren's '67 covers. As they developed over the years, their magazines often sported some of the coolest and most interesting visuals on the magazine rack.

Their Big 3 comic magazines were Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella, with a host of other titles supporting them over the years. But back in 1967, Vampirella was still a stirring in Forry's... imagination. So, instead of Vampirella, here's his other magazine - Famous Monsters Of Filmland. Not a comic magazine, but just around the genre corner:








There's a reminder - Christmas Is Coming! That sounds somehow very different in a post Game Of Thrones world...
Meanwhile, back at Warrens premiere comic magazines... Creepy is the Big Brother of the two titles, being a whole year older. So we'll honor the elderly and let them go first-






Frank Frazetta was a frequently featured cover artist on Warren's publications. Even when re-purposing a pre-existing illustration that many had likely seen before, it was still a good draw on the newsstand. A great number of other fantasy and horror artists' paintings were used on the cover, Warren seeming to splurge on the colour covers to offset the mostly black & white inner contents.
Worked for me, though these were before my time buying the titles. I was still living in Asia at this point, and Warren was having enough troubles with distribution in the USA.
On the cover's of  Eerie's mere five issues for '67 we had Frazetta once again leading off-






I particularly like that Gray Morrow cover on #10 above. So simple & clean compared to the typical offerings of the time, and a striking design that makes good use of the white space to draw the eye to the image.

Though perhaps not up to later levels at the peak of their covers, not a bad collection for the year of 1967.
Of course, this is The Voice Of ODD!, so we'd be remiss were we not to peek at the covers of Warren's oddest publication for '67 - Freak Out U.S.A.



Yes, the second issue is actually cover dated for 1968, but it was published in '67 and it was just too damn odd to leave out. I mean - how many of you looked at that and Austin drawled "Yeah, Baby!"?
You can expect to at least see a bit of The Monkees from the first issue (16 pages they got!), as might be expected from some of my previous indications of Monkee mania.

But the question looms in my mind - which covers make you want to look inside the magazine?

all covers from Warren publications (1967)

28 October 2017

Saturday Solutions 015

Well, yesterday's Friday Fun & Games quiz was a particularly evil little quiz. As the ever astute MindBender pointed out, some answers were just wrong. In this case, however, they were wrong intentionally to thin out the contenders.
You see, this quiz comes from the 1974 Famous Monsters Of Filmland Convention at the Hotel Commodore in New York City. I say it was an evil quiz because 9 of the 46 questions were Trick Questions, with either wrong, misleading, or multiple answers. NINE! And a tenth with two correct answers from which to chose. Evil, most certain. But, evil to a purpose when thinning things out for cash prizes and 10 Years subscription.

Our listing of the questions, and answers, comes from the following year's Famous Monsters con program booklet:


Answers to "The Great Quiz":

On the previously noted (in comments) answer to #37 - i was a huge fan of The Night Stalker, The Night Strangler, and The Night Stalker series, especially McGavin's take on the character, which led me to reading the Jeff Rice books. So much so that i never even looked at an episode of the 2005 remake series. They didn't much seem like fans of the original.

Tune in later today as we seek to answer the question: Could Classic Kirk survive in a Red Shirt?

Quiz from ...weren't you reading?... Famous Monsters Convention book (1975)