Atlas/Seaboard's Movie Monsters!

In the immortal words of the pop combo the world knows only as The Automatic, "What's that there coming over the hill? Is it a monster?"

No. It's four monsters.

Or at least it's four monster mags.

It's true. In the mid 1970s, Atlas/Seaboard didn't just create comics that were Marvel and DC knock-offs. They also created magazines that were Famous Monsters of Filmland knock-offs.

Of course, at the time, having never heard of Famous Monsters of Filmland, I had no way of knowing this and was therefore free to judge the mags entirely on their own merits.

Exactly what those merits were, I must confess to not being sure. The truth is I haven't read any of those issues for decades and so cannot say how they come across to the adult eye. But, as a child, I found them most wonderful concoctions indeed, packed with info about the sort of films and TV shows I loved.

Through them, I learned of the origin of the 1960s Batman show, that The Thing was directed by Howard Hawks, and that Lon Chaney Jr wasn't really called Lon Chaney Jr. I learned of the things the original Lon Chaney went through to prepare for his roles. I'm fairly sure I learned of the existence of Invaders From Mars and that Bela Lugosi insisted on being buried in his Dracula costume. I learned that Walt Disney did the visual effects for Forbidden Planet and that Jane Fonda looked rather fetching in Barbarella.

Of course, this was back in the days when I thought Barbarella was a good film, much as I thought Atlas Comics were good. Sadly, my faith in both Barbarella and Atlas Comics is long since gone but I still hold out faith that their Movie Monsters was as readable and informative as I remember it being, even though the mag's cancellation after just four issues warns me this may not have been the case.