The most forgettable comics I've ever owned - Part 24: Monster Fantasy magazine #3.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

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Barbarella! 

Barbarella!

Barbarella!

Who doesn't love Barbarella?

Probably anyone with any taste in movies.

And, yet, it's strangely hard to dislike, being one of those films - like 1980's Flash Gordon - that's probably more fun to remember than it is to actually watch.

"What are you blathering about, you moron?" I hear you cry. "What does this have to do with anything?"

Seemingly nothing.

But, also, everything.

For I can reveal I've been withholding vital information from you.

Recently, I wrote of how, while researching Marvel UK's brand new (in 1982) Monster Monthly, I stumbled across covers for Quasimodo's Monster Magazine and suddenly realised I'd owned a couple of issues of it, back in the 1970s.

Now, I must make a dramatic revelation.

Because, during that research, I didn't unearth just one publication I'd forgotten about. I unearthed two.

The other was a thing called Monster Fantasy. And, at once, I recognised the cover to issue #3, realising it too had once been in my possession.

But how could I have forgotten its existence? After all, it was that very mag which first introduced me to the aforementioned Barbarella. And not only that but, also, the rampant paranoia-fest that is Invaders From Mars.

It also introduced me to the monsters of the Outer Limits and the life stories of Laird Cregan, Lionel Atwill and Alfred Hitchcock.

It seems it gave me info I'd not previously possessed about Forbidden Planet, War of the Worlds, Phantom of the Opera, This Island Earth, Quatermass and the Pit and the 1930s Flash Gordon serials.

How could so much awesomeness be crammed into just one magazine?

I've no idea.

How could I have forgotten about its existence?

Easily. As with Quasimodo's mag, I'd always assumed that all the articles I'd remembered from it had been in Atlas/Seaboard's Movie Monsters mag.

What I do have an idea about is the nature of the book. It seems it was a sister mag to Quasimodo's, having also been produced by Mayfair Publications. In fact, so sisterly were the titles that they came out in alternate months, so as not to clash with each other.

Tragically, where the other mag lasted a full eight issues before falling from its bell tower and expiring, Monster Fantasy only endured for four, running from April to August 1975.

Still, despite its short life, it shall never be forgotten.

Except by me.

Except I've now remembered.

But for how long?