Cute Creeps From Pop Culture: Millie The Lovable Monster

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Millie The Lovable Monster

...If you thought Casper The Friendly Ghost was the most sissyfied 'horror' comic ever created, you thought wrong. Millie the Lovable Monster is sooo cute she doesn't even talk... instead, she draws cute pictograms for her lovable friends to decipher, friends like Goody, the Pink Ghost. Yikes! Created in 1962 by the legendary (and at that time, recently fired) Archie Comics stalwart, Bill Woggon... most famous for his Katy Keene fashion comics... Millie was so sweet she only lasted three issues. Any more than that would have rotted our teeth out.

It was also hilarious and unique, in a "so bad it's good" kind of way. Mister Kitty seems particularly fond of the 'twist' story in the first issue, and writes it up good and nasty on his Stupid Comics site. The always enlightening Scott Shaw! posts in detail about Millie here, along with some nice images. Despite the insipid cutseyness, Millie does have it's Monsterama moments, like the monster party in issue three, or the Toho- style giant monster fight in issue one, pictured here (click to enlarge).

"Horror and humor have been on intimate terms at least since the time of Elisabethan and Jacobean drama. Shakespeare's darkest tragedies were leavened with a gallows wit..."

-David J. Skal The Monster Show

"Even as we deny that our flesh must decay, however, we surround ourselves with fictional images of the very fate we strive to hear nothing about. They are everywhere: in books, films, and TV, in advertising, in toys and games for all ages, in children's breakfast food. No American child (even one lucky enough to escape Count Chocula) can grow up without learning what a vampire is..."

-Walter Kendrick The Thrill Of Fear

"... through expressions such as the comical Hyakkiyagyõ emaki, an inversion occurs, and that which should not be gazed upon is rendered visible-- and gazed upon with pleasure. The unseen (unseeable) is transformed into spectacle; the mysterious spirits of untamed nature are transmuted into familiar everyday objects; terror turns into humor; pandemonium becomes parade."

- Michael Dylan Foster Pandemonium and Parade

"The horror movie asks you if you want to take a good close look at the dead cat (or the shape under the sheet, to use a metaphor from the introduction to my short story collection)... but not as an adult would look at it. Never mind the philosophical implications of death or the religious possibilities inherent in the idea of survival; the horror film suggests we just have a good close look at the physical artifact of death. Let us be children masquerading as pathologists."

-Stephen King Danse Macabre

"No one will ever love a story the way a kid loves a story, whether told in a novel or as a ghost tale furtively whispered around a campfire. That's because no adult has an imagination quite like that of a child, where monsters might be real and lurking just under the bed."

-Monica S. Kuebler Rue Morgue