Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Thimking about Dracenstein

THIMK was a rather awful 'MAD' rip-off that floundered for 6 issues in 1958-59. Following MAD's lead, they had a number of monster themed gags... convieniently located in a MAD-style 'Monster Section' (duplicated the following year by Archie's MAD HOUSE). The cool thing about THIMK is that their mascot, featured on nearly every cover, wasn't some doofy kid with a poop-eating grin-- he was a monster! Otis Dracenstein was actually pretty nifty. The humor centered on the fact that he was a horrible looking monster married to a normal wife with two normal kids-- and he was the kind-hearted one. The 'normal' folks were horrible freaks, and Otis had a gentle soul. It's really not so hilarious now (and probably wasn't then, either), but you must remember that these stories were published years before the Addams Family, Munsters and Bewitched TV shows made nice monsters as common as colds. This site has some cool background info on one of THIMK's contributors... clearly a horror movie fan! Bob Drews from THIMK's "Good Old Bob Drews Department" was also SIR RODGER, host of WTAE-TV's (Pittsburgh) 'Shock Theater' (1958-1962)! Here are some sample Otis pages...