Mad Monsters

Mad Monsters is brimming with nicely scanned monster mags, cards, toys, posters, and more. Wonderful stuff.

4 little, 5 little, 6 little Weird- Ohs

Lookie what I got! Vintage (licensed?) Weird- Oh masks! Mr. Nostalgia has more if you're interested.

Cartoon Creepies

I highly recommend a trip over to previously mentioned (and delightfully warped) Gruesomestein's Monsters, as Mark and Riccardo have posted all the fantastic Gruesomstein animated shorts for you to enjoy! Free and fiendish!

Your Haunted Mansion

Praise the Spirits! My favorite Dark Ride of all time has some stunning Halloween merchandise for sale! Yup, I can now get a glowing Ezra, Phineas, Gus, and the Bride from Disney's Haunted Mansion (the cool ride, not the poopy movie) from this Disney Shopping site! I can't wait to... $169.00??!? What are they, nuts? Sigh... I'll probably end up buying some anyway. I think I'm an addict.

Make-Up Monster

The previous post about my dear, old Make- Up Monsters book really seems to have struck a chord with you weirdos! Many of you wrote to wax nostalgic about these spooky old face concoctions. Here's a photo of me in the Werewolf make-up. Apparently everything in the '70's was brown, as this snapshot has the same diarreah tone of the book cover. The black cape at left was my kid brother as Dracula, but the '70's also had crappy cameras, and a lot of these photos came out with half the picture blackened. Dracula didn't make the final cut of this one.

The Abominable Pat

One of the contributers to the Wide Awake 666 anthology mentioned below is the lovely and talented Pat Lewis, responsible for loads of funnybook goodness including the Monsterama-relevant PROWL, and ABOMINABLE (about an apathetic ex-scientist named Lisa who saves the day when an unfrozen yeti stalks the halls of a shady research laboratory. Creepy and funny. My favorites!). This is cool, too...

Wide Awake

This anthology of creepy cuteness looks very promising... here's the sales pitch from the site: "This October you’re in for a real treat! Prepare to savor every gooey drop of this deranged collection of drawings, comics and stories from some of your favorite indie artists. Wide Awake is a horror-inspired comic anthology sure to chill you to the bone (well, maybe the funny bone)." Mmmmm... very interesting indeed. And I do so like the inspired minds behind The Students Of The Unusual.

Three...

A trio of old comic book Monster ads...

Two...

Question: What do you get when you cross beatniks with supervillians and add in a touch of 'Weird-Oh' freakrodding? Answer: Two of my favorite comic criminals of all time... The Terror Twins! The Twins' one and only appearance is in the pages of The Owl #2 (1968), created by none other than writer Jerry Siegel of Superman fame. Obviously influenced by the popularity of the campy Batman TV series, These baddies are pure nuttiness! Gangster 'Scarmug' Maroni is deeply disappointed in his deadbeat, Rock N, Roll delinquent sons Rudy and Gilbert until their mom talks them into becoming criminals to humor the old man. They rob a bank wearing the skull-face masks of the Terror Twins, blasing away with their laser guitars and escaping on skelecycles. But wait! There's more! They kidnap one Professor Dalrymple and force him to make a weapon that backfires in the lab and turns the Professor evil. Now he's so bad he takes over and forces the Terror Twins to wreak bigger and better havok... eventually inciting them to steal Abraham Lincon's head from Mount Rushmore! Oh my god it's so stupid. Can you imaging how much I love it?

One...

Halloween Intrigue is one creeptacular new blog. Hope you don't think it's too soon for discussing All Hallow's... if so, you've come to the wrong place!

Boo!

Eeeegaaaah! Ok, so the cryptids project I'm developing for the Cartoon Network is taking up a lot of my time. Everything is going really well, and really fast, which is great... but I'm not going to be able to blog quite as much for the next little while. This batch of putrid posts ought to keep you fiends at bay for the moment.

Impossible, you say?

This British comics Annual from 1968 has some of the worst off-model drawings of Frankenstein Jr. in it. What could have been a very cool line up of stories featuring the likes of (personal favorites) Space Ghost and The Impossibles, it is instead a collection of garishly recolored reprints accompanied by some rather tragic 'artwork' from the Atlas Publishing staff. I can hardly believe this is an official Hanna-Barbera product! Guess it speaks volumes about how important Joe and William felt the British market was. Here's a look at a page from the original 'Frankie Jnr' text story fromm the back of the book, entitled "A Spook In His Wheel" (click to enlarge). I try to look away, but I can't!

Back from the Abyss

Where are all the cool monsters? Where the hell have I been, anyway? Well, fiends, I've been in L.A. on top secret cartoon business. The Cryptids project is now in full-blown development with the lovely and talented Cartoon Network, and I'll let you know how that's going soon. Now back to our scheduled programme...

The last post had me reminiscing about this 1976 book Make-Up Monsters that I begged my mother to order for me through Scholastic when I was a kid. This is my original copy, and it's pretty dog-eared! I tried out nearly all of Marcia Lynn Cox's cool techniques for All Hallows and otherwise... including SKULL FACE, SCAR FACE, COUNT DRACULA, DRIPPING FACE, and my favorite, the WEREWOLF. The last one was so itchy it drove me crazy, but I still wore it twice!

Franny K. Stein

My kids' school had it's annual BBQ last week, and look what I found at the book sale. Jim Benton is probably best known for his annoyingly ubiquitous 'Happy Bunny' merchandise, but this newer childrens' book series is definately more down our darkened Monsterama alley! Franny K. Stein is a schoolage Mad Scientist, with bats for friends. She makes zombie servants out of luncheon meats and she is fabulous. I just picked up the first volume from 2003, Lunch Walks Among Us, and my kids and I loved it. So I have to go and buy the other four books now. You know.... for my kids. Ahem--! Ohhhh! And there's a vinyl figure, and a flashlight keychain, and a glow-in-the-dark T-shirt, and...

Monster Factory!

Introducing the amazing Kevin. He is one of many huggable weirdos to come out of the smoke and mirrors of the Monster Factory. Take a tour of the factory floor for drawings, plushes, and also... funny movies. Oh, yeah, Rhya and her co-workers also have a blog. Grrr!

Old Haunts

Do I ever love this new blog of Keith's! Old Haunts is described as, "Old photographs of Halloweens long past. Faded, out-of-focus snapshots. Far away memories of the chilly Autumns of our childhoods. Turn of the Century, to the '60s & '70s." Ahhh...

Kreepsville U.S.A.

Monsterama's good pal Von Kreep is stitching together a gruesome cartoon show, with spooktacular design work by Darryl Young. Check the blog regularly to see if anything twitches. Mwa Ha Ha Haaaa!

Tell You A Secret

Kirk Demarais is a weirdo after my own black heart. His Secret Fun Spot is full of all kinds of monster stuff and retro goodies, and the new Secret Fun Spot Blog is a must-see thriller! Go now or get lost!

The Color Of (J.) Evil

I just got ahold of this rare Mr. and Mrs. J. Evil Scientist color guide from their 1962 Snooper and Blabber appearance, and thought I'd share it with you loyal creepsters.

More More Monsters

It appears that the previously blogged Mr. Rozum has gotten his charmingly creepy children Daphne and Dashiell into the family act. Monsters and More is another great gallery of kid monster drawings... some fiendishly familiar faces such as Hedorrah the Smog Monster (my favorite Kaiju, too, Dash) and the Creature from the Black Lagoon alongside some nasty new nightcrawlers.