FAMOUS MONSTERS #251: FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Okay, I waited until noon! EVERETT COMICS, the place to get my weekly fix of fantasy, opens at 11:oo AM. I held out for a whole hour, then jumped in my car for an early lunchbreak and hustled in. Brandon, previously-mentioned comic store manager par excellence, lets me behind the counter (why he allows me back there I'll never know) and I grab my stack 'o stuff from my box . . .

[Pictured above is Forrest J. Ackerman, a.k.a. Dr. Acula, a.k.a. Uncle Forry, etc., etc. from the inside front cover of FM #251. This is the last "official" photo that Forry ever posed for before he passed away in December of 2008. The caption reads: "The Great Ackermonster". The Dracula ring always proudly displayed on his finger was originally owned by Bela Lugosi.]

And there it is! FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND #251 with Corben's Nosferatu cover staring me back in the face! Now, I've already told you that you're gonna see quite a bit of FM around here until I get my fill. After all, this is a pretty big occasion. For a lot of us, FM is pretty much the sole reason why we're even spending our time with, as Moms called it, "trash" like this. If it wasn't for FM, we probably wouldn't have seen half of the things that came out from the monster craze of the 60s. And, who knows, maybe we wouldn't be seeing hardly anything in the way of monster stuff today at all, huh? In any event, Jim Warren and Forry Ackerman's FM exerted a whole lotta ju-ju on a whole lotta young minds back in the day. You could say it was dad-gummed influential.

I'm not going to go into detail just yet on what exactly I thought after a casual first flip through the pretty hefty, square-bound tome. I do have to say that I was somewhat disappointed. I'll tell you exactly why in the official MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD review coming up in a few days . . .

[Why is this man smiling? Is it because he landed an interview in the brand new FM? Pictured above right is the perennial Prince of the Pen, Ray Bradbury. The photo accompanies his interview in FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND #251.]

Below is a clip from FOX NEWS covering the FAMOUS MONSTERS CONVENTION. Wow! National coverage!