I WAS A TEENAGE MONSTER MAGAZINE MAKER

You have previously read about the results of my very first hand-made, desktop (the old-fashioned wood top kind, not a PC graphics program) monster magazine. Aptly entitled MONSTERS MAGAZINE, the Vol. 1 No. 1 edition was unleashed to the world (well, to my Dad anyway) at the affordable sum of 15 cents. That's right -- one dime and one nickel.

After a time, I managed to get my claws back on it, and it has miraculously survived since 1964 until today.

Now, thanks to an unexpected package that I received on my front porch not too long ago from a certain "Hall of Flame"  guest blogger, the MONSTERS MAGAZINE legacy lives on. Upon opening said package, I extracted a parcel of monster memories of the most personal kind. Here was a substantial stack of my MONSTERS MAGAZINEs and a couple other items that were concocted when we were Monster Kids of the considerably younger kind.

Most of us on the block tried their hand on at least one issue of a home-made monster fan magazine. Even my big sister came up with two of her own.

During the assembling of our monster masterworks, untold numbers of Leaf Brand Spook Stories cards and stickers, newspaper clippings and ripped out articles from our parents' magazines, such as TIME, LIFE, LOOK, and TV GUIDE fell under our rapacious quest for content. Literally doubles, triples, quadruples were massacred under the punishment of the tools of our terrifying trade: scissors, Scotch tape and Swingline staples.

Nothing stood in the way of our monstrous, magazine-making blood lust, even going so far as to cannibalize each others  mags -- which makes it all the more amazing that any of them survived at all to the present day.

Well, several did, and following is proof. Submitted now for your viewing pleasure (no tittering from the peanut gallery, please) is MONSTERS MAGAZINE #15, undated but probably made in 1967.

[NOTE: Some pages of this issue, while numbered, were left blank. They are not included here.]