MOVIE MONSTERS
Vol. 1, No. 1
December 1974
Publisher, Martin Goodman
Editor, Jeff Rovin
Publisher Martin Goodman sold his company, Marvel Comics, in 1968. In 1974, flush with an influx of capital, he started a new, independent company, Seaboard Periodicals (a.k.a. Atlas/Seaboard), with the idea of competing with the Marvel and DC empires. The idea seemed audacious, even ridiculous, but he had a plan to offer something not only a little different to readers, but to the creative talent pool as well.
First, he placed an ad in the New York Times and poached Jeff Rovin from Warren Publications to sit at the helm of his comics line. He then hired Larry Lieber (brother of Marvel's Stan Lee) to edit the black and white magazine line. He then started hooking major artistic talent, such as Neal Adams, Wally Wood, Steve Ditko, Russ Heath, and Alex Toth, with the promise of higher page-rates, returned art, and ownership of created characters, something unheard of in the industry.
Unfortunately, the experiment failed, but we do have a number of comic book and magazine titles that have retained a somewhat limited cachet over the ensuing years since their demise in late 1975. One of these titles is the monster magazine, MOVIE MONSTERS. The first issue promised "100 Weird Photos", and it was intended to compete against the titanic line of Marvel "black and whites", such as MONSTERS OF THE MOVIES, and MONSTERS UNLEASHED. Competently edited (by the more suitable Jeff Rovin) with some interesting content, it suffered from an uninspired format and little to connect with readers other than a contest. Note the cover is by Greg Theakston, a later proponent of Monsterology.
That cover brings it all back! I bought this off the newsstand in 1974 and recall it fondly.
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