"I TOLD YOU WE DUG TOO DEEP!"

MONSTERS UNLIMITED
Vol. 1. No. 4 (Whole number 1)
1965 (No month)
Non-Pareil Publishing (Marvel Comics)
Editor: Stan Lee
Cover: Photo cover
Pages: 36
Cover price: 25 cents

I'm sure you all know by now that I have a penchant for monster humor. My long-running MMW feature, "Frankie's Friday Funnies" is nearing it's 150th installment and I still enjoy creating corny captions for various monster movie stills.

Like any enduring phenomenon, if it can be parodied and made in some way humorous, it has a better chance of withstanding the test of time. Monsters have been poked fun at in magazines ever since FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, and humorous captions or word balloons attached to monster photos have been ubiquitous ever since.

My first memory of exposure to funny monsters was back in 1959 when Topps issued the Funny Monsters trading cards. With expressive artwork by the inimitable Jack Davis, the accompanying captions by an anonymous writer were both clever and funny. Shel Silverstein's captioned photos were regularly featured for a time in the 1950's in PLAYBOY, and sometimes would depict a scene from a monster movie.

The first monster magazine I was allowed to buy was MONSTERS TO LAUGH WITH, a full size magazine with word balloons and monster pics. I pored over those pages until it literally fell apart and I still have it after all these years to prove it!

MONSTERS TO LAUGH WITH lasted for three issues until it morphed into the first issue of MONSTERS UNLIMITED, shown here today. It's more of the same, format and everything, except I think a number of the jokes are actually funnier than usual which leads me to believe that maybe Stan had some writing help (no offense, Stan!). There's still a few that refer to commercial products from back then, but the number is greatly reduced from previous issues.

Interesting to note is that page four shows a couple face-to-face with a creature that's just crawled out of a cave with the word balloon saying, "I think we dug a little too deep". The same gag was used for card #58 of the Funny Monsters series, only with the caption reading, "I told you we dug too deep!"

MONSTERS UNLIMITED ran for only a few more issues likely because the jokes started petering out. Nevertheless, we have a handful of magazines with monsters to laugh with!