WORLD OF MONSTERS: 2023

Sunday, December 31, 2023

MONSTER PAINT-BY-NUMBERS

By the time I was a nine year-old Monster Kid, each item I had in my monster collection was like a holy grail. Every Aurora model, every Marx figure, every monster mag was treated as a sacred object and irreplaceable. As a result, I had VERY few disasters, but one devastating incident I remember to this day.

Somehow, I managed to scrape together the two bucks to buy a Hasbro Paint-By Number Monster kit. It was 1963 and that kind of money was hard to come by and it's possible my parents even bought it for me. I can't remember the selection at the store, but I decided on the Dracula kit, probably because it was so menacing-looking with the candle-glow on his face. When the time came to paint it, I went down a few doors to my friend's house and the two mini-Michelangelo's went to work (I think my friend had the Wolfman kit). After painting for an indeterminate time, I was called back up to my house for dinner. Satisfied that I had made good progress, I put it into the box and put the lid on it for "safekeeping". When I got back home, I went in my room and pulled the lid off to admire my handiwork one more time before dinner. What met my eyes was a smeared, crappy mess on the canvas -- the box top had come in contact with the wet paint! A Banshee couldn't have wailed any louder than me at that moment. I was so distraught I tossed it in the trash. Looking back, I don't think anything I did could have save it. So traumatized was I that I never considered getting another one. Oh, well, another lesson learned on the long road of life.

Image sources: eBay, Tumblr.

This unpainted kit went for over $800 at auction.

A full-page ad in -- guess where? -- FAMOUS MONSTERS!

Saturday, December 30, 2023

THE MAD, MAD SCIENTIST LAB!

Looking like an over-sized Aurora monster model box, The Mad, Mad Scientist Lab play-set was often seen as a full-page advertisement in Warren magazines. It's hard to tell how popular of an item this was compared to other monster memorabilia from the day, but it is currently considered very rare with very few ever seen for sale or up for auction (one seller stated that it was only the second one they'd offered in forty-nine years). The last auction that I came across with one of these sold it for almost a thousand dollars.

First sold by Homelab, a division of Physio-Chem in 1965, the box art and lettering were closely patterned after the Aurora monster model kits that were all the rage at the time. It appears that Jim Warren had some affiliation with it as there were coupons for a "free" issue of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND (just send 25-cents for shipping and handling).

The box promised: "Completely Safe! No Heat Or Flame Necessary! Over 100 Experiments!" With the handy instruction booklet, some of the experiments were called Instant Blood, Mystic Monster Milk Making, Ghoulish Green Globs, Witch's Bleach, Rubbery Bones and The Fiendish Fizz. Included in the kit were test tubes, a rack to hold them in, a plastic stirring rod and a "Mystic Writing Paper" note tablet. Can you imagine this making it on store shelves these days?

NOTE: Images are sourced from auction sites and the Toys For the Ages gallery on Flickr.

HOMELAB/Physio-Chem Logo.

Full page ad from FAMOUS MONSTERS #36.

If you have your own laboratory you may want to have a listen to this monster lab background music composed especially for mad scientists:

Friday, December 29, 2023

BY CROM THE BARBARIAN!

It's not often that a comic book character that appeared in only three stories got so much traction. In this case, it's one by the name of Crom the Barbarian. The name rings with some justified familiarity as Crom is the Cimmerian god that Conan occasionally issues both oaths and curses. The comic book Crom even has a dark-haired partner named Tanit which isn't too far away from Bêlit, and both were coincidentally queens. Crom does his own oath-swearing, and as he can't likely swear to himself, so he instead directs his to the Norse gods Thor and Freya.

The series is written by prolific author Gardner F. Fox and it is likely that he that floated this story idea to the editors at Avon, who first published them in OUT OF THIS WORLD #1 and STRANGE WORLDS #1-2. John Giunta was the artist.

Crom chronology:

OUT OF THIS WORLD #1 (June 1950) "Crom the Barbarian!"
STRANGE WORLDS #1 (November 1950) "Crom the Barbarian in The Spider God of Akka!"
STRANGE WORLDS #2 (April 1951) "The Giant From Beyond"

Two of the stories were recycled in Avon pulp digests as a part of a color comics insert:

OUT OF THIS WORLD ADVENTURES #1 (Avon, July 1950 - reprints STRANGE WORLDS #1)
OUT OF THIS WORLD ADVENTURES #2 (Avon, December 1950 - reprints OUT OF THIS WORLD #1)

But wait -- that's not all! Crom was resurrect by AC comics in their 1990 all-reprint issue, BARBARIANS & BEAUTIES #1. Published in 1990, it included the third and last Crom story, "The Giant From Beyond!" from Avon's STRANGE WORDS #2.

And finally, if you are an underground comics fan, in 1972 Bob Sidebottom and California Comics (San Francisco, CA) published four issues of BARBARIAN COMICS. While not related to Fox and Giunta's hero, issues 2-3 contained a barbarian strip titled "Crom" (underground comics were not apologetic as to where they derived their material!). I'll be posting these issues soon.

NOTE: Crom the Barbarian has recently been re-introduced to old fans -- and hopefully some new ones -- with the continuing story of the short-lived hero. Go HERE to visit the website.

Gardner Fox wasn't done with writing about sword and sorcery, either. Besides writing the scripts for scads of comic books, a decade later he wrote a number of books concerning sword-wielding heroes; the Llarn books were a ERB-inspired off-world adventures and Kothar and Kyrik were red-blooded sword and sorcery tales in the tradition of REH and Lin Carter.