THE REAL CREATURE FEATURES

This is the article that followed the Dave Cockrum Creature From the Black Lagoon illustration you saw in yesterday's MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD post. It's from Marvel Comics' MONSTER MADNESS #3, published in 1972 and must be one of the "Fiendish New Feautures" seen emblazoned on the front cover.

Note should be made of the two authors as well. Allan Asherman was a writer of several DC Comics titles and went on to become the publisher's historian. Gary Gerani was the writer of FANTASTIC TELEVISION, and more recently the DEATH SHIP comic mini-series that explained what happened aboard the doomed ship Demeter on its voyage from Europe to England, carrying in its cargo hold the most famous vampire in history.

COCKRUM'S CREATURE

Dave Cockrum was an American comic book artist and writer who is noted for his work on Marvel Comics' UNCANNY X-MEN (co-creating the Nightcrawler character) and DC Comics" LEGION OF SUPERHEROES. He also delved occasionally into the world of monsters, too, as this illustration is seen in Mavel's monster humor publication MONSTER MADNESS #3, published in 1973. A nice compliment to the Bill Everett Creature that I showed you some weeks ago.

YOU CAN'T KEEP A GOOD MONSTER GAG DOWN

Doing much to prove that you can't have too much of a good thing, the Marvel Comics magazine group was unabashed by using a gagline more than once in their monster humor titles. This was proven time and again that one apparently cannot keep a good monster laugh down.

While the most used schtick in this series of titles was spoofing popular household products and their advertising catch-phrases (I'll be sharing some of those with you all in a future post), it is still interesting to see that similar, and outright copied, gaglines were used far more frequently than the casual reader might suspect.

The examples shown below are from MONSTERS TO LAUGH WITH (1964), which became MONSTERS UNLIMITED with Issue #4 (1965), and was resurrected as MONSTER MADNESS in 1972.



MONSTERS TO LAUGH WITH #1




MONSTER MADNESS #2




















MONSTERS TO LAUGH WITH #1



MONSTER MADNESS #2




















MONSTER MADNESS #1



MONSTER MADNESS #3




MONSTERS UNLIMITED #4




MONSTER MADNESS #2



MONSTERS UNLIMITED #4




MONSTER MADNESS #2



MONSTERS UNLIMITED #4




MONSTER MADNESS #2




















MONSTERS UNLIMITED #5




MONSTER MADNESS #3



HEY, MONSTERS AREN'T PERFECT, EITHER!

[From MONSTER MADNESS #3, 1973]