THE THIRD EYE: A NOSTALGIC REPOST

Admittedly, I often wax nostalgic here, but isn't that what this blog is mostly about--remembering all the cool stuff  and things that happened when we were monster kids? I recently came across one of the items pictured below in my desk drawer and remembered I'd blogged about it. After taking a look, I decided to re-blog it since it was first posted about 10 years ago. As a result, the text has been edited and revised and new material added. I hope you can groove to it, man.

When underground comics (or, “comix” as they were referred to so that they would be differentiated from mainstream, “establishment” superhero and “funny animal” books) were first being published by companies like Rip Off Press and Last Gasp, they were truly underground. You couldn't find them on your local drug store comic book spinner rack, nor would you see them on the outdoor newsstands of the day. With few exceptions, the only place that one could find comix were at those quaint, colorful little shoebox-sized businesses called head shops.

 

Now, a head shop was the place where hippies shopped for everything from pipes (the kind for smoking dope, not plumbing) to jewelry, paisley-print clothes and any other kind of counterculture pop paraphernalia – including underground comix.

 

So, where did I get mine? There were a few head shops around California's San Fernando Valley (yes, the same place that birthed Frank Zappa's "Valley Girl") in those halcyon days of love and bell bottoms, but the one I preferred was a tiny little converted house on Ventura Blvd. in Encino called “The Third Eye”.

The Third Eye, Encino, CA ca 1968.

Co-owner Rick Redus behind the counter.

When my sister wasn’t letting me tag along with her when she stopped to buy papers (and I don’t mean the ones with newsprint on them), I would make the five-mile-or-so trek on my bike (I was a couple of years away from driving). After dutifully chaining up I would go inside and wonder at the fantasy freak-land provided by the very nice Alabaman proprietors, Kit Sandidge, Rick Redus and their respective "old ladies". Of course, the smell that always greeted me was that of the obligatory patchouli or sandalwood and sometimes I even detected the faint odor of another, more potent “herb”. But I was just there for the comix, dig?

The Third Eye business card.

The Third Eye matchbook. Mine still has the matches in it.

The Third Eye opened in 1966 and fast became the hippie merchandise mecca of the area during the time when the terms “far out” and “groovy” were quite active in the American lexicon. Besides the fare being offered inside, they also staged outdoor concerts. I remember one weekend afternoon, my sister and I showed up at the “Eye” and there was a band playing a cover version of Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused”. They even had a hand-painted, multi-colored bus out front that Ken Keasey and his Merry Pranksters might have left behind for an even funkier model. Far out and groovy, man.

The Third Eye "magic bus" on the front lawn of the shop.

Back to the comix; I bought a run of Robert Crumb’s ZAP COMIX starting with the now-expensive “#0”, as well as what I thought was one of the funniest of the lot, Gilbert Shelton’s FABULOUS FURRY FREAK BROTHERS (the "Fat Freddy's Cat" strip being a favorite). When 1970 rolled around, I bought the first issue of SKULL COMICS there, as well as many more that I could afford.

 

Later, I would buy cinnamon incense and other cosmic tchotchkes, thumb through the latest LOS ANGELES FREE PRESS, BERKELEY BARB or other west coast underground rags and gaze with wonder (with my newly acquired and more expanded awareness of the universe) inside the closet-sized black light poster room.  I still kept buying the comix and to this day, I retain my coveted collection of hippie funny books.

 

So, what happened to the The Third Eye, you ask? Well, as all things go, Kit and Rick eventually moved out of the Encino location and set up shop elsewhere in the valley. The building was torn down (and the squares and straights probably salted the earth) and built the Town and Country Shopping Center. You might go so far as to say, they “paved Paradise and put up a parking lot”.

Here's an article from another writer who fondly recalled the shop and remembered some of the same things:

"The Third Eye was far and away the coolest, hippest and most far-out shop that Encino ever had on Ventura Boulevard. The so-called 'psychedelic shop' also sold a variety of creative crafts, art, beads, leather clothing and accessories, and movie and pop art posters of the '60s. 

The Third Eye was the first 'head shop' in Encino. There was the Peace of Mind in Encino and The Hippodrome in Sherman Oaks that popped up shortly afterward, but none we nearly as successful or as popular with people from outside the immediate neighborhood as The Third Eye.

I was a young boy when The Third Eye opened in 1966. My parents chaperoned me into the store to buy posters and look at all the creative handiwork that was on display. We hardly fit in with the tie-dyed hippie customers.

The Third Eye was famous for several things, including the Day-Glo-painted school bus that was parked in front of the store, a converted house. The bus had a real 'commune' look to it and certainly some of the local Encino neighbors were not thrilled at the prospect of The Third Eye staging live music concerts in the house's front yard.

Another thing The Third Eye was famous for was its black-light room, which was lit only by purple black lights that illuminated the many Day-Glo posters on the walls. I remember Beatles posters from their Yellow Submarine movie and one of a famous psychedelic, spiral, circular design that seemed to come to life in that room.

I also bought iconic posters of Raquel Welch in the fur bikini from her famous film One Million Years B.C. and Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper on their '60s choppers from Easy Rider. The famous poster of John and Yoko Lennon posing nude and a very 'underground,' adult-oriented spoof of a classic Disney character misbehaving was for sale at The Third Eye, but I never got to see those until many years later!

The owners of The Third Eye were Kit Sandidge, his wife, Brenda, and close friends Rick and Marinell Redus. They ran The Third Eye like a country inn. All four were from Alabama.

'We had a lot of Southern hospitality at The Third Eye,' Brenda Sandidge told me.

The shop closed in 1971 and later became the Town and Country Shopping Center.

The owners of The Third Eye opened an art gallery next to the shop called the Walrus, which featured a lot of local artists' work. Kit Sandidge stayed in the leather and custom bead business for many more years after The Third Eye closed and had a couple of other successful stores in the San Fernando Valley.

'The Third Eye is the place people remember most that Kit and I owned together,' Sandidge said. 'That's the one store that seems to hold the most precious memories for people. When people find out I was involved with it, they are always asking questions about the store.

'It was like we really tapped into what was happening in the '60s and I am proud to have been a part of that. It was such a time of peace and harmony. I miss those days.'"

[SOURCE: Encino-Tarzana Patch]

As far as I can tell, Kit and Brenda are still operating a jewelry shop in San Clemente, CA. The name? The Third Eye, of course!

THE FIRST COMIC BOOK SHOP

There is much speculation as to which was the first comic book shop that opened in the country, and the rest of the world for that matter. Evidence is sparse and assigning exact dates is challenging.

First, I'm not going to get deep in the weeds with defining what a "comic shop" truly is. I'll leave that to late author and uber-comic fan, Bill Schelly, who also happened to write EMPIRE OF MONSTERS, the biography of James Warren and his publishing company:

“Comic shop” is a term that has almost no meaning before the beginning of direct market sales in the 1970s. Before that, old/used comics had been sold in used book and magazine stores as a subset of magazines. As families disposed of old magazines, there were also comic books that went along with them, and those that survived the World War II paper drives went into such used book stores. So it’s impossible to know the first book store that began carrying some old comic books for sale.

Comic books alone have rarely if ever been the sole stock of ANY store at ANY time. (There have always been posters, calendars, Big Little Books, and other ancillary products.) So, for me, the only meaningful starting point for a “true comic shop” has to be when stores carried direct comics at the same time as newsstands. I don’t think that could ever be whittled down to the “first” one — do you?

Now, it’s like anything else, such as arguing when the Golden Age ended, or the Silver Age ended, it’s really just an excuse for a bull session over a few beers with friends. Nothing wrong with that. But there’s no ultimate answer! There’s no way to empirically bestow the title “the first comics shop.” Or so I believe."

So, with that in mind, and after doing some investigating, I came across several possibilities:

• Around 1939, a fellow by the name of Pop Hollinger opened up a used bookstore in Concordia, Kansas where he also sold used comics. A "comic shop"? No.
• Victory Thrift Shop in Queens, New York was opened around 1960 by Robert Bell. Bell sold used comics, as well as paperbacks and other goods. A "comic shop"? While Bell did own a brick and mortar store, it was a mixed bag, so no.
• Seven Sons Comic Shop, San Jose, CA opened in 1968. One of the owners said: "I staunchly maintain nobody beats Seven Sons Comic Shop, opening March 1, 1968, for comics and nothing but comics, Until I see proof otherwise, I think that's it." This is probably the earliest of what can be characterized as a "comic shop", with the exception that they didn't sell new comics. The answer? Could be.
• San Francisco Comic Book Company, San Francisco, CA opened in 1968 and was owned by EC comic fanatic Gary Arlington. He had a storefront and sold both new and used comics. A "comic shop"? Closer than any of the above, and generally speaking, yes.

At this point, we need to remember that all the above were operating long before direct sales and independent distribution.

That said, I'm throwing one more possibility into ring, and I think it qualifies as the closest thing to a comic shop as any of the others, including Seven Sons and Arlington's shop, which both opened later than this one.

I'm casting my vote for a place called Cherokee Book Shop. While there are tangential exceptions to the myriad criteria, I think this bookstore/"comic shop" fits the bill as well as--if not better--than the rest of them.

From what I found, the book shop opened around 1949 and the comic book "division" a decade or so later, around 1960. It was owned by Jack Blum and located at 6607 Hollywood Blvd. between N. Cherokee Ave. and Whitley Ave., across the street from Frederick's of Hollywood, about a block from the famous Musso & Frank Grill and a couple of blocks in the opposite direction to the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Jack and his son, Gene, ran the bookstore and Jack's brother Burt ran--yes, I'll say it--the comic shop, which was at the top of a rickety flight of wooden stairs. The reason I know this is because I visited it numerous times in the early 70's. As soon as my buddy (and fellow comic book junkie) and I got our driver's licenses, we would tool into Hollywood from the San Fernando Valley and spend a good part of the day hanging out there. A few years later, I would drive up on my own from points further south on my day off from work (that's day not days!). Invariably, I would start off by chowing down at Love's Pit Barbecue. The BBQ short ribs were my favorite and they baked a mean pot of beans. All the locations have since closed, but you can still buy a bottle of their really good sauce HERE.

Love's menu from 1974, about the time I was eating there.

A fabulous baby back rib plate!

One of the annoying things that cropped up while I was writing this is that I can't remember for the life of me if I bought any comics at Cherokee. Even then the prices were a little rich for my blood. However, I do know that I started actually "collecting" comics at early San Diego Comic Cons and with the enthusiastic urging of Terry Stroud and Carl Macek at American Comic Book Company on Ventura Blvd. in Sherman Oaks.

Burt's client list steadily grew to include individuals who were serious collectors and would pay top dollar for valuable books One customer was said to have owned 24 copies of ACTION #1 in mint condition!

One of the key points here is that it operated separately from the bookshop and as a result, in essence it was its own entity. It was known to have one time the largest inventory of second-hand comics in the world. Not only that, other sources claim it was also the first store in the world to sell old comics to collectors.

[Above] "COMIC BOOK HEAVEN-Rick Durell, El Segundo, left, a Standard Oil (Chevron) worker and Burt Blum, manager of Cherokee Book Shop, 6607 Hollywood Blvd., look over comic books in store, largest center for them in the country. Publication: Los Angeles Times, Publication date: June 7, 1965. (Image from the UCLA Photo Library). Note the use of plastic bags on some of the comics. I wonder if they were acid free.

Cherokee Book Shop had the great fortune of being covered frequently in local papers. Here's one from the LOS ANGELES TIMES from 1986:

Under Cover : In the Heart of Hollywood, a Book Lover’s Paradise

By Robin Tucker | Aug. 3, 1986 |LATimes.com

‘I offered this one to a gentleman I’ve sold some old Bibles to,” Gene Blum says, bringing out from behind the counter a 14th-Century prayer book, handwritten in medieval Dutch. “It’s my rarest book. He told me that he’d have to confer with someone before deciding, and at first I thought he meant a broker or an attorney. But he meant the Lord. He must not have gotten an affirmative answer, because I haven’t heard back from him.” Blum, owner of the 37-year-old Cherokee Book Shop, says he sees all kinds, especially at his location--6607 Hollywood Blvd., right across the street from Frederick’s of Hollywood. A transient wanders in to check out the comfortable, incongruous shop with its Oriental rugs and old oak cabinets; Blum gently steers him out again. But most browsers are book lovers like Paul Carroll, who came in to buy the suede-covered copy of “Friendship,” by Henry David Thoreau, that he had discovered there the day before. “I’ve been thinking about it all night,” he said. “I had to have it.”

Most sales are made to savvy collectors looking for particular items. One of Blum’s best customers is singer Michael Jackson, who favors rare, beautifully illustrated fairy tales and children’s books. The singer never visits the shop; when Blum gets a book that he thinks Jackson will like, he takes it over to the house, or one of Jackson’s aides picks it up.

The first rare book that Blum ever sold would have interested the rock star. An English professor came in with a copy of “Peter Pan” illustrated by Arthur Rackham, best known for his illustrations of children’s books such as “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” It was Rackham’s book, signed by him, with 16 pages of original sketches. The man wanted $600. Blum’s father--who started the shop but never ventured into rare books--wouldn’t consider it.

“Are you out of your mind?” he said. “I begged and argued until he finally conceded,” Blum remembers. “About two weeks later, I sold it to a dealer in Chicago for $1,350. It’d be worth $15,000 to $20,000 today.”

Between customers, Blum tells stories--of the woman who spent $6,000 on occult books, of supplying books for the set of “Rosemary’s Baby.”

But the rare-book business, he says, isn’t what it once was. “We used to see four or five complete libraries a week; now we’re pleased if it’s one or two annually.” To compensate, book dealers help one another. “If I don’t have something when someone calls, I’ll refer them. My colleagues reciprocate.”

The telephone rings, and Blum is off again, this time to search for a rare copy of “Treasure Island.”

Cherokee also sold their comics through a mail-order business. Shown here is a cover of their catalog from 1970. It was sold for $228 in 2018 at Heritage Auctions, Dallas. TX.

Image source: Heritage Auctions.

I believe that Cherokee Book Shop closed their brick and mortar location around 2002. They briefly ran an internet site selling Hollywood memorabilia and auctioned off the rest of their remaining inventory in 2008.

So, there you go -- my bid for the first "official" comic book shop.

You're welcome to comment with your thoughts, aka opinions.

[NOTE: A portion of this information was found at dangearino.com.]

EXTRAS!

The world-famous Musso & Frank Grill:

The early Musso & Franks Grill, 1930.

Early Musso & Frank menu (it's a little blurry).

Musso & Franks Grill menu 1954.

More recent photos of Musso & Frank Grill.

And a world-famous pop culture landmark of another kind, Frederick's of Hollywood, home of the famous Lingerie Museum:

Frederick Mellinger, founder of Frederick's of Hollywood.

Vintage Frederick's of Hollywood catalog cover (April 1969) and magazine ads:

Frederick's of Hollywood 1999 Holiday Catalog:

The flowers adorning the Art Deco building on 6608 Hollywood Boulevard first bloomed during the Great Depression. The S.H. Kress company built the four-story temple of thrift as a five and dime in 1934 but it’s best remembered today as the longtime headquarters of Frederick’s of Hollywood. The lingerie store’s bawdy catalogs, outlandish window displays, and screaming pink paint job made it a destination from 1960 until it relocated in 2005. 

Today, Marilyn’s bustier from How To Marry A Millionaire is at The Hollywood Museum, a few items are displayed at the Beverly Hills headquarters of current owner Authentic Brands Group, and a black bustier worn by Madonna was sold at auction for $75,000. Sources say music producer Dr. Luke is planning a new project in the shuttered space which was most recently Kress nightclub. No word yet on a dress code.

[SOURCE: L.A. Magazine.]

WEASELS RIPPED MY BLOG! (SLIGHT RETURN)

What’s the ugliest part of your body?

Some say your nose,

Some say your toes

But I think it’s your mind…

-Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention

Earlier this week I posted the story, "Hot Fangs Tore My Flesh!", from MAN'S LIFE (January 1959). While repeated often in men's adventure magazines, the trope of Man vs. Beast is best associated with another tale published in the same title a little over three years earlier. Indeed, it has come to be adopted as the cornerstone of this particular thematic cycle that runs through the heart and soul of these obscure -- and now expensive -- gems.

The following missive was first posted over a dozen years ago and I've edited it considerably, adding additional details and images that weren't originally included.

It was 1968, one year after the so-called “Summer of Love”. While my friends and I were very aware that the times, they were a-changin', we largely ignored such goofy social events. Instead, we were busy enjoying the last of the innocent fun that we sensed was fast slipping through our young, collective fingers. The days of awkward puberty were behind us, and we were on the cusp of that big Scary and Exciting Thing called Adulthood. This feeling, of course, made “adult stuff” all the more exciting. We still reveled in “spazzing around”, a term we used often that would eventually disappear along with much of the rest of our slang lexicon from a bygone age that has since been long locked up deep within the Hallowed Bowels of the Politically Correct. Nevertheless, we were content in our never-ending quest for cheap fun and a good laugh.

Yes, the flower children were in full bloom and their music was as heavily sweet and seductive as the scent of jasmine and patchouli. We, on the other hand, were a little more interested in kooky stuff of an entirely different kind: Dr. Demento was in full tilt, busily unearthing crazy tunes from the past (once you’ve heard it, you won't forget Benny Bell’s “Shaving Cream”), DJ Nevada Smith would be playing “Boobs A Lot” by the Holy Modal Rounders from her call letters KPPC in Pasadena, CA, and Cheech and Chong would be supplying their own unique brand of stoned humor, albeit sans music. Who needed music, anyway, when you were too busy laughing?

All these sixties shenanigans had their roots and could be traced back to one seminal, genius loci . . . Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

I was first asked if I was “hung up” and introduced to Suzy Creamcheese by way of my cousin while on vacation in Sacramento, CA in the summer of ’66, not long after the double-LP FREAK OUT by a loony by the name of Frank Zappa had been released. It was 60 minutes of pure mind warp mixed with ‘50s Rock ‘n Roll. It was strange, bizarre, but I loved it!

Zappa's Zanies followed with album titles such as WE’RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY (my personal favorite), HOT RATS, and LUMPY GRAVY, and I was schooled on such imperatives as mud sharks, the perils of eating yellow snow, and what the ugliest part of my body was.

One of Zappa's records stood out from the rest (if that was possible!) with the stark and shocking title of WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH! Man, we cracked up over that one, I tell ya. However, it wasn’t until some years later that I learned the title had originated from an even more bizarre source -- a men’s magazine!

The album cover was painted by an artist by the name of Neon Park (b. Martin Muller). Known for his surrealist style of work, Park was busy in San Francisco creating posters for the music promotion company The Family Dog when he got a phone call from Frank Zappa asking him to design the cover for his new Mothers of Invention LP. When he met Zappa in L.A, Zappa showed him a magazine cover. "It was one of those men's magazines like SAGA," Park later said. "The cover story was 'Weasels Ripped My Flesh' and it was the adventure of a guy, naked to the waist, who was in water. The water was swarming with weasels, and they were all kind of climbing on him and biting him. So Frank said, 'This is it. What can you do that's worse than this?' And the rest is history."

Park chose a Schick electric shaver ad as the basis for his design. He roughly traced over it and replaced the razor with the body of a weasel.

Schick razor ad from The Saturday Evening Post, October 3, 1953.

Weasels Ripped My Flesh LP cover, released August 10, 1970.

The cover art was met with disgust by Warner Brothers, then Zappa's record label. Even the printer was horrified by it. Zappa was happily satisfied that it had these reactions, all of them before the album was even released! 

However, despite its legendary status, Neon Park is better known as the primary LP jacket artist for the rock band, Little Feat, doing all of them except one. Among the other artists that used his work were David Bowie, The Beach Boys and Dr. John, known then as "The Night Tripper". Park also sold illustrations to PLAYBOY and NATIONAL LAMPOON, among others. He died from Lou Gehrig's Disease in 1993.

Men's adventure magazines were, during their heyday, an extremely popular form of men's entertainment. Much like their ink-relative, the pulp magazine, titles like STAG, BLUEBOOK, MAN’S WORLD, SOUTH SEA STORIES, and EXOTIC ADVENTURES were printed every month on cheap paper and delivered by the truckload to newsstands, drugstores, and liquor stores for over 20 years. While generally not relegated to being held “under the counter” like the girlie mags, they were many times tucked underneath the top tier of the magazine rack. At the Anchor Liquor store where my neighbor (the one who introduced me to monster magazines) bought his FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, MAD MONSTERS, HORROR MONSTERS and Tarzan paperbacks, they were sold this way.

These ‘zines were read by thousands of men (and maybe 3 or 4 women), then cast off into the trash, which is where a lot of people (mostly wives, I’d surmise) thought they ought to have gone in the first place. Consequently, it is estimated that about only 1% of men’s adventure magazines, from the 50s through the 70s, remain.

Still, the stories and articles found in these "throw-aways" all have a brusque sort of charm. They may be relegated to the legacy of trashy pulp pabulum, but they are a rare sort of treat, nonetheless -- the kind that you really shouldn’t eat, but enjoy anyway; a guilty pleasure as it were.

The covers -- again much like the earlier pulps -- were painted in the bold, lurid colors of their predecessors, and depicted such titillating tableaux as G.I.’s in do-or-die action, headhunters chasing down their next victim, and half-naked girls being tortured by crazed Nazi scientists.

A common theme used by many titles was that of a man, a woman, or both being menaced by such unsavory things as river monsters, flying reptiles, blood-thirsty amphibians, and a host of other nasty critters, all hatched by Mother Nature, all hungry for human flesh . . . and, yes, all purported to be true! These cover images became widely available during the advent of the Internet. Web sites began to pop up that featured cover scans and some interiors (rarely the entire article or issue). One of these images that I came across stopped me in my tracks when I saw it; here was a man, waist deep in water, warding off a slew of pissed off-looking furry rodents. The title on the bottom right of the cover read: “Weasels Ripped My Flesh!”

The story itself turns out to be a manic, nerve-wracking journey into one man’s nightmare, as the reader is immediately thrown into the middle of a tale about a horde of nocturnal weasels bent on killing, maiming, or otherwise destroying the poor narrator’s entire stock of breeding ducks (!). Told in the first person, he describes his fruitless attempts at fending off wave after wave of the horde, and is torn to shreds in the process. His “duck house” is eventually destroyed and our hapless victim must suffer the additional indignity of plastic surgery to reconstruct his ripped up face to the point of it being turned into an entirely different visage.

Talk about a horror story! This is low-brow, flash fiction at its fiercest, and an exemplary example of the types of stories and articles that a reader back in the day would likely come across on any given month in any given title.

True, any resemblance to high art here is purely unintentional, if indeed, any exists at all. More interesting is the fact that an alarming number of noted and popular authors cut their literary teeth in the sweat and blood-soaked pages of the men’s adventure magazines (hey, you gotta make a living, right?). Well, writers like Lawrence Block, Mario Puzo, Harlan Ellison, and Robert Silverberg did, as all of them contributed at one time or other to ‘zines with titles like MALE, FOR MEN ONLY, and PERIL.

MAN'S LIFE happened to be among the longest running of the men’s adventure mags, with a life-span of over twenty years, from 1952 to 1974. Along with its companion title, TRUE MEN STORIES, they were originally published by Crestwood Publishing, then both later sold to Stanley Publications/Normandy Associates.

Comic fans may recognize these two companies as comic book publishers. Crestwood was founded in 1940 and is best known for Prize Comics, Dick Briefer's FRANKENSTEIN and work by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. They stopped publishing comics in 1963, selling what was left to DC, but kept on with humor magazines such as SICK (edited by Joe Simon) and ARMY LAUGHS, edited by Samuel Bierman and containing cartoon gags by Don Orehek, Vic Martin, Bob Tupper and good girl artist Bill Wenzel.

Stanley Morse is second only to Martin Goodman for publishing the most comics and magazines during this period. Morse is infamous for publishing some of the most notorious Pre-Code horror comics, including MISTER MYSTERY and WEIRD MYSTERIES (the first issue of this title will be posted soon at WOM's companion site, FEAR IN FOUR COLORS). A late-bloomer, Morse founded Key Publications in 1951 and launched a number of imprints under its banner, such as Aragon Magazines, Gillmor Magazines, Media Publications, Stanmor Publications, and Timor Publications.

Morse was a maverick and one of Pre-Code's "shady characters". Comics historian David Hadju said Morse "produced several acutely vile horror comics".

Author and historian Lawrence Watt-Evans went even further by writing in THE SCREAM FACTORY and ALTER EGO:

"[Morse published 'some of the grossest and most vile' [comics]. His titles often changed publishers from one issue to the next as he dodged creditors or changed partners, and would sometimes have cover art taken from a story from a different issue as deadlines were missed. If he came up a story short, he would simply reprint something. If he couldn't get an artist for a particular slot, he'd have his editor cut up and rearrange the art from an old story to make a new one."

Morse shuttered Key Publications' in 1956 after the Comics Code Authority lorded over exactly the type of books he printed. But he didn't stop there; he went on to dodge the Code and publish more scandalous magazines, such as the lurid, full-size 'zines ADVENTURES IN HORROR, and HORROR STORIES, as well as his line of Pre-Code horror comics reprints such as his Eerie Publications ripoffs, GHOUL TALES and CHILLING TALES OF HORROR.

This issue of MAN'S LIFE is staffed with what appears to be a number of individuals who found employment after bailing out of the comic book industry when the Code was instituted. Harold Straubing was a writer and editor who collaborated with Leslie Charteris to create a comic about his famous detective, The Saint. Joe Genalo was the editor and colorist of Prize Comics. Don Orehek is a well-known and well-traveled artist who, in his career, claimed to have drawn over 33,000 cartoon gags. I was unable to find any information about Ed Gerard, but there is a Dave Gerard who was a cartoonist (one and the same or related?). Information on Art Director Milton Louis is also scant, but I did find a reference to him photographing the legendary Zombie mask sold in Warren's magazine for the cover of the CREEPY 1972 ANNUAL. Last but not least, Art Associate Nick Frank was a comic book artist who worked for Stanley Morse.

Photography by Milton Louis.

So, after all the build-up, are you ready to finally read the story? Well, here it is, in all its frenetic and bloody glory. An admittedly crappy scan, but it's all I've got. It's written by Matt Kamens and the cover is by Will Hulsey (under the American Art Agency), who was quite proficient at painting exciting Man vs. Beast covers.

See more MAN VS. BEAST posts HERE.

Read the horrific "The Coming of the Rats!" HERE.

Highly Recommended Reading:

WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH: THE ILLUSTRATED MEN'S ADVENTURE ANTHOLOGY

Edited by Robert Deis, with Josh Alan Friedman & Wyatt Doyle

New Texture, 2024

450 pg.

Softcover: $39.95

Hardcover: $46.95

From Amazon.com:

From the jungles to the deserts to the mean city streets, the men's adventure magazines of the 1950s, '60s and '70s - pulpy periodicals like Real Men, Male, Man's Life, True Men Stories, Untamed, Exotic Adventures and Gusto - left no male fantasy or interest unexplored. War stories, exotic adventure yarns, "true, first-hand" accounts of white-knuckle clashes between man and beast, and spicy tales of sadistic frauleins and tropical white queens hungry for companionship ... topped off with salacious exposés of then-shocking subjects like free love, the Beat Generation, homosexuality, LSD and the secret horniness hidden in calypso lyrics.

Josh Alan Friedman (Black Cracker) and Wyatt Doyle (Stop Requested) join collector and historian Robert Deis of MensPulpMags.com for a guided safari through a jaw-dropping collection of classic men's adventure magazine stories in the first anthology from the genre ever published.

Packed with pulp fiction created by writers who later went on to greater fame, sensational illustrations by masters of men's pulp art and wacky ads taken from the magazines' back pages, Weasels Ripped My Flesh! is your passport to a gonzo world where every dame was a femme fatale or a scantily-clad damsel in distress and manly men fought small mammals bare-handed.

Also highly recommended is Robert Deis' Men's Adventure blog. Visit his site HERE.

ONE-OF-A-KIND AURORA MONSTER MODEL PROTOTYPE SCULPTS

While the years roll inexorably along, I can still recollect with fairly vivid clarity my model building days as a Monster Kid. As mentioned in an earlier post, I laid down my hard-earned allowance money on Aurora's The Mummy, my first monster kit (before that I had painted and built The Red Knight of Vienna). I bought it at Gilbert's Toy and Hobby, our local hobby shop. It was within walking distance from our house, just down the hill, across Palos Verdes Blvd., and over to the north side of Southwood Shopping Center.



"My Old House", Torrance, CA (Photo from Google Earth)



I walked down this hill to get to Southwood Shopping Center.

This was the same stretch of early strip mall where my Dad tended bar part-time at a restaurant and cocktail lounge just a few doors down from Gilbert's. Ronn's Liquor & Delicatessen was at the opposite end -- the spot where, among the Stags and Bluebooks on the news rack, monster magazines were sold! I must also mentioned that, about midway down the mall was Angelo Revel Brothers Bakery, who easily rivaled the Helm's Bakery home delivery truck for mouthwatering glazed donuts and éclairs. Without fail, when you first walked through those doors, the fragrance of fresh-baked bread assailed your nostrils, evoking an immediate hunger response.



A few vintage shots of the Helms Bakery trucks.



Olympic Bread and some of the world's best donuts were sold
out of the back of these trucks!



Much like the UPS signs of today, this cardboard sign was put up
in windows to signal the Helms Bakery truck driver
to stop. I still have ours!

Forgive me for momentarily waxing nostalgic --- anyway, Gilbert's Toy and Hobby was a kid's dream store. Model rockets (the kind propelled by CO2 cartridges), kites, balsa wood airplanes, an HO track (you'd pay so much per 15 minutes to run your cars on it), train sets -- you name it -- Gilbert's had it all.

Oh, and did I mention they sold Aurora monster models? Delvin and Arnette Rice, the proprietors, like hundreds of other hobby shop owners, also participated in the great Master Monster Maker Contest of 1964, sponsored by Aurora Plastics and Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. The banner sign in their window "daring" kids to enter was proof positive.



The proprietors of Gilbert Toy and Hobby Shop.



A local business listing in the Torrance Herald 1961.

After hearing of this, I spent many hours at our newspaper-draped kitchen table, assembling and "customizing" my Mummy model kit. I had my Testor's gloss enamel paints, my toluene-laden, headache-inducing tube of glue, and a supply of mineral spirits, aka "paint thinner". But what to do to make my Mummy stand out from the rest in the contest?

I noticed that my jar of thinner was getting pretty dirty from the gray paint I was using for Kharis (this was the Lon Chaney Jr. Mummy version, not the Boris Karloff Im-ho-tep Mummy, you see). Then it hit me like a gallon of tea infused with nine Tana leaves! I called out: "Mom, do we have any old t-shirts?" Like most any other Mom of the era, she didn't throw anything away that wasn't otherwise dead, dangerous, or decaying.

I tore thin strips of the cotton shirt, "painted" them with the thinner that was dirty with rinsing brushes, and -- voila! -- I had my "mummy wrappings". I also brushed the same material onto the broken down temple pillars that were a part of the model base, giving them a nice "antique" appearance.

All in all, I had tons of fun on this kit as I recall fondly, and it was a very exciting few hours -- just what the folks at Aurora were banking on. Unfortunately though, I was a day late and a dollar short as they say, because I missed the deadline to enter my model in the Gilbert's Master Monster Maker Contest! But this minor disappointment didn't dampen my enthusiasm for making monster models and, like a loyal Monster Kid, bought and built each new Aurora kit as they came out over the years.

A Captain Company ad shown in the back pages of
FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND #26 (Jan 1964) showing the
newly-introduced Phantom of the Opera model kit.

The Godzilla and King Kong model kits are advertised for the first time in
FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND (Issue #29 July 1964)

One thing that never came to my mind all that time was just exactly how did they actually make these models from start to finish? While I know the parts were cranked out by machine on "parts trees" (technically called "sprue") as they came in the Bama-painted box, I never really considered how they got to that point.

It wasn't until years later (and with the help of the Internet) that the secrets of model making were slowly revealed. Intrepid and loyal Aurora fans even went so far as to track down the producers of these kits, including the sculptors who were responsible for the creation of the figures and how they would look as a finished product.

Aurora Plastics is long gone, but thanks to other model companies like Polar Lights, Playing Mantis and Moebius the original Aurora monster model line was resurrected as well as introducing a few new kits to boot. They are also largely responsible for rekindling the art and craft of model making to a whole new generation of Monster Millennials.

Now at auction are two examples of the earliest steps in the making of the classic Aurora monster models. The prototypes are sculpts done in solid acetate plastic by Larry Ehling. An excellent description of the process is offered by the seller. As of this writing, the bid on the King Kong prototype is $1000 and the bid on the Phantom of the Opera prototype is $500.

Description of King Kong model prototype auction Lot #2301:

9.25" tall hand-carved solid acetate plastic master pattern for Aurora's King Kong model kit. HMS Associates (a product development company) of Willow Grove, PA, was hired by Aurora to create master patterns for two new kits in their expanding line of Universal Monster models (Phantom of the Opera and King Kong), which were introduced in 1964. Both monsters were hand-carved out of solid blocks of acetate plastic by well-known sculptor Larry Ehling, who was then sub-contracting w/HMS. Ehling would carve each piece, then precisely cut it along the "break line," the seams where pieces fit together. After the sculptures were completed (each took between 2-3 weeks to finish and cost $2,000-$3,000), the pieces were sent to another specialty company, Ferriot Brothers, who created the beryllium copper molds by using a pantograph machine which traced over the acetate pieces while a cutter on the other end carved the mold cavity. When completed, both the sculptures and the molds were shipped to Aurora. There, the molds were inserted into injection molding machines and the production process began. Meanwhile, these master patterns were assembled and painted by staff members, then used for catalog photography and other promotional purposes. Offered here is the master pattern prototype for Aurora's King Kong model kit. Underside of base has faint "33353" in black marker. Base has holes for the "King Kong" name plaque and broken trees, etc., but these separate pieces are not included. Kong's mouth is included, but a separate piece made from the same pattern material as the rest of this piece and was painted, just never put in place. Mouth cannot be inserted into opening as Kong's fangs prevent placement. Kong has interesting orange overspray paint job as does the separate small figure of the woman in his hand. This female figure shows a more heavily concentrated orange coating, w/one arm and legs having moderate flaking. Kong figure has some scattered small spots of paint wear, as does base. Still displays VF. A one of a kind piece for the Aurora collector. We sold this in our July 2014 auction for $3,233 and it has been re-consigned to us.

Description of Phantom of the Opera model prototype auction Lot #2302:

Offered here is the 9.25" tall master pattern prototype for Aurora's Phantom of the Opera model kit. Base is complete w/"The Phantom Of The Opera" name plaque, rat, lizard and prisoner behind bars. The Phantom's professional paint job closely matches Aurora's box art, though w/a healthier skin tone than the green-tinted box version. Model is complete w/separate mask but is missing right hand, however still holds mask (if carefully placed) for display purposes and a replacement hand could be easily substituted from a production model. Figure has scattered paint wear, mainly to shirt and on cape at shoulders. Still displays Fine, w/detailed eyes looking terrifying when mask is in place on Phantom's face. A one-of-a-kind piece for the Aurora collector. We sold this in our Nov. 2014 auction for $1,589 and it has been re-consigned to us.

Come back to MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD next week for more Aurora monster model history and nostalgia!