FRANKENSTEIN FOR MEN ONLY

I find it rather surprising that with all the print material and digital files that I have available to post about, I regularly come across something pertaining to monsters in--of all places--men's magazines.

I found this article, "The Legend of Frankenstein!" in the June 1965 issue of JADE. Subtitled, "The Ultimate in Magazine Entertainment, it was published by Seven Seventy Publishers with a P.O. box out of Universal City, CA. This was their first issue and I don't know if there was a second. There is no masthead or staff credits.

Being the first issue, the editorial professes some lofty claims, such as being "a magazine that combines the visual impact of LIFE, the readability of SATURDAY EVENING POST and the sophistication of PLAYBOY" (!).

The history of the title is a bit of a puzzle; there were at least two issues of JADE published in 1960 by Roena Publications, Inc. subtitled "A Gem of Male Entertainment" and at least three issues published from 1962-1963 by Pike Publishing Co. with the same subtitle and similar logo as the issue shown today. I'm guessing it was bought by, or morphed into Seven Seventy Publishers and continued for at least one more issue.

After reading the article, I do have to say that it was well-written and not just a slap-dash quickie meant for filler. It does, however, have a few errors with dates and names.It runs for 10 pages, is well illustrated and includes a still from BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN that I don't ever remember seeing. Without provenance, this could have easily been thought to be from a monster magazine from the same period.

EXTRA!

Included in this issue were five of Harvey Kurtzman's one-page HEY LOOK! cartoon strips. Kurtzman is, of course, best known for his work on EC Comics and MAD, but earlier he worked for Stan Lee at Timely Comics from where he drew HEY LOOK! strips. Lee is reported to have come up with the title and Kurtzman took it from there. I'm not sure how these ended up in this magazine, and I'm assuming he retained the rights to them and they are all reprints. Kurtzman also worked on the humor magazines HELP! and TRUMP, as well as publishing his own humor mag, HUMBUG (and infamously poached a few artists from MAD). All these went by the wayside when he found better success (and a larger paycheck) writing the LITTLE ANNIE FANNY strip (no pun intended) for PLAYBOY.

On a side note, one of the individuals who chipped in some cash for the HUMBUG start-up was Harry Chester, a graphic designer who ran a studio catering to the publishing trade. He designed James Warren's girlie magazine, AFTER HOURS, and is notable to monster fans as the production manager for FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND beginning with issue #10.

BONUS!

Kurtzman also did some pre-EC comics work in the 1940s. He illustrated two Black Venus stories for Aviation Press' CONTACT COMICS. Black Venus was an ex-Parisian showgirl who went to war as a Japanese-fighting aviatrix. This story is from CONTACT COMICS #11 (March 1946). The title was the only one that Aviation Press published and it ran for 12 issues until shortly after the war.

LITTLE ANNIE FANNY MEETS CONAN

As well known today as it is, Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder's LITTLE ANNIE FANNY has not been a favorite of some critics over the years. Despite the crisp writing and meticulous art the naysayers maintain that it isn't their best work, citing Hugh Hefner's "helicopter editing" as the main reason. Others believe it was the pinnacle of the Kurtzman/Elder partnership. Whatever the viewpoint, it is really the most extreme (and sexy) moment in the evolution of MAD magazine.

As the founder of the world's greatest humor magazine (now a light gray shadow of its former self), Kurtzman was lured by Hef to publish a humor magazine of his own under the HMH Publications (aka Playboy) imprint. Kurtzman bailed from MAD and took a parcel of its talent with him including Elder, Jack Davis, Al Jaffe, Wally Wood and Russ Heath. The first issue of TRUMP hit the above-the-counter stands with a cover date of January 1957. It tanked after the second issue when Hef pulled it because of financial problems he was having at the time. Another humor 'zine, HUMBUG, followed thereafter but didn't gain any traction (while MAD cruised along nicely, thank you very much).

After corresponding with Hefner over a period of time and getting an endorsement from executive editor Ray Russell, Kurtzman and his pal Will Elder landed the LITTLE ANNIE FANNY stint. It lasted for 107 issues from October 1962 to September 1988.

In an interview with THE COMICS JOURNAL, Russ Heath describes some of the chaos that went into a LITTLE ANNIE FANNY strip on any given segment:

"I met him [Kurtzman] when he was doing the Hey Look strip for Stan Lee up in the Empire State Building and we became friends and went out for lunch. And then he started feeding me little things at lunches and I eventually did a couple things in Mad. I did Help! and Humbug and, of course, Little Annie Fanny for years and years and years. In fact, Hefner moved me out to Chicago because I’d been asking Harvey for a raise for a year, and he says, 'You’re working for Playboy magazine!'

"I say, 'I can’t feed that to my kids.'

"He didn’t pay any attention. I got fed up with him one time. He came down one morning to pick some stuff up at 7:30 from my apartment from where he lives, and he didn’t tell me he was bringing all his daughters with him. So I open the door, haven’t been to bed yet. I’m in my briefs and a T-shirt and they all come running and screaming. A little politeness would have warned me to open the door with some clothes on, right? [Laughter.] And then, this one kid took my spy glasses apart and flushed the lenses down the toilet. That didn’t please me too much.

"But anyway, we cut the pages apart so Willy could work on half of one page while I’m working on the other half and that means cutting all the tissues that were taped on. And, you know, tissues and tape and sticky — it becomes a complete mess. And so I’m sitting there after he left and I thought, 'That’s it, I’ve had it!' I waited for him to get home and I called him and I said, 'Why don’t you come back down here and pick all this stuff up? I’m done, I’m through.' So he panicked and by 5 o’clock Hefner’s on the phone and says, 'I’ll double your salary. I’ll give you my old office to work out of and I’ll physically move you to Chicago.' Well, that was an offer I couldn’t refuse so that’s how I moved to Chicago."

In this particular episode we see Annie meeting up with Arnie Shpritzwasser as Cohan the Barbarian, from "the Hibernian Age, when the sword is mightier than the pen, and the penis is mightier than the swordis"  -- with apologies to Frazetta, of course! "

CAVEWOMAN GETS INTO DEEP WATER

Inspired by the dinosaur artist Bill Stout and Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder's LITTLE ANNIE FANNY strip (pun intended) in PLAYBOY, Budd Root's 19-year-old Meriem Cooper (aka Cavewoman) has been battling dinosaurs and other monsters from the Cretaceous period since 1993. One should also notice that King Kong was an inspiration as well, as Meriem Cooper sounds an awful lot like she could be the daughter of Kong filmmaker Merian C. Cooper!

Root explains her beginnings:

"Cavewoman was inspired by Little Annie Fanny and William Stout. I wanted something like "Little Annie Fanny in the Stone Age". Originally, it was going to be a T&A type of book, but it seemed like, as I was writing, it just kept on developing. Then my grandfather died after I wrote it. He had been diagnosed with some kind of inoperable tumor, and it made me think: "I'm not going to do a T&A book. Let's keep this respectable". I brought the pages (to the first issue) to show Gramp just about a week or so before he died."

That thought didn't seem to last long as gradually Meriem lost more and more of her leopard-skin bikini, especially when Devon Massey was drawing her (Root drew a lot of her series comics and Massey draws the lion's share of her one-shots).

With 300 different issues under her knife-belt, Cavewoman would be 39 now, but she hasn't seemed to have aged a day, especially taking into account gravity -- if you know what I mean and I think you do! This particular issue contains cover-to-cover Meriem sans bikini so I've elected to post it HERE instead of on the main page. You'll see what I'm talking about -- CAVEWOMAN: DEEP WATER gives new meaning to "Adult Swim"!

Cavewoman is published by AMRYL ENTERTAINMENT.

Vampire Girl by Budd Root (2002).

SWAMP MONSTERS AND MUCKMEN (PART 4)

The long-running character of The Heap was even parodied once or twice, this time in the early EC comic book series, MAD (#5, June-July 1953). The script was by Harvey Kurtzman with art by Bill Elder. Included is a profile of publisher William M. Gaines.