Recalling The Monster Times

After posting yesterday about actor Akira Takarada’s passing, I ended up browsing the internets for all kinds of old Toho monster stuff online. One thing led to another, and I discovered (or actually rediscovered, since I had happened upon it some time back) a site that features full issues, by way of JPGs, of The Monster Times, a tabloid-style publication that ran for several years in the 1970s. My first published work, for which I was actually paid — a filmbook of Godzilla vs. the Thing — appeared in issue #42 of TMT (July 1975). I remember discovering TMT at a bookstore in Atlanta when I was a young teen and being blown away that such a publication existed. It was printed on cheap newsprint, featured tons of articles and photos from my favorite monster movies (especially Godzilla and other daikaiju flicks), and leaned distinctly toward humor. Not necessarily good humor, but humor nonetheless. Eventually, issues of TMT began appearing at our local newsstand in Martinsville, VA, which delighted me no end.

I remember picking up an issue one day — Fall of 1973, when I was 14 — and going utterly mad to find the familiar poster art of one of my favorite Godzilla movies, Destroy All Monsters (which, by the way, remains a favorite to this day). Not only that, the filmbook’s author was Tom Murdock, a pen pal I had met sometime earlier by way of the late Greg Shoemaker’s wonderful Japanese Fantasy Film Journal. I asked Tom how he’d gotten published in The Monster Times, and he said he basically asked them if they wanted a filmbook of Destroy All Monsters. They said yes, so he wrote it and sent it to them. They published it and sent him money. So, I immediately wrote The Monster Times and asked them if they wanted a filmbook of Godzilla vs. the Thing. They said yes, so I wrote it and sent it to them. They published it and sent me money (though not all that quickly or without prompting; some things never change).

In the typical way of the publishing business, it took some time between submission, acceptance, and publication. I wrote the Godzilla vs. the Thing filmbook when I was 14 going on 15. I was 16 before the issue came out. Regardless, seeing it on newsstand shelves was, at that time, so exciting that it’s something of a miracle that my teenage body didn’t shake itself apart. During that waiting period—in 1974—I had entered the publishing arena myself with the first issue of Japanese Giants, a cobbled-together fanzine that also featured a Destroy All Monsters filmbook (also by your humble narrator). I only published that one issue, but JG managed to continue for over two more decades, first by way of editor/publisher Brad Boyle and then at the hands of longtime friends Ed Godziszewki and Bill Gudmundson.

The Monster Times closed up shop in 1976, with issue #48, so it was well for me that my filmbook saw print before the publication’s time ran out. At one time, I had a sizable collection of TMT issues, but that newsprint tended to not weather the years very well, especially since I didn’t have the forethought to protect them adequately. Still, I have these two issues, and several others — mostly featuring Godzilla — and it would be kind of nice, I suppose, if they managed to outlast me.

The Monster Times #26 (featuring Destroy All Monsters) at From Zombo's Closet

The Monster Times #42 (featuring Godzilla vs. the Thing) at From Zombo’s Closet