« Eeeeeeeeeee! A horrible monster! He wants to… to eat me! »
With the coming of Hallowe’en, you have to get all the bases covered: an ungodly hoard of candy, a pumpkin to carve and assorted decorations to array about the house. Thank your lucky stars for the lightness of your burden: the average Balkan peasant also has to polish his pitchfork, sharpen and set out wooden stakes, gather sprigs of wolfsbane, and round up the requisite number of torches.
This merry nocturnal chase is brought to you by the team of Otto Binder, writer, and local favourite Jerry Grandenetti, illustrator. It comes from the sixth issue (January, 1969) of Cracked‘s go at a Warren-style Monster mag, For Monsters Only (10 issues… plus a best-of “annual”, sporadically published between 1965 and 1972). This was Frankenstein ’68, the first of three entries in Binder and Grandenetti’s The Secret Files of Marc Vangoro*, featured in issues 6, 7 and 8 of the mag. Well worth hunting down.
While this material has never, to my knowledge, been reprinted, and as copies of these long-neglected mags are getting scarcer and naturally pricier, fear not… for some kind souls have taken the considerable trouble of scanning, and more to the point, sharing them. In this particular case, look here.
– RG
*perhaps a knowing wink at Grandenetti’s (with fellow Eisner Studio acolytes Marilyn Mercer and Abe Kanegson) 1949-51 classic The Secret Files of Dr. Drew, blessedly available in an exemplary edition, thanks to the sterling efforts of cartoonist-scholar Michael T. Gilbert.
Who's Out There? 
I only have one issue of FOR MONSTERS ONLY (as opposed to about 70 of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND), but it was a fun mag. I didn’t realize only 12 issues were produced.
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Hey, sounds like a fine stack of Famous Monsters you have there! Oddly enough, I think I have more issues of Monster World than I do of FMOF.
As for For Monsters Only, I suppose it was more of a side-project for the Cracked people, and the market was getting crowded, between Castle of Frankenstein, The Monster Times, FMOF, more devoted that they were, leaving little point for a half-committed effort to carry on. One of the issues, the “Annual”, apparently consisted of reprints. I say ‘apparently’, because it rarely does turn up.
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