Monster World #001 1

Let's see if I can make sense of this...

First of all, the actual Monster World issues came out around the same time as the issues of Famous Monsters 30-40.  They're earlier than their place as "70-79" would suggest.

In 1970, long after Monster World ended, it was decided to retroactively insert them into the numbering of Famous Monsters.  I've heard it was so FM would hit #100 earlier, but who knows.  In any case, at that point FM jumped right from 69 to 80.

Decades later, after another publisher got the right to the Famous Monsters name, they decided to publish issues 70-79, falsely dated "1970" even though they actually came out around 2011.  I don't believe they actually made it through all 10 issues.  Those are the ones you're seeing as the MCS listings.

For what it's worth, even in the original Monster World issues they describe themselves as just more issues of Famous Monsters, but with a different name.  I think the idea was to get each issue to stay on the racks for two months, rather than one, with two issues at a time out.

Thanks--I wondered what the real story was, since there seemed to be two different ones.  So Famous Monsters of Filmland #70-#79 were published retroactively, but at the time, they were Monster World #1-#10.  Sounds good to me!

I think, according to Forrest Ackerman, the decision to jump the numbering from #69 to #80, using the 10 Monster World issues as an excuse, was done solely to bring them closer to issue #100.   

On 6/22/2022 at 12:33 AM, Jaylam said:

I think, according to Forrest Ackerman, the decision to jump the numbering from #69 to #80, using the 10 Monster World issues as an excuse, was done solely to bring them closer to issue #100.   

Yeah, that's what Eric said above, too.

Here's the page from #80 where the issue numbering jump is explained by Forrest. I hope the text is readable as this is the only image of it I could find.

Nice!  I was able to blow it up enough to read it.  So 20 months... when did this issue come out?  What happened in 20 months that they wanted to coincide with Issue #100?

I believe he was just saying 20 months is how long it would take under the book's publishing schedule to reach #100. Nothing special in particular. I believe this issue #80 came out in August 1970. 

Issue #100 came out in June 1973 (cover date August 1973). More than 20 months by far. It could be a typo that he meant to say "20 issues" instead of "20 months" in issue #80.