Magazine: 2 out of 5

Gerber contributions: 3 out of 5

And in the early 70s, Marvel had a growing selection of magazines – mostly, I believe, short-lived – that sprang up for various reasons; this one and Famous Monsters of Filmland were intended to compete with some of Warren’s movie monster mags.  As with most of the themed mags from that time, the idea is fun, but the execution is a little uneven.  ‘Monsters,’ at least in these three issues, doesn’t really live fully up to its namesake, slipping into sci-fi for several Mars themed stories that, sure, feature monsters, but don’t seem to slot in properly with covers that highlight Wolf-Man, Man-Thing etc.  The books are a split between text and comics, the majority of material the latter, with an ongoing slot for Frankenstein and then some one-off features.  The writing in several spots – particularly on the Gullivar Jones space tales – is rather atrocious, the puns far from dumb enough to be classically campy, and the pacing and story-beats not lending themselves well to the format.  The editing (Tony Isabella) is equally atrocious, with frequent word-swaps making sentences confusing and, in one instance in #4, some pages out of order in a story.  So the lack of focus and rather amateur presentation make it a hard mag to get into, despite it seeming fun.  But then you’d’ve had several other horror mags to choose from at the time…

For Gerber’s contribution, his Golem story in issue #4 is, perhaps, the first original Golem story I’ve ever read, and it does a Twilight Zone ending without being overly cheeky about it.  Issues 8 and 9 feature a Man-Thing text story.  I wouldn’t say it’s worth tracking down, really – it doesn’t add a thing to Manny’s world – and the editing mentioned above really hits it hard, as Steve’s repetitive phrasing in parts could’ve used a second set of eyes to smooth it out, but, it is sufficiently dark; the ending is a nice downer, and a reminder of how well Steve did with that empathic creature concept, pushing his tales into unexpected directions.

I think Marvel fans wanting a taste of 70s horror would do better with Tales of the Zombie or Dracula Lives! – there are reasons those have been collected whereas I don’t think Unleashed! has been – and Gerber fans aren’t missing much, although the dude rarely wrote solid one-off tales, so issue #4 is definitely a rare of example of a pretty great one.