Monster Madness #2

History

Monster Madness launched in late 1972 under Marvel's Curtis/Magazine Management imprint, with Stan Lee receiving sole writing credit for the gag word-balloon captions applied to full-page black-and-white horror movie stills — a fumetti format Lee had first employed nearly a decade earlier in Monsters to Laugh With. The series was published on a quarterly schedule and carried the Marvel Monster Group brand emblem, placing it at the very front of the 1973 wave of B&W horror magazines that Marvel's new ownership unleashed to compete with Warren Publishing. The magazine format sidestepped the Comics Code Authority entirely, though Monster Madness itself — unlike its sister titles — contained no original horror art or stories, relying instead on licensed film stills and Lee's wisecracking captions. After just three issues the title folded, and Marvel quietly folded the comedic caption concept into the back pages of Monsters of the Movies, its more traditional film-magazine successor.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published by Marvel Comics Group / Magazine Management Co. under the Curtis/Marvel Monster Group imprint; release date January 9, 1973, cover-dated January 1973.
• Black-and-white fumetti magazine format, 66 pages, printed on newsprint with saddle-stitched binding — exempt from Comics Code Authority oversight by virtue of its magazine classification.
• Monster Madness was the first title launched under the Marvel Monster Group brand, predating the horror magazine wave of Dracula Lives!, Monsters Unleashed, and Tales of the Zombie.
• The entire series ran only three issues (1972–1973), making all issues relatively scarce survivors of a short-lived publishing experiment.
• Stan Lee received sole writing credit for the humorous word-balloon captions overlaid on full-page stills from classic monster films and television programs.
• Issue #2 expanded the visual range of the series beyond feature films to include stills from TV horror and sci-fi series, including Lost in Space, The Munsters, and The Outer Limits, alongside classic monster-movie imagery from films such as Frankenstein, Dracula, King Kong, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Mothra.
• The concept directly revived Marvel's own mid-1960s 'Monsters to Laugh With' / 'Monsters Unlimited' fumetti format, reconnecting Bronze Age Marvel with a Silver Age humor tradition.
• Marvel later continued the comedic caption feature briefly within the pages of Monsters of the Movies (1974–1975), but Monster Madness represented the last standalone series in that format.

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