Meet the Monsters

No matter how incredulous the creature, or hamfisted the horror, poverty row moviemakers in the '50s knew that their audience dug monsters, sometimes the sillier and more ludicrous the better. How else to better explain the existence of the vegetable creature from It Conquered the World or the ridiculous giant buzzard from The Giant Claw, much less the killer tree from From Hell it Came ("...and to hell it should go!" was a common rejoinder by many a wag who reviewed the picture in newsprint). Although no one considers this films art, they are often recalled with some measure of fondness. It's almost as if these productions were, in the end, a shared joke between the makers and the audience, despite the fact that the movies were often played ramrod straight (dramatically, at least). Even without a self-conscious wink or elbow nudge, the audience roared (or at least tittered) at the appearance of these outerworldly beasts, and the producers didn't care. They knew they got away with it again.

Getting away with it was the secret to successful monster making back in those days. One guy who got away with a lot was Jack Kirby, especially in those days before he became "King" Kirby . Before the Fantastic Four took off, Kirby was busy grinding out monster comics for Marvel, all of which are detailed and celebrated at the Monster Blog. In the Meet The Monsters of the same site, you would glean through an index of Kirby drawn monsters such as Glob, the Menace from the Molten Depths, Gomdulla, the Living Pharoah (a giant mummy), Moomba, the Wicked Wooden Statue, and Shagg, the Killer Sphinx. And a whole lot more.