Saturday, November 3, 2012

RARE JAPANESE MONSTER MAGAZINE?

My trips on the internet have taken me to some pretty strange and interesting places. In fact, "going down the rabbithole" as I call it, is one of my favorite things to do while surfing the web and is pretty much wholly unique to this technology. Attempting the same thing in any other medium is nigh impossible.

The world of Tumblr offers up some cool sites by individuals that post nothing but pictures. Others grab a shot that they like and put it on their "Tumblr posts" and so on, creating a huge network of subject matter covering everything from vintage to fetish.

On one of my journeys I came across this image. I was quite surprised as I don't recall every seeing it before. Depicting what appears to be a japanese magazine called WORLD MONSTERS, my first thought was that I had come across a possibly rare item.

The cover image depicts Eddie Powell and Maggie Kimberly in THE MUMMY'S SHROUD, a 1967 Hammer film. A presumption could be made that this publication is from that era.

The Japanese are famous for their photo collection publications, so it's also possible that this could be a book of some sort. Since I can't read japanese, I can't tell what the writing on the cover says. Can any Monsterologist out there offer any help or know what this is?

5 comments:

Jim Reddy said...

The title is "Sekai no Kaibutsu" which translates to "World of Monsters." The phrases on the bottom are photo credits.

John said...

Jim, many thanks for your comment!

Jim Reddy said...

Glad to help!

Dennis said...

Hmm. Might be a hasty leap to the conclusion that this publication was produced circa 1967. Non-English speaking readers could as easily jump to the same conclusion by viewing a current issue of Freaky Monsters or Monster Bash.

There's something about the grainy black & white reproduction of that cover photo that suggests to me a non-professional publication (fanzine). As such, it could be of almost any vintage, even quite recent. Hard to say for sure, but my gut instinct is telling me that even in the 1960s in Japan, a color cover was pretty standard for most professionally-published magazines.

John said...

Dennis, these are definite points to ponder until a copy shows up.