First: I believe The Monster Times to be in the public domain. If it’s not and you are the copyright owner, please let me know.
I’m a big fan of a gentleman named Phil Seuling and have been collecting basically anything with his name on it for a few years now. Two things he seemed to focus on were making his hobby more accessible and helping other people to grow their businesses in that hobby. It may seem strange in a world where social media “began” with web 2.0 but I believe the comic book ecosystem of the 1960s and 1970s had at its core a social media system more similar to the internet in 2022 than most people understand. Sadly, a great deal of the social media of the time is simply unavailable. This is my first effort in making social media of that time more accessible.
The Monster Times had a CON-CALENDAR in every single issue, and in every single CON-CALENDAR was a listing for Phil Seuling’s Comic Book Market a monthly swap meet at The Commodore Hotel in New York City. I never realized this until I happened to buy a lot of 4 issues, one of them being issue 34 which also contained a half-page advertisement for Phil Seuling’s 1974 Comic Art Convention.
Almost all the issues are already available on arcive.org but not all. The quality varies from issue to issue, with some pages or entire issues missing. I am going to work on collecting all the individual issues as well as re-imaging them in as high a quality as possible and sharing them here and elsewhere on the internet.
I hope this will lead to similar projects NOT in the public domain where I can partner with the original creators. I think it will be fun to allow new people to see their creative works, and with luck put a few bucks in their pockets.
Thanks,
kevin