Memory of a Memory?

I don't know if it's the sudden turn in the weather or the incipient Halloween season, but today my thoughts have turned to an old black-and-white horror magazine we used to have. I don't remember its name; my impression is that we got it some time before any Famous Monsters of Filmland. And it was less 'fannish.' It seemed more devoted to cinema history and special effects, on a more 'adult' scale. I seem to recall stuff about Dracula, Frankenstein, and King Kong. The only thing I clearly remember is a frame very similar to this one from a Flip the Frog cartoon, Funny Face. The reason it stands out to me is because this was the first place I ever heard of Flip the Frog.

What particularly teases and torments me is that we have no physical relic of this magazine. Just lately I heard that people have no actual 'original memories', just memories of the last time we remembered something; that our brains desperately try to recreate circumstances and fill in likely blanks. So how much is 'real' about this magazine, and how much is brain farts? Though it sounds more likely to have belonged to John, my impression is that it was actually Mike's. That John has no memory of it seems to argue that that is right. Maybe Mike borrowed it from one of his friends, and that's why we have nothing of it but a memory. Or is this just more blank filling?

Basic Reading: Magazines

 

Besides books, we got an irregular supply of magazines, both comics and periodicals. Never a great many, and, as I said, not regularly. They were something of a treat, but they were also intensely scrutinized, so that in time most became rather ratty and fell apart. Planet of the Apes, sharks, and what you might call Weird Subjects (like UFOs or sea monsters), were all topics of our interest. I shall soon have a Basic Reading post on such things. The comics of Monster of Frankenstein and Man-Thing from Marvel were also part of our focus, and I have entire anthologies of those now that fill in all the parts that I missed. That issue of The Savage Sword of Conan marks the last time our parents bought us reading material when we went on vacation to the beach; after that I pretty much got them on my own. But our earliest magazines were The Wonderful World of Disney, a tie-in to the TV show and the parks, offered by Gulf at their gas stations. We would usually pick ours up on our way to our grandmother Omi’s house or at the gas station next to the grocery store. I think. It would have been 1969 -1970.

Artifacts of Interest: Mazagines (As We Would Sometimes Say)