Welcome to Big Ole Face Full of Monster. We are still building this Monster. We know it's about horror, but horror has many faces: Lugosi, giant ants, Leatherface, the Alien, Sadako, Jennifer Lopez. And horror has many genre's: gothic, expressionistic, classic, Grand Guignol, Hammer, 70s realism, J-horror, true horror, supernatural, erotic, fantasy, Biblical thriller. What to cover? All of them?

We are still building this Monster. Why another horror magazine? Hell, why another magazine? Partly the usual ego of course. We have the brain from the jar and pathological though it may be, we are sewing it into this monster. Partly we want to do something different from what we see out there now. We do know that we will cover literature, art and music as much as film. Monster is not going to be an Entertainment Weekly of the horror movie industry, diligently covering every studio film release with splashy photos of its young stars.

There are other things that should set this monster apart. The history, psychology and mythology of horror and the grotesque fascinate Mr. and Mrs. Monster, so we'll go there a lot. Symbolic analysis can be fun to some of us put together that way. Visual arts other than film don't get much attention in most horror mags, but we are already on to so many artists and openings and museums, we know it will be a big part of ours.

But that all sounds a bit serious. The same brain that loves the symbolic, also loves dragstrip B movie bad girls. Big Daddy Roth hotrods driven by goofy monsters. Tony Carr singing “Johnny Frankenstein.” Daffy Duck's “Quackbusters.” Psychobilly screamers. Tura Satana shaking the tinsel on the runway. Steve McQueen and “us kids” taking on The Blob (“beware of the Blob / it creeps / and leaps / cha cha cha”). There simply isn't enough reverence out there for the 50s era of monsters as fun and funny and hip. So there will be a place for that in this monster. As well as a place for Lacanian, Jungian analysis like you find if you look really hard in the dry academic journals in university libraries. But printed with zombie girl pinups (don't worry, they're coming).

But we are still building this Monster. We want to know what you want, what you would like, and most importantly what would make you shell out 24 bucks for a subscription. No we won't say something smarmy like it's your magazine. It's not. You want someone else to make the magazine for you. So you can concentrate on more important things like getting stoned, eating cheez-its, and watching The Gore Gore Girls . But tell us what you like and dislike. Write us letters. Write us checks. But really, write us letters. Funny obscene letters that we can print and people can read and laugh at with their mouths open.

And send us the type of thing you want to see printed as well. Submit your work. We want reviews, articles, photos. Despite the two stories here, we don't intend to publish much fiction. But who knows. If great stuff comes our way (are you listening Clive?), we'll publish it (send to monsterzine@aol.com).

Really, we just want you to have a good time. And no, I will not subject you to any angsty poetry. In fact, this issue is poetry-free! Don't get me wrong, I enjoy poetry very much, but unless the next Edgar Allan Poe or Coleridge appear in my in-box, you probably won't see poetry here. And while we enjoy the occasional gothy magazine (“Spooky” is a good one, by the way), we like to say that while gothy horror magazines are often a swoopy moonlit waltz in a cemetery, our magazine is more of a cocktail party with the Wolfman at the roller rink.

Please excuse any off-color remarks so far. I know some of you have kids. Despite everything they say about sci-fi and horror geeks, we do meet and mate on rare occasions. So you have kids. Well, I am a kid. Middle-aged but still a kid, and I like and want to review books, records, movies, games, etc for your own mommy's little monster in training. If you don't want your kid to head into the cannibal jungle with Umberto Lenzi quite yet, but you want them to see what you like about spookiness, we'll be reviewing some scary stuff with training wheels that might give you ideas on things to show them.

We are based in the San Francisco Bay Area, as you will see reflected in our coverage of some local people and places. We will offer as much as we can from around the world, as coverage becomes available to us.

We are still building this Monster. This is Issue #1 and it by no means defines exactly where we will be taking it. There are different features we want to try out. We'll be printing in color in issue #3. There are more playful design elements we are going to work in (anybody interested in doing some graphic design?). So come along for the ride. We promise to bite.