Monster of the Day #168

Well, to wrap up the New Year, let’s give the people (all six of you) what you so clearly want. And really, I can’t gainsay you.

First, though, check out this poseur. Not only does he got another guy with him instead of a swooning chick, and not only is he using a rifle instead of a knife, but he’s wearing a shirt. And a hat! That dude from yesterday attacking  a gorilla with a blade would sneer in derision at this nancy boy.

Thanks to OTL who suggested this gem:

Looks like that Panda escaped from the same lab as this fellow:

Meanwhile, you know this guy’s going to be a bit embarrassed when it’s his turn to talk at the next He-Man Adventurers’ poker game:

Rocky, no! The weasels call out the Air Force.

  • David Fullam

    So SyFy published these mags, or are they where they took all of their movie ideas from?

  • Gamera

    Gee you could build an entire blog around stuff like this, and I suppose there are probably more than a few sites devoted to this sort of awesomeness.

    In the first cover I think ‘The Great White Hunter’ forgot ‘Ken’s Rule of Guns’. The hippo is going to smack the rifle out of his hands and then eat him. The native will swim to shore and laugh his @#$ off.

    I think the second is from the Korean War showing a confrontation between the US Davy Boone brigade vs. one of the Red Chinese elite WerePanda terror squads.

    The others are just so out there they’re beyond anything I could make a joke about- WOW!!!

  • roger h

    “One morning I fought an otter in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.”

  • And people want to go into the wild for what reason now? Seems to me there’s an irritated animal waiting behind every bush out there…

  • I wonder if the person who painted that panda picture had even the slightest knowledge about pandas and their biology.

  • fish eye no miko

    John M. Hanna said: “I wonder if the person who painted that panda picture had even the slightest knowledge about pandas and their biology.”

    I’m gonna take a wild stab in the dark here and say no.

    BTW, the “killer hippo” thing might seem funny, but hippos are actually incredibly dangerous animals. They’re herbivores, yes; but they’re very, very territorial, they’re big, and they have large tusks they can gore people with. Seriously, don’t fuck with ’em. It won’t end well for you. Oh, and they fling their poop with their tail to mark territory. Lovely animals.

    Man, thanks for sowing these to us, Ken; they’re really quite hysterical! (-:

  • The Rev.

    The odd thing is that most of these animals could be dangerous, were they provoked. We all know about hippos and Komodo dragons; giant otters have really big, sharp teeth (to hold onto fish) and it’d probably hurt like hell to have one bite you; and pandas can chew through bamboo and have big claws. Granted, one squirrel wouldn’t be a big deal, but a swarm of them could be a problem.

    Yet, the hyperbolic way these things are painted, I can only laugh at most of them. Especially that panda one. That’s a classic right there.

  • Rock Baker

    Are you saying the bland, unimaginative, and rather colorless magazine covers of today are better? At least these fire a certain spark of childhood love of adventure that holds deep in the male brain. I’d say these covers are a perfect reflection of the games I used to play and who I’d imagine myself to be when I was a child (except for the whole being-ripped-to-shreds angle).

  • D. Jason Fleming

    John M Hanna: The panda shows distinct signs of having been “retouched” by a different artist than the rest of the painting. Especially the eyes and mouth, and probably the ears. I’m guessing that either it was a different animael entirely, painted over, or the original artist didn’t “sex it up” the way the editor wanted, so somebody else did.

    Anyway, the eyes and the fangs don’t blend in with anything else in the picture, they’re sharp and distinct from everything else. Which these days is a sign of Photoshop, but in those days was a sign of another hand tinkering.

  • Rock Baker

    Good eye, I just sort of glanced at it because the style of art didn’t do as much for me as the others. (Possibly because the Heroic Comics cover looks like something I could do myself.) The other covers are far more impressive.

  • Ericb

    “Not only does he got another guy with him instead of a swooning chick, and not only is he using a rifle instead of a knife, but he’s wearing a shirt. And a hat! ”

    Not only that, the woose is in a boat. Be a man and fight it in the water.

  • Ericb

    * oops it’s probably spelled “wuss”

  • sandra

    I had no idea pandas hunt out in the Great White North. I should think they would have a tough time finding their favorite food – bamboo – there. Actually, it looks to me as though the painting originally showed a standard brown bear until somebody who didn’t know much about pandas painted a new head on it.
    As for the hippo attack, they are extremely dangerous. After they tip your boat over, they bite one or both of your legs off.

  • Rock Baker

    I had a similar thought about the ‘panda’ cover. Having seen this done a lot, I’m going to say it was probably a reused cover. It was probably printed first with a grizzly, and then down the line the publishers bought a story about a panda. Rather than comission a whole new piece, they could just retouch the previously used cover and presto! The idea was likely along the lines of ‘a bear is a bear.’

    (And it seems like I have heard that pandas are a lot more dangerous than get presented these days.)

  • Reed

    Once again it’s the by-lines that I love.

    Don’t be a sucker: Cheat!

    Anyone interested in real-life wildlife peril should check out the Peter Capstick books including Death in the Long Grass, Death in the Silent Places, and many more. Capstick was a professional hunter in Africa, and if you are not inherently bothered by stories about hunting then you will find them fascinating, and horrifying. He divides Death in the Long Grass into sections by wildlife. I guarantee that you will never look at water buffalo the same way again. The lesson that I learned from his books: never step to the edge of the firelight to piss. Seriously.

    Of course, that was before 40 years of poaching and wars took their additional toll. :(