Basil Gogos

[Festered]

One of the great contributors to the classic fanmag Famous Monsters of Filmland, artist Basil Gogos creates vibrant images of all the horror greats. He is as identifiable to the publication as Leroy Nieman is to Playboy, and was always one of the high points of every issue. His illustration style reminds you of Frazetta, only in portrait format. He took a sabbatical from the mag,for a few years, and I would imagine, sales plummeted. He also makes appearances at various conventions, so if you get a chance to, check him out.

Unfortunately, his site appears to be down, right now(domain jumpers, it looks like), but hopefully, will reappear in the near future. A good sampling of his work can be Googled, tho. And here is his Wiki-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Gogos

and another site of interest-

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.linesandcolors.com/images/2008-01/gogos_322.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.linesandcolors.com/2008/01/19/basil-gogos/&h=480&w=322&sz=53&hl=en&start=2&sig2=dZedYfa0x7s9-EN403USWQ&um=1&usg=__6rokgM4lJ_N3ekHCMfkSUonryhw=&tbnid=3Ou-PenP7oNkmM:&tbnh=129&tbnw=87&ei=pNzRSNCFB4me8wSe8oiWCg&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbasil%2Bgogos%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa fe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN

[neverending]

Yes, Gogos was a MAJOR reason to pick up FM every month. He does the convention circuit I hear, and is a really nice guy.

[Festered]

Between Gogos and the occasional contributions by Frazetta and Boris Vallejo, FM was pretty sweet in the day. Frazetta's Vampirella was usually on an inside cover, and he even did some black and white anti-smoking comix-ads for the mag. Unfortunately, FM started pulling away from illustration, using more PR pics, and the mag was less impressive(Forry's puns can only go so far). Fangoria and another mag(can't remember the exact title, I think it was Frankenstein's House of Horror or something like that) started giving FM more competition too.

[neverending]

Well, I was like 10-15 when I was buying FM. Forry's puns were just fine by me.

[Festered]

Calvin T. Beck's Castle of Frankenstein was the mag I was thinking of. I used to back-order a lot of their issues, but they closed shop. And the mag only came out sporadically. They had pretty good cover art, too, but mostly pics. The main difference was the reviews(much more in-depth than FM) and their political stance. Cinefantastique was almost impossible to get in the states, back then.

[neverending]

Yep, I moved on the CoF as well, as I got older. They were a great catch-all mag, featuring original comics as well as articles.

Did you ever see any issues of Larry Ivie's Monsters & Heros?

[Festered]

I never got his mags(unavailable in my location) but I do remember his art very well. I believe he is listed as one of the top 100 sci-fi/horror/fantasy artists of the 20th century.

I started moving on to more mainstream film review mags, as I got older, and unfortunately, lost a lot of the horror mags(and sports cards) thru the years. Some of Gogos stuff was so good, I actually used to buy 2 copies of FM, with the intention of framing one.