I think the three or four year 'cycle' thing was -- and is -- a pretty firmly established publishing theory for comics and such, which is why even today they 'reinvent' the Flash and others every few years.

Still, there did seem to be an inordinate amount of reprints in Famous Monsters -- even Spacemen and Monster World I thought recycled some articles, but I might be mixing up my memories.

In a way, I think it might be that Forry WAS kind of a one-man show at the beginning. Except for his rival magazines -- from Bob Burns, Calvin Beck and a few others -- there wasn't an army of horror historians and writers in the early and mid 60s like there are today. So it must have been a challenge to fill an issue with new writing and packages every other month.

Forry, in a way, said what he needed to say after the first couple dozen issues. He lifted the silents, Metropolis, Kong, the Universal films, Karloff, Chaney and Lugosi to classical heights, introduced readers to Harryhausen and Pierce and Pal, had fun with the super-tall and ultra-small (Deadly Mantis and the like), and then began to repeat himself.

He had done most of his horror 'sleuthing' in the 30s and 40s and 50s. By the time Famous Monsters came along, he began teaching what he had learned but didn't have the energy to dig more deeply, as some of his more sophisticated readers wanted.

If sales stayed steady by sticking to his basics, including reprints, then that was the way to go.

But again, I'd love to read a history of all this. I doubt it was finances as much as it was deadline and production pressures that led to so many reprints. But I might be wrong.

david