I'm embarking on a self-imposed drawing challenge for October. AMAWIO! is not only a clumsy acronym (it stands for A Monster a Week in October), it's also an excuse to draw the monsters that thrilled and haunted me as a kid.

This tentacled alien is from the movie The Green Slime – a movie I've never actually seen. The only reason I know about The Green Slime is because of the magazine Famous Monsters. Before the internet, before VHS tapes, the only place to see or read about movie monsters was FM.

The magazine exposed me to the vast universe of cinematic monsters. The first time I saw Nosferatu and the robot Maria from Metropolis was in the black-and-white-newsprint pages of Famous Monsters. Lon Chaney, Jr., and Vincent Price were household names because of Famous Monsters. I am monster-obsessed today because of Famous Monsters.

The Green Slime appeared on the cover of issue #57 of Famous Monsters. The illustrated artwork shows an army of giant, one-eye tentacled monsters over running a spaceship. It's impressive. It's awe-inspiring. It's woefully misleading. Photos inside the magazine make it clear that the actual The Green Slime movie was less grandiose than the promotional artwork would lead you to believe. Still, the movie loomed large in my mind for years.

I recently watched the trailer for The Green Slime and the movie looks even less impressive. What I thought might be an unappreciated sci-fi epic is actual a low-budget B-movie made in Japan with English actors. But I'm not utterly disenchanted. There is something truly impressive about The Green Slime – its awe-inspiring theme song!