Out of the Inkwell

My buddy Dogboy has been finding chunks of my past on eBay of late – a fairly odd sensation, that.

First it was a "Fiend Without a Face" glow in the dark t-shirt that Steve Bissette drew and my former business partner and I published back in the Animato! days. Yes indeed the brain monster glowed. We only did a few of them. I'm not sure how that glow-in-the-dark pain survived the washing cycle.

And now he's found someone the Fiend model kit on which I was the licensing agent. On it the bottom of the base it reads "Licensed by Inkwell Productions." That was/is me!

What? You don't know about "Fiend?" In short, this 1958 movies involved the creation of ambulatory radioactive brains that would literally suck the life out of people.

Check it out here

I had a conversation with my friend Richard Gordon – who produced the film and did many more horror and science fiction films – one day and asked why he hadn't tried licensing products based on his movies. He asked me if I wanted to try it, so I did.

It was a fascinating experience. The folks from Geo-Metrics had made an inquiry about a Fiend Without Face model kit – perhaps Richard's best known movie – and I made the deal. This was back in the early 1990s when there had been an explosion of interest in high end, intricate model kits.

Here is the model kit

The kit was featured in a story in Fangoria about the whole "garage kit" movement – something that has sadly died. Fifteen years ago every pop culture convention had a ton of these kits. The most grim one was one of O.J. Simpson holding a bloody knife!

© 2009 by Gordon Michael Dobbs