Showing posts with label Teen Beam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teen Beam. Show all posts

31 March 2018

Beam Beat Monkee Loving

I've made no secret of my fondness for The Monkees, (Words is playing now, and Randy Souse Git just finished - but Goin' Down is still my fave) and neither did DC.


Yeah - that's Joe Orlando's signature up there.

At the height of the Groovy Age, the folks at DC decided they should expand from comics and try their hand at the teen magazine game. But, not glossy print magazines. The idea was to use the existing set-up to create a cheaper comic book style printed magazine and offer it for only 12¢.

It was an experiment, down to the title - half of the run was called Teen Beat, half was labelled Teen Beam though the basic logo design remained constant:



You might have noticed that it changed from Beat to Beam on issue #2. So, yeah - that was the complete run of the series. The Monkees were featured on the cover of both. (As the blurbs indicate, the insides were packed with a ton of groups and stars of the day.)

The first issue featured a big article on fears that the boys would follow those other guys and break up with lots of photos. Unfortunately, comic book presses weren't really the best thing for photographs - that's probably one of the things that kept the book from catching on. The second issue featured a spread of tour photos, and a most odd little feature on The Monkees drawn by Joe Orlando! (from which the (slightly modified) image at the top of the page originated as well)



To show you what i meant about the photograph quality, here's the spread that followed the Family Album:


And, just because, here's that article from the first issue:


Gonna Buy Me A Dog is playing now. You know what's coming up, of course - Listen To The Band.
(And it's not even LJ)

art by Joe Orlando, articles from Teen Beat #1 and Teen Beam #2 (1967, 1968)