AMAZING MONSTER MAZES

I may have failed at getting a daily Halloween countdown together this year, but to me this is as good as a whole spooky months worth of posts because of the personal triumph it represents. After more than two decades of want, this weekend I've reclaimed the book Amazing Monster Mazes (1977, Hallmark) as my own.

It started in October of '77 when mom and I made a routine visit to the downtown Bible Book Store. Beyond the expected Bibles and books, the store carried a wondrous assortment of novelty gifts, jigsaw puzzles, chick tracts, posters, and endless bins of plastic trinkets intended as Sunday School rewards. The floor boasted a thick, green shag carpet perfect for plopping down upon, so as to examine their wares at length. They were also the most extensive Hallmark dealership in our little town, so once a year the whole place turned orange and black with the brand new line of Hallmark Halloween offerings. (Mind you, this was before American church culture mysteriously and collectively turned on Halloween a decade or so later.) Having deliberated over all of my possible purchases— greeting cards, wall decorations, centerpieces and party favors, it was a booklet that ultimately won my fancy.

(all pictures super size when clicked)

The 24 page volume is indeed a maze book, but to me it functioned more like a text book considering the hours of daily study I invested in its pages. In my pre-Where's Waldo world, few of my kiddie books served up this kind of detail, and I devoured it. I questioned the motives of every beast and I was frightfully intrigued by the consequences that met any careless maze traveler. I grew genuinely chilled at the thought of accidentally wandering into an open grave, or unintentionally awaking a sleeping ghoul.



One of my few memories of preschool is submitting this book when it was my turn to pick out the story to be read aloud in class. All morning I'd been anticipating the moment my teacher would share the mysteries of the monster mazes to my classmates, undoubtedly earning me their pure gratitude. I sat grinning as my teacher held it up and read the title. But then she hesitated and flipped through the book before announcing that maze books were unreadable. This sent me into an uncharacteristic outburst of tears, and I fled the room.
Later, after I'd choked down the replacement story with a damp face and raw eyes, the instructor took pity on me and revisited Monster Mazes, doing her best to describe each maze as cross legged students squinted to see the pictures. Her gracious actions had a healing effect.




The book fell apart, yet remained a favorite of mine for a number of years. And then it vanished. There are family theories surrounding its fate, the most plausible being a box of books that were unintentionally sold in a garage sale. No matter, it was gone; and I actively missed the booklet throughout my remaining childhood.



When I discovered ebay in 1998, recovering this treasure was among my first intentions. But its rarity (it was purely ephemeral, meant to be a value add crammed behind a greeting card, and discarded at seasons end), and the fact that I didn't know the official title (I always just called it my monster maze book, and there are tons of monster maze books) delayed my crusade. Until now.




Recently, a series of book related memories triggered me to scour ebay once again. When I saw that forgotten cover pop up (the very last entry of the last page of results, of course) I made an involuntary guttural sound and my heart started to pound. Four Buy-it-now dollars (plus shipping), and a week later it showed up in my mailbox.




So now that I posses it once again, what have I learned?
-It's still fantastic. The illustrations have aged extremely well, and it has lost none of its appeal in my eyes.
-Though they are uncredited on the cover, the book is written by Edward Cunningham, designed by Rick Cusick, and masterfully Illustrated by Tim Kirk. I've learned that Mr. Kirk started as a Hugo award winning fan artist...


...and after a seven year stint at Hallmark he became a Disney Imagineer.

-I've also learned that the imagery from this book never stopped rattling around my subconscious, and has influenced me artistically. Case in point: an illustration that I did right after college...


My (inferior) piece not only echoes the detail and scope of Monster Mazes, but it shares similar elements such as the starry sky, the hilly skyline, and the haunted house with the following maze (which happens to be my favorite)...

Notice how the placement of my rollercoaster echos the maze's path.  I drew a road leading into a cop's mouth while the original features a road running into the jaws of a monster mountain.

The tell tale orange cyclops cinches my theory...

Also note the vehicles near both of them.

And later when I translated the drawing into a Flash animation I even shuffled the cyclops into the upper left corner where he belongs...


I did the initial drawing at least 15 years after my last contact with Monster Mazes and I hadn't recalled Mr. Kirk's one-eyed creature until I saw it again yesterday. It's as though my mind was desperately trying to recreate the missing book without my knowledge. Awesome.