Book Review: “I Was A Teenage Monster Shirt Painter” by Von Franco
By Greg Holland, Ye Olde Editor

A month or so before I heard of Big Daddy Roth’s passing, I saw an ad in Custom Rodder Magazine, for this new book. As I’ve been infatuated with Weird-O shirts since the ads started appearing in Car Model Magazine back in 1962, (and actually did a half dozen of my own)  I knew I just had to get it.

A week or so later, the book arrived. What a Gas! A real trip down memory lane!

Von Franco doesn’t pretend to tell you how the whole Monster Shirt thing got started, sticking to what he does know, from the time he got into it in the early to mid 60’s. He worked for many of the West Coast “names”, including Big Daddy, over the past 30 years, and has stories about most of them. Several of these “names” contributed their own stories, including the person that Von Franco himself says is the best shirt painter ever – Ed “Newt” Newton.

The real meat of the book, however, is the page after page of old ads, catalog cuts, and photos of actual shirts. 16 of these pages are in color, which is really rare, since there were never any color ads that I saw, and even catalogs at best had only a color cover. This book is a rare chance to see what the art really looked like! There is at least one ad from each shop/artist who advertised in the magazines of the period.

There is a fair amount of coverage of “Mouse” and the “rivalry” between he and BDR, as hyped up by show promoters. “Mouse” also advertised heavily in the magazines, and I liked his work, but never bought any of it. Of course BDR got famous with his “Rat Fink”, which was turned into plastic models by Revell. Mouse’s most famous character “Fred Flypogger” was also converted into plastic by Monogram, but it never caught on as well. Of course, “Mouse” went on to fame as the cover artist for the Grateful Dead….

Another interesting feature in the book is pictures of a supposed “Leave It To Beaver” show, where “da Beav” and his buddies all get monster shirts, and are all going to wear them to school on the same day. The buddies get caught by their parents before they leave the house, so Beaver flies solo, and gets in the deep doo-doo yet again. I’ve never seen or heard of this particular episode before, so it is possible that Von Franco is having a little fun with us, just as BDR & his buddies had a little fun with VF at their first meeting!

There are only 2 “wishes” I have after devouring this book: The first is more color! This was limited to keep the cost of producing the book down to a manageable level. The second is more Von Franco! He modestly didn’t include much of his own work, in a book devoted to the works of others. He is a very, very talented artist himself!

Anyway – if you’ve ever had any interest in Monster / Weird-O shirts, this book is a MUST HAVE! It’s Koolsville, man!
You can order it at http://www.VonFranco.com