Posts Tagged ‘fanzines’

Beto Mess


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Thursday, June 3, 2010


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Beto fan art from 1981

Hey True Believers, Frankie The Wop here. I think I gotta start a new series of posts for CC for when I come across something like this. Maybe call it “Diggin’ Thru the Bins” or something. This find is a real treat. It’s an illustration that I unearthed by Gilbert Hernandez in The X-Men Chronicles fanzine from 1981. It’s a nice drawing. But isn’t that Clea from Doctor Strange? Maybe it’s the White Queen?

Published by FantaCo Enterprises, this fanzine boasts an interview with Jim Shooter, an X-Men checklist, an article on comic book investments, and look at the similarities between the Teen Titans and the X-Men. Apparently there’s a curious parallel in the history of the two “super-kid” teams but the “visual repertoire” of the Teen Titans is lacking according to the article.

Heady stuff, but for me, 30 years later all that I care about is this wacky Beto sketch.

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Someone Else’s Policy


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Friday, February 12, 2010


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It’s no secret that comic-book “fandom” more or less grew directly out of the earlier organized fan traditions of science fiction. (In fact, if you didn’t mind significantly overstating things, you could even say that the modern comic book industry itself originated from sf fandom, seeing as Siegel and Shuster debuted an early version of Superman in the science fiction fanzine Siegel published as a teen.)

Comics fans didn’t just model themselves after the sf fan world in terms of mimeographed magazines, letter columns, societies, and conventions, but also in terms of attitudes. Consider the “Statement of Policy” printed in 1964, as an opening salvo in the first issue of the excellent (but extremely short-lived) fanzine SF Horizons, edited by Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison. (Incidentally, Harrison once worked in comic books himself, most famously as an artist for EC, and Wally Wood fans will remember him as half of the Harrison-Wood team.) In the editorial, Aldiss and Harrison declare the following:

Critics, teachers, editors, writers — all people who should know better — remain remarkably ignorant about the realities of sf, while at the same time feeling free to condemn or brush it aside. Their attitude has long served to bolster the reactionaries inside sf itself who greatly desire to continue their existence as outcasts, a term they translate to mean superior beings. These are the people whose contention that sf is a special medium which must be treated by special standards has created one of the major stumbling blocks in the path of intelligent criticism of sf.

In reality we need no special pleaders; the long-flickering spark of sf existence has finally burst into a hearty flame that is fed by a continuous supply of books. During the year 1962, at least 160 sf books were published in the English language. The attitude once widely held within sf that any sf book was a good one, and was best not panned in public, produced a flock of reviewers and no critics. Whether this pose was necessary at the time to ensure the survival of sf is unimportant now. Sf may still be suffering from a number of deforming, and at times repellant, diseases, but none of them are fatal.

With a little bit of pruning and reworking, you could replace “sf” with “comics,” and almost get away with this as a recent statement describing the current state of comic books.

Later in the same issue, SF Horizons includes an amusing but almost unbearably chummy* dual-interview with eminent SF boosters C.S. Lewis and Kingsley Amis, recorded by Aldiss “in Professor Lewis’s rooms in Magdalene College.” It’s a fun read. (Though I personally admire the writings of Aldiss far more than those of the other two. Maybe I haven’t read the right books.) Mostly Lewis and Amis congratulate each other on their superior tastes, and bemoan the fact that so few in respectable society take science fiction seriously. Then the subject of comics comes up.

Lewis: One thing in sf that weighs against us very heavily is the horrible shadow of comics.

Aldiss: I don’t know about that. Titbits Romantic Library doesn’t really weigh against the serious writer.

Lewis: That’s a very fair analogy. All the novelettes didn’t kill the ordinary legitimate novel of courtship and love.

Aldiss: There might have been a time when sf and comics were weighed together and found wanting, but that at least we’ve got past.

Amis: I see the comic books that my sons read, and you have there a terribly vulgar reworking of some of the themes that sf goes in for.

Lewis: Quite harmless, mind you. This chatter about the moral danger of the comics is absolute nonsense. The real objection is against the appalling draughtsmanship. Yet you’ll find the same boy who reads them also reads Shakespeare or Spenser. Children are so terribly catholic. That’s my experience with my stepchildren.

Aldiss: This is an English habit, to categorise: that if you read Shakespeare you can’t read comics, that if you read sf you can’t be serious.

I’m not sure that many children these days read both comic books and Spenser, but then Spenser seems to be a British thing mostly. Otherwise, it’s remarkable (and salutary) how quickly Lewis backs down from his early blanket dismissal of comics as a form, declares that the Wertham argument against them is worthless, and says the real problem lies in the low level of craft.

Anyway, nothing of major importance here, just a window into a cultural moment ostensibly, but perhaps not actually, much different from today’s.

*For example, the frequent alcoholic interludes sprinkled throughout the interview.

Such as:

Lewis: [Interrupted from a discussion of Abbott’s Flatland.] Are you looking for an ashtray? Use the carpet.

Amis: I was looking for the Scotch, actually.

Lewis: Oh, yes, do, I beg your pardon….

And then later:

Amis: More Scotch?

Lewis: Not for me, thank you, help yourself. (Liquid noises).

Amis: I think all this ought to stay in, you know — all these remarks about drink.

Lewis. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a drink.

Those were the days, I guess.

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Boyette


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Monday, January 4, 2010


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From BEM #36, a British comics fanzine published in 1980:

Boyette on attitudes:

“Most comic people from the East take themselves, and comics, so damned seriously. I read THE COMICS JOURNAL, and I can’t believe that those guys are talking about… and having emotional apoplexy over… comics! My attitude towards comics has never been that.

“I see everything in comics today but FUN. Where the hell is this enjoyment I knew in comics as a kid? The excitement of drawing and reading the comics?”

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Dave Sim Versus Jack Kirby


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Thursday, November 12, 2009


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Anyone interested in Dave Sim should try and get a hold of copies of Comic Art News and Reviews, a fanzine he frequently wrote for in the early 1970s.

As a teenage fan, Sim interviewed and analyzed many major creators who shaped his art, including Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, and Jules Feiffer. In retrospect, the Feiffer essays Sim wrote are particularly piquant because the young fan praised the alternative cartoonist for his insights into gender relations. Who knew back then that Sim would grow up to be a character out of Carnal Knowledge?

Equally ironic is an outburst against Jack Kirby that Sim penned in the very first issue of Comic Art News and Review. Sim was upset that Kirby had been given too much artistic freedom by his editors at DC:

I maintain, as I have for some time, that Kirby has little or no talent. His writing disgusts me even more than the early work of Gerry Conway. His creations seem to be of less than human quality. […]

Now for some conclusions on this topic. Why do these characters exist? They are Kirby creations and it is a well-known fact that the only way to maintain Jack Kirby as a staff artist is to cater to his wants. One of these wants is total freedom to change, distort or completely destroy anything in the panel art at DC. He changed Superman into something less than he should be, totally demolished anything it took DC thirty years to build Jimmy Olson into….and left both characters when he was through with them. This is somewhat reminiscent of ushering a spoiled child into a room full of antique toys, permitting him to smash them at will and guiding him to yet another room.

Now, the almighty King demands that he be granted a team of artists at his California headquarters that he might continue his Fourth World Farce. Whom would he take? Neal Adams? Jim Aparo? Joe Kubert? Certainly sacrificing these gentlemen to the pseudo science fiction slop of the Fourth World means nothing…if the King is satiated by it.

At least on the issue of creator rights, Sim became wiser as he grew older. The entire magazine Comic Art News and Reviews testifies to the vital fan culture that existed in Southern Ontario in the early 1970s. A run of the journal can be found in Robarts Library at the University of Toronto. If anyone has access to the library, they should definitely check it out: it’s a goldmine waiting to be opened up.

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Charlton Comics Fanzines


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Thursday, November 6, 2008


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Charlton fanzines! Man, what a guy can find here in Pittsburgh, PA.

OK, lemme see if I can trace this riff back to the source. So, I went to that small convention last weekend and was bragging to my friends about all the cool shit I cherry picked from 50-cent bins, when I mentioned that I passed up those off-sized color comics from Charlton.

My buddy Spahr was like, “Oh, yah, those were great, I love the paper they used for those things. I don’t have any of those around but I do have these, remember these Charlton fanzines?”

The most interesting one, to me, is the first one pictured below (top left). That’s Contemporary Pictorial Literature #12 from 1975 with a Paul Gulacy cover.

Check out some choice bits from the editorial by Roger Stern about the debut of Atlas Comics (at that time a new publishing effort led by former Marvel Comics owner Martin Goodman), as well as the price increases and content changes to the zine:

“Think for a moment of the really ugly things that go on in comics publishing—the deliberate rack-crowding, the unearned braggadocio, the high-handed treatment of creative personnel—and you’ll realize that Atlas has in a sense become a microcosm of the industry. We have seen a handful of shockingly beautiful books and a carload of tripe. […] It is clear that a free, creative hand can devise a damn good comic. And no better examples can be found than Larry Hama’s Wulf and Howard Chaykin’s Scorpion. […] So here we are for $.75 … four times a year … with ever-lovin’ color covers … and type so clear you can read every word. […] Old timers amongst you will notice that there is no Steve Gerber with us this issue. What with him becoming a Crazy editor, and a number of new titles starting up … well, you’ve heard of deadline doom. Dogs willing, he’ll be back with us next issue.”

It was a cool little zine (mostly put together by Bob Layton, future Iron Man artist) and also inside are spot illos and comics by future pros John Byrne (we used to say “John Brine”) and Dennis Fujitake (remember Dalgoda?), as well as “fan” drawings by established pros like Syd Shores and Herb Trimpe(!).

But the best thing in the issue has to be this line from the indicia: “Contributors! Please refrain from sending in samples unless you can put any of our regular CPL artists to shame.”

Hold on, I’ll be back, I gotta see if I can scare up any Fantastic Fanzines.









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