More fanzine covers from the mists of time.
Bem No.28 (May 1980): An exciting thing about fanzines was watching them develop and improve. By 1980 Bem had increased in size and in page length, added spot colour to the covers, and tidied up its layout. Covers by professionals became more regular too, such as this fantastic piece by Brian Bolland depicting a domesticated Batman.
Fantasy Advertiser International No.61 (April 1977): Published by Colin Campbell, who had taken over the 'zine from Dez Skinn. Quite a lot of advertising in this (hence the title) but also a lot of text in a very small typeface crammed into the pages to make it good value for the (then) relatively expensive price of 35p! Cover art by Trevor Goring, now a storyboard artist on numerous Hollywood movies.
Graphic Sense No.2 (August 1978): Published by Gez Kelly, who now runs comic marts around the UK. A nice mixture of opinion and comment in this 20 page 'zine. Investing in a full colour cover was a rare move for fanzines of the time, and the registration's a bit off in places, but it made this Alan Hunter cover stand out at marts and conventions and impressed a lot of us back then.
Metamorph No.1 (Spring 1981): One of my self-published efforts. Various short articles, fan art, and the second Brickman strip (continuing from my previously cancelled fanzine After Image). I was honoured to have definitive Judge Dredd artist Mike McMahon draw a cover for the issue.
Unicorn No.5 (1972): Published by Mike Higgs and Phil Clarke. Mostly strips, the contents included Alon Alone by Alan Hunter, reprints of Captain Marvel and a Wally Wood strip, and fan art by Kevin O'Neill! Nice contemporary pop-art wraparound cover by ex-Cloak artist Mike Higgs, who later went on to draw Baz & Co for the Daily Mirror and edit and design the Dan Dare hardbacks for Hawk Books.
Comics fanzines were numerous in the 1970s. Each title usually produced by one person (the self-appointed editor, publisher, and main writer) and in formats restricted by budget (mono or spot colour, photocopied or litho if you were lucky) they nevertheless served an important purpose for fandom. They not only brought us news of upcoming comics but also, via the busy letter columns which often spanned pages, brought together comics fans for discussion and friendly banter.
They're all gone now; replaced by slicker magazines like Comics International and Wizard and countless internet forums, groups, fan sites etc. All of which serve the same purpose and bring the same enjoyment and information as the fanzines of old, only much faster! (Many of the old fanzines had sporadic publication times, - some only appearing a couple of times a year.)
Above are a selection of just four of those old fanzines. Click on the covers to see the full size versions. (Another four below, in part two. The size limitations of this blog meant I had to do the scans in two parts.)
Bemusing Magazine No.10 (August 1976): Later abbreviated its title to Bem (which we'd always called it anyway). Published by Martin Lock, who went on to write for Eros Comics! A great little fanzine full of news, informal features, reviews, fan art etc.
Comic Media No.11 (December 1973): Published by Nick Landau, who went on to start up the Forbidden Planet shops and is the publisher of Titan Books! (Didn't he do well?) The most professional comics 'zine of the time I think. This issue contains a Syd Jordan interview and also runs the Jeff Hawke strip, as well as Modesty Blaise and The Seekers. (This is the very first fanzine I bought, via a mail order ad in the UK Marvel weeklies.)
Comic Media News No.28 (Oct-Nov 1976): Published by Richard Burton, who went on to be an editor on Tiger, 2000AD, and Sonic the Comic (amongst others). A very nicely produced 'zine, very professional in its attitude, and the news source for us back then. (One of the news items in this issue tells of the opening of Nostalgia and Comics, - Birmingham's first comic shop, which is still running today.)
Comics Unlimited No.43 (February 1977): Published by Alan Austin, this long-running fanzine was a great place for fans old and new, with its lengthy letters pages and features. This particular issue featured my first fanzine contribution, - a letter published! I was dead chuffed.
Four more blasts from the past:
Magazine of Tomorrow No.1 (Summer 1978): Published by Graham Bleathman, now a top-notch artist of cutaway illustrations of Gerry Anderson tv series etc whose website can be found at http://www.grahambleathman.co.uk/ . Back in 1978 this was a modest start with a slim fanzine at only 14 pages but it managed to spotlight material that most other 'zines were ignoring (such as The Trigan Empire).
The Panelologist No.6 (Aug-Sept 1976): Published by George Barnett. Now there's a description one never hears today: panelologist. This was a term used at the time by fans who felt "comic collector" wasn't worthy enough. Thankfully, the fanzine itself wasn't anywhere near as pretentious and instead was packed with news, lettercols, and gossip, usually in incredibly tiny type. I remember buying this issue on my very first visit to a comic shop (London's Dark They Were and Golden Eyed when it was in Berwick Street) 30 years ago!
U.K. Comicdom No.0 (May 1970): Published by Unicorn (Phil Clarke), who went on to found Nostalgia and Comics and is now involved with Ugly Duckling Press. We're still waiting for the next issue (No.1) of this fanzine 37 years later, but it's a nice mag, with its Mike Higgs cover and Frank Frazetta reprints inside.
Workin' Class Super Hero No.1 (1978): Published by Jolly Martian Productions. An impressive stripzine featuring a cover and some interior art by Glenn Fabry, later to be a renowned artist on Slaine and a fantastic cover painter for Vertigo comics. Not sure if there was ever a second issue of this though, but that was part and parcel of fanzines back then. You never knew how long they'd last before the creators went pro or moved on to other things, but they were great while they lasted!
More old fanzine covers soon!
There was a time when most fans of British comics thought they'd never see the likes of The Steel Claw, Bad Penny, or Grimly Feendish again. Enjoyable characters of a bygone age, forgotten in the modern publishing environment and replaced by licensed tie-in comic magazines and predominantly pre-school titles. Thankfully, 2005 changed all that, reviving those characters and many others for the cast of Albion, the six issue mini-series from Wildstorm Comics.
Now the trade paperback collection is out, where Albion reads much more smoothly than it did in the often delayed mini-series. It's a family affair; plotted by Alan Moore, written by his daughter Leah Moore and her husband John Reppion, and drawn by Shane Oakley, who perhaps is either some mad cousin from Earth 2 or the lodger who will turn out to be their time travelling descendant from the year 5974.
I won't bang on about how good this is. Tons of pixels have already done that on other websites. One thing I will mention though is that Shane's artwork has come in for some criticism from a few of the old school of comic aficionados. My feeling is, yes it's quirky and different from anything seen in those old comics... but that's why it works. With so many old characters included, all of which were originally drawn by individual artists, Albion needed a look that was different to any of their styles to make this stand on its own two feet. To bring those Sixties/ Seventies characters into the modern age, and as the majority of readers would be new to these characters, it needed a modern art style; Shane Oakley's yer man.
There's some nice extras to the book too, in the form of 35 pages of classic reprints of The Steel Claw, House of Dolmann, Kelly's Eye etc. (mostly taken from old annuals). It's a great pity no humour strips are reprinted though as the humour characters play an equal part in the main story as anyone. There's also a short feature by Steve Holland which whilst useful makes the common mistake of crediting Ken Reid as the artist of Georgie's Germs. (Ken Reid and Leo Baxendale signed their Odhams strips so I've never known why they're often credited for strips they didn't draw.)
A British edition of Albion is being published by Titan later this month but for those who can't wait, the US Wildstorm edition is available from the authors at Leah and John's website http://www.moorereppion.com/ . While you're there have a look at what other comics that smashing couple are working on. They're bound to be good!
While TV Century 21 rightfully receives great praise for its place in comics history, a similar comic which followed is less well known. Countdown was launched by Polystyle Publications in early 1971, and was basically TV21 under a new name. By this time the publishers of TV21 had lost or relinquished the rights to comic strips based on Gerry Anderson tv shows and Polystyle had acquired them. Establishing the similarity between the two comics even further, the editor of Countdown was TV21's ex-art editor Dennis Hooper. Apparently Hooper was an admirer of the Doctor Who tv series so a strip version of that appeared in Countdown too, liberated from its previous home in TV Comic and upgraded with a higher standard of stories and artwork.
I always regarded Countdown as an excellent comic and avidly bought it every week. This was a title published in an age where comics didn't "dumb down" (as many do today) and it featured intelligent plots, artwork by the best in the business (such as John Burns, Gerry Haylock, Harry Lindfield), and sophisticated features on space exploration and UFO sightings. (Unlike most other UK comics of the period it also featured art credits on its strips.) One of the standout strips was a serial which itself was titled Countdown. Not based on any tv series, it concerned the struggles of a group of freedom fighters opposing a ruthless Earth dictatorship. And this was several years before Blake's 7!
Sadly, perhaps Countdown was too sophisticated for its readers. Or perhaps it was just a little "behind the times" now that the space race was over. Whatever the reason, budget cuts meant a few reprints crept in (not that we minded as they were reprints from TV21!) and other desperate measures were evident, with the logo being tweaked and finally a complete change of title to TV Action with issue No.59! The emphasis on science fiction/fact was diminished, and a swing towards strip versions of action shows like Cannon, The Protectors, and Hawaii Five-O became the norm.
Whilst TV Action continued to have reasonably good plot-based strips and strong artwork, it made the mistake (in my opinion) of trying to imitate its competitor Look-In and introduced pull-out posters of pop stars. Did their target audience of 7 to 12 year old boys really want pin ups of Donny Osmond and Elton John? Apparently not, as readers continued to leave (me being one of them) and the comic was cancelled with No.132 (merging into TV Comic).
Today, the UK comics industry is saturated with license-based comics and magazines, but they each focus on individual properties. Anthology tv-theme comics like Countdown and TV21 and are a thing of the past. That's a shame, as it means less variety within the pages. The strength of the anthologies was that as one tv strips popularity faded it could be replaced by a new one whilst keeping the title going. (Which is how TV Comic and Look-In survived for so many years.) It also meant that tv programmes that perhaps were not strong enough to carry their own titles could still appear as strips within an anthology.
Will the likes of such variety comics be seen again? Or do copyright holders today demand that their tv properties have solo titles? Time will tell. In the meantime, old issues of Countdown are definitely worth seeking out as great examples of the tv-theme comic and as a high point of British comics in general.
