Comics Fanzine

A fanzine (blend of '' fan'' and ''magazine'' or ''-zine'') is a non-professional and non-official publication produced by enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon (such as a literary or musical genre) for the pleasure of others who share their interest. The term was coined in an October 1940 science fiction fanzine by Russ Chauvenet and first popularized within science fiction fandom, and from there the term was adopted by other communities.

Typically, publishers, editors, writers and other contributors of articles or illustrations to fanzines are not paid. Fanzines are traditionally circulated free of charge, or for a nominal cost to defray postage or production expenses. Copies are often offered in exchange for similar publications, or for contributions of art, articles, or letters of comment (LoCs), which are then published.

Some fanzines are typed and photocopied by amateurs using standard home office equipment. A few fanzines have developed into professional publications (sometimes known as "prozines"), and many professional writers were first published in fanzines; some continue to contribute to them after establishing a professional reputation. The term fanzine is sometimes confused with "fan magazine", but the latter term most often refers to commercially produced publications ''for'' (rather than ''by'') fans.

Origin

The origins of amateur fanac "fan" publications are obscure, but can be traced at least back to 19th century literary groups in the United States which formed amateur press associations to publish collections of amateur fiction, poetry, and commentary, such as H. P. Lovecraft's ''United Amateur''.

As professional printing technology progressed, so did the technology of fanzines. Early fanzines were hand-drafted or typed on a manual typewriter and printed using primitive reproduction techniques (e.g., the spirit duplicator or even the hectograph). Only a very small number of copies could be made at a time, so circulation was extremely limited. The use of mimeograph machines enabled greater press runs, and the photocopier increased the speed and ease of publishing once more. Today, thanks to the advent of desktop publishing and self-publication, there is often little difference between the appearance of a fanzine and a professional magazine.

Genres

Science fiction

When Hugo Gernsback published the first science fiction magazine, ''Amazing Stories'' in 1926, he allowed for a large letter column which printed reader's addresses. By 1927 readers, often young adults, would write to each other, bypassing the magazine. Science fiction fanzines had their beginnings in Serious & Constructive (later shortened to sercon) correspondence. The fans would start up clubs to ease finding others with their same interests. Gernsback founded the Science Fiction League in 1934, where these clubs could advertise for more users.

The first science fiction fanzine, '' The Comet'', was published in 1930 by the Science Correspondence Club in Chicago and edited by Raymond A. Palmer and Walter Dennis. The term "fanzine" was coined by Russ Chauvenet in the October 1940 edition of his fanzine ''Detours''. "Fanzines" were distinguished from "prozines," (a term Chauvenet also invented): that is, all professional magazines. Prior to that, the fan publications were known as "fanmags".

Science fiction fanzines used a variety of printing methods. Typewriters, school dittos, church mimeos and (if they could afford it) multi-color letterpress or other mid-to-high level printing. Some fans wanted their news spread, others reveled in the artistry and beauty of fine printing. The hectograph, introduced around 1876, was so named because it could produce (in theory) up to a hundred copies. Hecto used an aniline dye, transferred to a tray of gelatin, and paper would be placed on the gel, one sheet at a time, for transfer. Messy and smelly, the process could create vibrant colors for the few copies produced, the easiest aniline dye to make being purple (technically indigo). The next small but significant technological step after hectography is the spirit duplicator, essentially the hectography process using a drum instead of the gelatin. Introduced by Ditto Corporation in 1923, these machines were known for the next six decades as Ditto Machines and used by fans because they were cheap to use and could (with a little effort) print in color.

The mimeograph machine, which forced ink through a wax paper stencil cut by the keys of a typewriter, was the standard for many decades. A second-hand mimeo could print hundreds of copies and (with more than a little effort) print in color. The electronic stencil cutter (shortened to "electrostencil" by most) could add photographs and illustrations to a mimeo stencil. A mimeo'd zine could look terrible or look beautiful, depending more on the skill of the mimeo operator than the quality of the equipment. Only a few fans could afford more professional printers, or the time it took them to print, until photocopying became cheap and ubiquitous in the 1970s. With the advent of computer printers and desktop publishing in the 1980s, fanzines began to look far more professional. The rise of the internet made correspondence cheaper and ''much'' faster, and the World Wide Web has made publishing a fanzine as simple as coding a web page.

New technology brought various print style innovations. For example, there were alphanumeric contractions which are actually precursors to " leetspeak'. (A well-known example is the "initials" used by Forrest J. Ackerman in his fanzines from the 30s, and 40s, namely "4sj". Fans around the world knew Ackerman by three letters "4sj" or even two: "4e" for "Forry.") Fanspeak is rich with abbreviations and concatenations. Where teenagers labored to save typing on ditto masters, they now save keystrokes when text messaging. Ackerman invented nonstoparagraphing as a space-saving measure. When the typist comes to the end of a paragraph, they simply moved the platen down one line.

Never commercial enterprises, most science fiction fanzines were (and many still are) available for "the usual," a sample issue will be mailed on request. To receive further issues, a reader sends a "letter of comment" (LoC) about the fanzine to the editor. The LoC might be published in the next issue; some fanzines consisted almost exclusively of letter columns, where discussions were conducted in much the same way as they are in internet newsgroups and mailing lists today, though at a relatively glacial pace. Often fanzine editors ("faneds") would simply swap issues with each other, not worrying too much about matching trade for trade, somewhat like being on one another's friends list. Without being closely connected with the rest of fandom, a budding faned could read fanzine reviews in prozines, and fanzines reviewed other fanzines. Recent technology has changed the speed of communication between fans and the technology available, but the basic concepts developed by science fiction fanzines in the 1930s can be seen online today. Blogs – with their threaded comments, personalized illustrations, shorthand in-jokes, wide variety in quality and wider variety of content—follow the structure developed in science fiction fanzines, without (usually) realizing the antecedent.

Since 1937, science fiction fans have formed amateur press associations (APAs); the members contribute to a collective assemblage or bundle that contains contributions from all of them, called apazines and often containing mailing comments. Some APAs are still active, and some are published as virtual "e-zines," distributed on the Internet. Specific Hugo Awards are given for fanzines, fan writing and fanart.

Media

Media fanzines were originally merely a subgenre of SF fanzines, written by science fiction fans already familiar with apazines. The first media fanzine was a ''Star Trek'' fan publication called ''Spockanalia'', published in September 1967 by members of the Lunarians. They hoped that fanzines such as ''Spockanalia'' would be recognized by the broader science-fiction fan community in traditional ways, such as a Hugo Award for Best Fanzine. All five of its issues were published while the show was still on the air, and included letters from D. C. Fontana, Gene Roddenberry, and most of the cast members, and an article by future Hugo and Nebula winner Lois McMaster Bujold.

Many other Star Trek 'zines followed, then slowly zines appeared for other media sources, such as ''Starsky and Hutch'', ''Man from U.N.C.L.E.'' and ''Blake's 7''. By the mid-1970s, there were enough media zines being published that adzines existed just to advertise all of the other zines available. Although ''Spockanalia'' had a mix of stories and essays, most zines were all fiction. Like SF fanzines, these media zines spanned the gamut of publishing quality from digest-sized mimeos to offset printed masterpieces with four-color covers.

Men wrote and edited most previous science fiction fanzines, which typically published articles reporting on trips to conventions, and reviews of books and other fanzines. Camille Bacon-Smith later stated that "One thing you almost never find in a science fiction fanzine is science fiction. Rather ... fanzines were the social glue that created a community out of a worldwide scattering of readers." Women published most media fanzines, which by contrast also included fan fiction. By doing so, they "fill the need of a mostly female audience for fictional narratives that expand the boundary of the official source products offered on the television and movie screen." In addition to long and short stories, as well as poetry, many media fanzines included illustrated stories, as well as stand alone art, often featuring portraits of the show or film's principal characters. The art could range from simple sketches, to reproductions of large elaborate works painted in oil or acrylic, though most are created in ink.

In the late 1970s, fiction that included a sexual relationship between two of the male characters of the media source (first Kirk/Spock, then later Starsky/Hutch, Napoleon/Illya, and many others) started to appear in zines. These became known as slash fiction from the '/' mark used in adzines. The slash help to differentiate a K&S story (which would have been a Kirk and Spock friendship story) from a K/S story, which would have been one with a romantic or sexual bent between the characters. Slash zines eventually had their own subgenres, such as Femslash. By 2000, when web publishing of stories became more popular than zine publishing, thousands of media fanzines had been published; over 500 of them were k/s zines.

Another popular franchise for fanzines was the "Star Wars" saga. By the time the film "The Empire Strikes Back" was released in 1980, Star Wars fanzines had surpassed Star Trek zines in sales. An unfortunate episode in fanzine history occurred in 1981 when Star Wars director George Lucas threatened to sue fanzine publishers who distributed zines featuring the Star Wars characters in sexually explicit stories or art.

Comics were mentioned and discussed as early as the late 1930s in the fanzines of science fiction fandom. Famously, the first version of Superman (a bald-headed villain) appeared in the third issue of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's 1933 fanzine ''Science Fiction''. In 1936, David Kyle published '' The Fantasy World '', possibly the first comics fanzine. Malcolm Willits and Jim Bradley started '' The Comic Collector's News'' in October 1947. By 1952, Ted White had mimeographed a four-page pamphlet about Superman, and James Vincent Taurasi, Sr. issued the short-lived ''Fantasy Comics''. In 1953, Bhob Stewart published ''The EC Fan Bulletin'', which launched EC fandom of imitative EC fanzines. A few months later, Stewart, White, and Larry Stark produced ''Potrzebie'', planned as a literary journal of critical commentary about EC by Stark. Among the wave of EC fanzines that followed, the best-known was Ron Parker's ''Hoo-Hah!''. After that came fanzines by the followers of Harvey Kurtzman's '' Mad'', ''Trump'' and ''Humbug''. Publishers of these included future underground comics stars like Jay Lynch and Robert Crumb.

In 1960, Richard and Pat Lupoff launched their science fiction and comics fanzine '' Xero''. In the second issue, "The Spawn of M.C. Gaines'" by Ted White was the first in a series of nostalgic, analytical articles about comics by Lupoff, Don Thompson, Bill Blackbeard, Jim Harmon and others under the heading, ''All in Color for a Dime.'' In 1961, Jerry Bails' ''Alter Ego'', devoted to costumed heroes, became a focal point for superhero comics fandom and is thus sometimes mistakenly cited as the first comics fanzine.

Contacts through these magazines were instrumental in creating the culture of modern comics fandom: conventions, collecting, etc. Much of this, like comics fandom itself, began as part of standard science fiction conventions, but comics fans have developed their own traditions. Comics fanzines often include fan artwork based on existing characters as well as discussion of the history of comics. Through the 1960s, and 1970s, comic fanzines followed some general formats, such as the industry news and information magazine (''The Comic Reader'' was one example), interview, history, and review-based fanzines, and the fanzines which basically represented independent comic book-format exercises. While perceived quality varied widely, the energy and enthusiasm involved tended to be communicated clearly to the readership, many of whom were also fanzine contributors. Prominent comics zines of this period included ''Alter Ego'', ''The Comic Reader'', and ''Rocket's Blast Comicollector'', all started by Jerry Bails. During the 1970s, many fanzines (''Squa Tront'', as an example) also became partly distributed through certain comic book distributors.

One of the first British comics fanzines was Phil Clarke's ''KA-POW'', launched in 1967. Prominent British comics fanzines of the 1970s and early 1980s included the long-running ''Fantasy Advertiser'', Martin Lock's '' BEM'', Richard Burton's ''Comic Media News'', Alan Austin's ''Comics Unlimited'', George Barnett's ''The Panelologist'',Clarke, Theo. "And then nothing happened: THE ESCAPE INTERVIEW," ''The Comics Journal'' #122 (June 1988), p. 119. and Richard Ashford's '' Speakaeasy''.

At times, the professional comics publishers have made overtures to fandom via 'prozines', in this case fanzine-like magazines put out by the major publishers. ''The Amazing World of DC Comics'' and the Marvel magazine ''FOOM'' began and ceased publication in the 1970s. Priced significantly higher than standard comics of the period (''AWODCC'' was $1.50, ''FOOM'' was 75 cents), each house-organ magazine lasted a brief period of years. Since 2001 in Britain, there have been created a number of fanzines pastiching children's comics of the 1970s, and 1980s (e.g. ''Solar Wind'', ''Pony School'', etc.). These adopt a style of storytelling rather than specific characters from their sources, usually with a knowing or ironic twist.

Horror film

As with comics zines, horror film fanzines grew from related interest within science fiction fan publications. ''Trumpet,'' edited by Tom Reamy, was a 1960s SF zine that branched into horror film coverage. Alex Soma's ''Horrors of the Screen,'' Calvin T. Beck's ''Journal of Frankenstein'' (later ''Castle of Frankenstein'') and Gary Svehla's ''Gore Creatures'' were the first horror fanzines created as more serious alternatives to the popular Forrest J Ackerman 1958 magazine ''Famous Monsters of Filmland.'' ''Gore Creatures'' began in 1961 and continues today as the prozine (and specialty publisher) ''Midnight Marquee.'' ''Garden Ghouls Gazette'' – a 1960s horror title under the editorship of Dave Keil, then Gary Collins—was eventually headed by the late Frederick S. Clarke (1949–2000) and in 1967 became the respected journal ''Cinefantastique.'' It later became a prozine under journalist-screenwriter Mark A. Altman and has continued as a webzine.

Mark Frank's ''Photon''—notable for the inclusion of an 8x10 photo in each issue—was another 1960s zine that lasted into the 1970s. Richard Klemensen's ''Little Shoppe of Horrors'', having a particular focus on " Hammer Horrors," began in 1972 and is still publishing as of 2022.

The Baltimore-based ''Black Oracle'' (1969–1978) from writer-turned-John Waters repertory member George Stover was a diminutive zine that evolved into the larger-format ''Cinemacabre.'' Stover's ''Black Oracle'' partner Bill George published his own short-lived zine ''The Late Show'' (1974–1976; with co-editor Martin Falck), and later became editor of the ''Cinefantastique'' prozine spinoff '' Femme Fatales.'' In the mid-1970s, North Carolina teenager Sam Irvin published the horror/science-fiction fanzine ''Bizarre'', which included his original interviews with UK actors and filmmakers; Irvin would later become a producer-director in his own right.
'' Japanese Fantasy Film Journal'' (JFFJ) (1968–1983) from Greg Shoemaker covered Toho's ''Godzilla'' and his Asian brethren. Japanese Giants (JG) was founded by Stephen Mark Rainey in 1974 and was published for 30 years. In 1993, '' G-FAN'' was published, and reached its 100th regularly published issue in Fall 2012. ''FXRH'' (Special effects by Ray Harryhausen) (1971–1976) was a specialized zine co-created by future Hollywood FX artist Ernest D. Farino.

Rock and roll

By the mid-1960s, several fans active in science fiction and comics fandom recognized a shared interest in rock music, and the rock fanzine was born. Paul Williams and Greg Shaw were two such SF-fans turned rock zine editors. Williams' ''Crawdaddy!'' (1966) and Shaw's two California-based zines, ''Mojo Navigator'' (full title, "''Mojo-Navigator Rock and Roll News''") (1966) and '' Who Put the Bomp'', (1970), are among the most important early rock fanzines.

''Crawdaddy!'' (1966) quickly moved from its fanzine roots to become one of the first rock music "prozines," with paid advertisers and newsstand distribution. ''Bomp'' remained a fanzine, featuring many writers who would later become prominent music journalists, including Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, Ken Barnes, Ed Ward, Dave Marsh, Mike Saunders and R. Meltzer. ''Bomp'' featured cover art by Jay Kinney and Bill Rotsler, both veterans of SF and Comics fandom. ''Bomp'' was not alone; an August 1970 issue of ''Rolling Stone'' included an article about the explosion of rock fanzines. Other rock fanzines of this period include ''denim delinquent'' 1971, edited by Jymn Parrett, ''Flash,'' 1972, edited by Mark Shipper, ''Eurock Magazine'' (1973–1993) edited by Archie Patterson and ''Bam Balam,'' written and published by Brian Hogg in East Lothian, Scotland, beginning in 1974, and in the mid-1970s, ''Back Door Man''.

In the post-punk era, several well-written fanzines emerged that cast an almost academic look at earlier, neglected musical forms, including Mike Stax' ''Ugly Things'', Billy Miller and Miriam Linna's ''Kicks'', Jake Austen's '' Roctober'', Kim Cooper's ''Scram'', P. Edwin Letcher's '' Garage & Beat'', and the UK's Shindig!

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