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GA Fanzines

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Well I have a specific question and then thought - what the heck! This would be a fine place for those GA Fanzines of yesteryear to be talked about.

 

So anyway, I have a LOT of these B&W fanzines put out by a guy in Massachusetts who hadn;t published it in a long time but had also switched to doing some of the more general cons selling tapes of radio programs.

 

I THINK it was called Comic World or something like that. Dang this has to be 10-15 years ago. But this guy had such amazing energy and the 'zines were pretty good sized and just filled with a great variety of topics.

 

Anyone recall this from the hints?

 

And also, let's start talking about GA Fanzines????

 

Best I can say at this point is I have a complete run of Terrology - still cannot find out why it stopped being printed. Have a complete run of Squa Tront minus #8. Have a complete run of friend precodekeith's fine and current horror fanzine. I feel the urge to get those old Comic World or whatever they were called back. I cannot believe I dumped them. Man! 893frustrated.gif

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There was a fanzine called The Comic World put out by Robert Jennings out of Nashville, Tenn. It was one of the earlier fanzines and I think it ran 6 issues in 1963/64. I've got copies of #1 and #5.

 

What you described sounds more like Captain George's Comic World. That was from the later 1960's and early 1970's, but some issues seemed to be available much later than that. They were printed on cheap newsprint and were for the most part reprints of older strips and comics. They were put out from Ontario, Canada by Memory Lane Publications. I think there was a "Captain George", but I can't recall his name.

 

Some of the themes I recall off of the top of my head were Winsor McKay political cartoons, Pogo, Stanley Pitt's Silver Starr, Alex Raymond, The Frazetta You Didn't Know About (early 1960's adult magazine/book illustrations by Frazetta - later reprinted by someone else on better paper) and Timely. I have scanned the cover of the Timely issue.

 

captain_george.jpg

 

Funny you should mention fanzines. I have a particularly fascination with them and probably have over 1000 of them. I don't know of any book that catalogs what is out there. Some people might be surprised what some of the fanzines contain. Coincidently I posted a thread in the Bronze Age section about a fanzine from 1974 that I just acquired. It has a two page Punisher story by John Byrne (prior to any of his professional work). The Byrne signature is dated 1973, so this must have been drawn almost immediately after Spiderman #129.

 

I have also been mulling around the idea of a thread where I scan art from some early fanzines and see if people can identify the artist. A lot of professionals started out in fanzines in the 1980's and 1970's.

 

If you are looking for some good reading about the Golden Age of Fanzines (1960's), there is an excellant book written by Bill Shelly that gives you a good feel for the times. It was titled "Golden Age of Comic Fandom". Highly recommended. I think it is out of print, but I think copies are available on Amazon.com.

 

But there is no good reference book on the fanzines that are out there and what they contain. I believe a couple of people are working on one, but don't know how likely they are to be published. I doubt if it would be a profitable venture as there are not a lot of people that collect fanzines.

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What's the oldest zine u have that mentions comics? I have a sci-fi club zine from about 1955 that has a classified buy ad for GA comics.

 

I think the oldest I have is the 1954 Scouting Magazine with Wertham's anti-comic campaign. Even has a cover blurb!

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Also recommend Golden Age Greats zine that is mag sized. Circa late 70s by Paragon Publications. Reprints included b/w Green Lama by Mac Raboy, Frazetta, Katy Keene, etc. Back covers were either pin up illos or reprints of a GA cover. cloud9.gif

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