Review by New York Times Review
I recently subscribed to a well-known magazine that offers an interactive digital edition for my iPad. I was utterly disappointed. As a magazine geek for many decades, I looked forward to complaining about how nothing is better than turning real pages, smelling real ink and caressing real paper. But sadly, I have finally come to recognize that after all that turning, smelling and caressing, what remains are piles of old magazines collecting dust. The new digital version may seem less substantial, but it doesn't have those annoying loose subscription cards or peel-and-sniff perfume ads that induce headaches (and depressing sensory memories). What's more, I don't have to tie up digital magazines for disposal on recycling day. So I canceled all but one print subscription, and now I get my periodical enjoyment from an iPad. Which is actually why I am pleased to see new books devoted to printed magazines. Just in case the end of print comes tomorrow, we'll never forget what we had. The most disposable yet fascinating of all magazines are the small do-it-yourself, photocopied or offset-printed fanzines. Before Web sites and blogs, these zines were a bridge between mainstream magazines and personal newsletters. Well, maybe not a bridge per se, but an alternative to slicks, one that could be produced with minimal cost and by virtually anyone with a mind to publish. Spiritually related to Dadaist and Surrealist art journals of the 1920s, yet born of the '60s underground press, these limited-run, nonprofessionally produced zines, when seen in light of today's digital culture, were, and in some cases still are, the last stop on the road to print's predicted extinction. FANZINES: The DIY Revolution (Chronicle, paper, $40), by Teal Triggs, an American graphic-design educator and historian who now lives in London, is an exceptional resource for anyone looking to get an eyeful of these "oppositional or subcultura!" publications in all their carelessly shoddy glory. The book, handsomely designed by Therese Vandling, is both a fanzine of fanzines and a scholarly record. Vandling's restrained yet stylish typography unobtrusively frames the fanzines' characteristically chaotic covers and discordant interiors, accentuating the various design eccentricities. Triggs's text is equally respectful and illuminating. Although it sometimes sounds like an academic paper ("It is not until the early 20th century that we begin to see the formalization of some of these early visual characteristics, which help to establish a readily identifiable form"), her well-researched narrative nonetheless significantly contributes to an understanding of this otherwise ephemeral publishing phenomenon. Fanzines are extremely diverse and intensely personal - some filled with rant, some with reason - and their adherents use the form much like a blog, to communicate and interact with like-minded people. "The term 'fanzine,'" Triggs explains, "is the conflation of 'fan' and 'magazine,' and was coined by the American sci-fi enthusiast and zine producer Louis Russell Chauvenet in 1940 in his hectographed fanzine Detours . . . when he declared his preference for the term 'fanzine' rather than 'fanmag.'" Other producers adopted the term "to describe a mimeographed publication . . . devoted primarily to science fiction and superhero enthusiasts." The word became so popular, Triggs adds, that it was soon included in the Oxford English Dictionary. Fanzines became a critical outlet for those interested in rock music, comics, fashion and politics, not to mention fetishes (in the early '70s, I used to see a zine called The Razor's Edge, for women who shaved their heads). There have been zines like Guinea Pig Zero, "an occupational jobzine for people who are used as medical or pharmaceutical research subjects"; The TV Collector, a bimonthly publication "for collectors of television films, videotapes and memorabilia"; Drop Babies, which includes "'hunky' male pinups and various 'domestic bliss' scenes from British Ladybird children's early-reader books"; Ker Boom, an anti-police state and anti-capitalist zine; and Junk Food, a confessional "perzine" (personal zine) that examines the author's relationship with food. One specimen in the book, Holiday in the Sun: A Zine About Surviving Exposure to the Mainstream, questioned the selling out of fanzine publishers to the mainstream culture. The line between '60s underground papers and zines can be pretty thin: both circumvented traditional means of publishing and distribution, often ignored other people's copyright ownership and were usually not rigorously edited. But as Triggs writes: "While fanzines sit comfortably within the domain of the underground they are not considered part of the underground press movement. . . . The relationship between private and public spaces helps to differentiate the two types of publications." The underground was public, and the fanzines were "essentially 'private' in that they were produced by fans for fans." Early zine creators nonetheless borrowed the graphic language of the undergrounds, including collage and montage, pick-up artwork and transfer type. "New technologies such as the I.B.M. Golfball typewriter and the more cost-effective printing method of offset lithography," Triggs writes, "gave designers and printers a newfound freedom." Zines knew no boundaries. Any group or personal obsession could be zine-ified, and with a few tweaks some zines could become mainstream. Today, naturally, some zines have gone digital. But there are still plenty of printed ones, enough to fill at least a quarter of this book. "Fanzines are intimate graphic objects," Triggs explains, "holding meaning through their form and content but at the same time functioning to communicate. Zines are defined by their materiality." Most are unabashedly D.I.Y., while others are as professional-looking as a mainstream magazine. All are now nicely chronicled in this book, a must-have for magazine geeks. FANZINES began as an offshoot of sci-fi and horror books, magazines and comics - some of the images used in the zines were "borrowed" from these sources. And the horror genre itself has its own distinct history. In THE WEIRD WORLD OF EERIE PUBLICATIONS: Comic Gore That Warped Millions of Young Minds! (Feral House, $32.95), Mike Howlett resurrects both Eerie Publications, publisher of many of the post-pulp newsstand magazines, and the grotesque stories and images that filled adolescent minds a decade after the crackdown in 1954, when the Comics Code placed strict puritanical limits on the amount of gore, crime and sex in comic books. Former comic-book publishers took refuge in the unregulated realm of magazines, though Eerie Publications was not the first. Creepy magazine was released in 1964 by James Warren's company, Warren Publishing. It featured the work of great comics artists, including Jack Davis and Wally Wood, and fantasy painters like Frank Frazetta, along with tales of mystery, suspense and the weird, of werewolves, zombies and vampires. "Horror comics had finally risen from the grave," Howlett writes. And they did with another horror entrepreneur too, Myron Fass, "one of the most successful independent publishers in history." This book is in part an hommage to Fass, whom I met when I was 17 years old. (My name was used by one of his authors in a fake story that appeared in the "blood and guts" tabloid National Mirror; it was about cannibalism, and I was dessert.) "The road to Eerie Publications," Howlett says, "is paved with Fass's smarts, tenacity and never letting morals get in the way of a good publication." After the Comics Code was instituted, Fass found shelter in the pulp genre, publishing Foto-Rama, True or False and Shock Tales, each serving up a generous helping of gore, sex and sundry other taboos. Other magazines of his, like Quick, Ogle and Pic, were full of pinups and "manly sensationalism." Fass also took advantage of teenage trends. In 1964, when the Dave Clark Five grabbed the No. 1 spot from the Beatles on the British music charts, Fass rushed out two "Dave Clark 5 vs. the Beatles" special-edition magazines, with articles about a "vicious battle" between the bands. Of course, it was all hyperbole. In 1965, Fass wanted to publish a horror magazine titled Eerie, but so did James Warren. Both publishers were distributed by the Publishers Distributing Corporation, which had the power to decide who would get the title, and which leaned toward Fass. Seeing that his plan to have Eerie in his stable was about to be thwarted, Warren "cobbled together a small, digest-sized . . . issue of three horror stories," Howlett writes about this proto-fanzine, "putting their . . . Eerie logo across the top of the cover. . . . They printed up 200 copies overnight and rushed them to newsstands in four different states, as well as to the U.S. Copyright Office in Washington." Fass, realizing he had been trumped, had to surrender and settle for the title Weird for his own horror magazine. This colorful book follows the evolution and devolution of these and other horror and novelty magazines and their artists. Even if you're not a fan of this genre, it is a curiously wonderful, weird and eerie tale of magazine history. The censorious Comics Code Authority was similar to the film industry's Hays Office. After 1954, all the comics in THE HORROR! THE HORROR! Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You to Read! (Abrams ComicArts, paper, $29.95), edited by Jim Trombetta, were discontinued for fear of running afoul of the code. If you were a God-fearing American, you might have said good riddance. Yet it was the acutely liberal-minded Fredric Wertham, author of "Seduction of the Innocent," who made it his mission to have certain comics banned. Paradoxically, Trombetta reports: "Wertham's credentials were excellent. He was a progressive and antiracist intellectual whose Lafargue Clinic in Harlem was unique in offering free psychological treatment to children. In fact, his work on the psychological damage of segregation was referenced in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision." Actually, there is a school of thought that argues he wasn't really a censor; he wanted only to restrict comicbook sales so that children would need a parent in tow to buy the questionable ones - much like what the movie code does today. But the response by the frightened industry was to overreact. In addition to offering a generous helping of controversial comics - including Tomb of Terror, Dark Mysteries, Strange Fantasy and the equally gruesome War Fury and Battle, which showed bloodthirsty North Korean soldiers - Trombetta's book provides insightful history. For example: "Hunger was as big a taboo in horror comics as sex. One of the most frequent images in these comics is the mouth of a starving predator, supernatural or otherwise, upper and lower lips linked by thick strands of saliva." See how far we've come since then; now this scene is matter-of-fact in most teen movies. The Italian shelter magazine Abitare (meaning "to dwell"), which began in 1961 under the title Casa Novità, was not entirely part of the mainstream at the time of its inception, but it certainly helped redefine Italian and, by proxy, American visual culture. It was far more alternative than any of the leading American shelter magazines of the period. And as the furniture designer Alessandro Mendini notes in his foreword to ABITARE: 50 Years of Design (Rizzoli, $85), edited by Mario Piazza, the magazine was legendary because of its founder, Piera Peroni, "whose inventive editorial direction was accessible, radical and completely Milanese." What he means by "accessible, radical" is best described in an essay here by Paola Antonelli, the architecture and design curator at the Museum of Modern Art, who says that Abitare's "focus on everyday life, on the mixture of great and not-so-great style," is what made the magazine so very important in the '60s, when Italy began influencing the furniture world with its revolutionary approaches. FOR the past 50 years, Abitare has also been a model of conceptual art direction. From 1961 to 1974, Peroni oversaw a visual format that was elegant without being conservative. Instead, it was cut with generous amounts of wit and humor. A 1969 article on Italian-style dining, for instance, features "the cheerful photographs of Oliviero Toscani," showing "how the Italian table is changing, as is the mutability of the conditions under which people eat." A series of photos illustrates the period's stereotypical meals. One shows diners with "red-checked tablecloths": "Bowls for spaghetti replace immaculate plates. Plastic and colors take over." In another, poker players at a green-felt table munch on chips and smoke cigars. This is not the typical shelter-magazine way of idealizing lifestyles. Likewise, for an article on modern office furniture, Toscani (who went on to be creative director for Benetton) photographed a bunch of live "puzzled chickens and hens" sitting in and on the rosewood desk and chairs. Rather than an in-depth history like "Fanzines," this book is a compendium of Abitare's best layouts. Extended captions provide editorial context; personal essays by Piazza and others recall (in sometimes awkward translations) each of Abitare's decades. Seeing the layouts photographed as objects directly from the pages of the magazine, with all the binding and printing imperfections intact, also allows the reader to experience the design in context. And what smart and often beautiful design it is. Rarely are the same techniques or conceits used more than once, and most important, there is an exemplary balance among conventional architectural photography, candid imagery and drawn illustration. I became a reader (there is an English-language version) and hoarder of Abitare after 1992, when Italo Lupi became art director and editor in chief. Lupi's art direction did not strictly follow that of his predecessors or that of the other leading Italian design magazines, Casa Bella and Domus. Staying contemporary and stylish while avoiding faddishness is a tough thing to do, and for many years Lupi maintained a neutral yet identifiable typography, allowing the startling photography and illustrations to dominate. Unlike those shelter and style magazines that are basically promotions for the products they feature, Abitare never merely showcased the new. As evidenced in a 2005 portfolio by Michael Wolf, "Hives in Hong Kong" - which recorded that megalopolis's gigantic apartment complexes as if they belonged to some dystopian world -the magazine chronicles the good, the bad and the ugly, placing design in the role of cultural provocateur. This is summed up in the caption: "Photography increasingly takes the form of a kind of universal writing that leaps over the hurdles of unknown alphabets and languages." "Abitare: 50 Years of Design" is not only a good record of half a century reduced to 430 pages, but a handbook on how a magazine can continue to inform and delight, even in the iPad era.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 20, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review
Horror comics dominated the comic-book industry in the early '50s before they were targeted by congressional hearings aimed at stemming their lurid excesses. Trombetta documents the phenomenon, reprinting more than 100 covers, dozens of excerpts, and a handful of complete stories that amply demonstrate the imaginatively gruesome tales that shocked a nation but captivated millions of readers. Since his aim is to accurately characterize the genre, most of Trombetta's examples sport crude artwork, preposterous plots, and risible dialogue. However, several rise above the mediocrity: while EC Comics the artistically preeminent publisher of the decade is represented only in passing, complete stories by such auteurs as the celebrated Basil Wolverton and the underappreciated Howard Nostrand are included. Trombetta strings together the selections with perceptive commentary that assesses the comics' recurring elements not just zombies and werewolves, but also such themes as hunger and sexual hostility and ties them into such cultural and political currents of the era as anticommunism, nuclear terror, and racism. A suitable companion volume to David Hajdu's 2008 account of the anticomics witch hunt, The Ten-Cent Plague.--Flagg, Gordon Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
David Hadju's The Ten-Cent Plague got an enormous amount of press for rehashing a story that older comics fans or anyone vaguely interested in the medium's history already knows well; Trombetta is not a notable comics critic but similarly rides the wave of renewed interest in a period when comics were the subject of overheated Senate hearings, demagoguery, and censorship. Fortunately, Trombetta, who has written for television and worked as a magazine editor, grew up reading EC horror comics and has a genuine affinity for them that prevents the sparse text from being merely perfunctory. He does a fine job of detailing the basis of the horror tropes of the 1940s and 1950s, including World War II atrocities and subsequent Cold War paranoia. The real draw of such a book, however, is the rich collection of public domain horror comics art from some of the most eccentric, talented, and possibly chemically imbalanced artists of the time. There are old EC stalwarts Johnny Craig, Graham "Ghastly" Ingels, Jack Davis, Al Feldstein, and even Wally Wood. Readers are also treated to quirky early work from Steve Ditko (prior to his cocreating Spider-Man with Stan Lee), offerings from legends like Alex Toth and L.B. Cole, and an all-too-brief glimpse of the wonderfully bizarre stylings of Basil Wolverton. Verdict A great deal for comics historians and fans of early horror comics from the EC era and beyond; the original comics collected here would set any collector back many thousands of dollars, but they are viewable in these pages for under $30. While much of what passed for horror often looks dated and amusing by today's standards, there is still enough genuinely ghoulish and disturbing imagery to keep this out of the reach of children.-R. Young, The Comics Interpreter, Charleston, SC (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
