Fanzine

[fan-zeen, fan-zeen]

A fanzine (see also: zine) is a nonprofessional publication produced by fans 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, from whom it was adopted by others.

Typically, publishers, editors and contributors to fanzines receive no financial compensation. 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 have evolved 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.

Origin

The origins of amateur "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. These publications were produced first on small tabletop printing presses, often by students.

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 professionally produced magazine.

Genres

Science fiction fanzines

When Hugo Gernsback published the first scientifiction 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. Fans finding themselves writing the same letter to several correspondents sought to save themselves a lot of typing by duplicating their letters.

Early efforts included simple carbon copies but that proved insufficient. 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" or "letterzines."

Science fiction fan magazines 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 is purple (technically indigo) and the next step after hecto 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.

The printing technology affected the style of writing. For example, there were alphanumeric contractions which are actually precursors to "leet-speak." (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 move the platen down one line.

Never commercial enterprises, most science fiction fanzines were (and many still are) available for "the usual," meaning that 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 fanzines

Media fanzines were originally merely a sub-genre of SF fanzines, written by science fiction fans already familiar with apazines. The first media fanzine was a Star Trek zine called Spockanalia, published by long time SF fans (members of the Lunarians), who definitely hoped for Spockanalia to be included in the Hugo ballot for best fanzine. The first two of its five issues were published while the show was still on the air, and included snippets from DC Fontana and Gene Roddenberry and a letter from Leonard Nimoy. Many, 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.

In the late 70s, fiction that included a sexual relationship between two of the male characters of the media source (first Kirk/Spock, then later Starsky/Hutch, Napolean/Illya, and many others) started to appear in zines. This became known as slash from the '/' mark used in adzines 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 became their own sub-sub-genre; in many fandoms you rarely saw slash and non-slash stories appear in the same zines. 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.

Comics and graphic arts fanzines

Comics were mentioned and discussed as early as the late 1930s in science fiction fanzines. 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. Malcolm Willits and Jim Bradley started The Comic Collector's News, the first comics fanzine, in October, 1947. By 1952 Ted White had done a four-page pamphlet about Superman, and James Taurasi did the short-lived Fantasy Comics. In 1953 Bhob Stewart published The EC Fan Bulletin, which launched EC fandom and several subsequent imitative EC this and EC that titles. Somewhat later Stewart, White and Larry Stark did Potrzebie and started the second wave of EC fanzines, the best-known of which 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. Richard and Pat Lupoff's science fiction fanzine Xero began featuring a series of nostalgic and analytical articles about comics, by Richard, Don Thompson and others, under the heading, All In Color For A Dime. In 1961 came Jerry Bails' Alter Ego, devoted to costumed heroes, a slick revived version of which survives as a semi-prozine.

It started modern-day superhero comics fandom and is thus sometimes cited mistakenly 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.

In Britain, there have since 2001 been created a number of fanzines pastiching children's comics of the 1970s and '80s (eg 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 fanzines

As with comics zines, horror film fanzines grew from related interest within science fiction fan publications. Trumpet, edited by the late 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/James Warren 1958 magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. Gore Creatures began in 1961 and continues today as the prozine Midnight Marquee. Garden Ghouls Gazette -- a 1960s horror title under the editorship of Dave Keil, then Gary Collins -- was later headed by the late Frederick S. Clarke and in 1967 became the respected journal Cinefantastique. It later became a prozine under journalist-screenwriter Mark A. Altman.

Mark Frank’s Photon -- notable for the inclusion of an 8x10 photo in each issue -- was another fine '60s zine that lasted into the 1980s. The Baltimore-based Black Oracle from writer-turned-John Waters repertory member George Stover was a pint-sized gem that evolved into the larger-format Cinemacabre. Stover's Black Oracle partner Bill George later became editor of the Cinefantastique spinoff Femme Fatales. Japanese Fantasy Film Journal (JFFJ) from Greg Shoemaker covered Toho's Godzilla and his Asian brethren when no other publications much cared. FXRH (Special Effects by Ray Harryhausen) was a specialized 1970s zine co-created by future Hollywood FX artist Ernest D. Farino. And Richard Klemensen’s Little Shoppe of Horrors continues to be the definitive fanzine on Hammer horrors and has been publishing its generously-sized issues on an irregular schedule since 1972.

See Monster Magazines - The First Decade for further information on early horror film fanzines.

Rock & Roll music fanzines

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 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 and denim delinquent.

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! and Italy's Misty Lane.

Punk fanzines

The punk subculture in the United Kingdom spearheaded a surge of interest in fanzines as a countercultural alternative to established print media. The first and perhaps still best known UK 'punk zine' was Sniffin' Glue, produced by Deptford punk fan Mark Perry. Sniffin' Glue ran for 12 photocopied issues; the first issue was produced by Perry immediately following (and in response to) the London debut of The Ramones on July 4, 1976. Other UK fanzines included Blam!, Bombsite Fanzine, Burnt Offering, Chainsaw (punk zine), New Crimes, Vague fanzine, Jamming, Love and Molotov Cocktails, New Youth (fanzine), Peroxide (punk zine), ENZK, Juniper beri-beri, Rox , Grim Humour and Cool Notes. Of these, Tony Fletcher's Jamming was the most far reaching, becoming a nationally distributed mainstream magazine for several years before its demise.

In the US, Flipside and Slash (fanzine) were important punk zines for the LA scene, both debuting in 1977. Among later titles, Maximum RocknRoll is a major punk zine, with over 300 issues published. As a result, in part, of the popular and commercial resurgence of punk in the late 1980s and after, with the growing popularity of such bands as Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Fugazi, Bikini Kill, Green Day and The Offspring, a number of other punk zines have appeared, such as Punk Planet, Razorcake Magazine, Tail Spins Magazine, Sobriquet Magazine, Profane Existence and Slug and Lettuce. The early American punkzine Search and Destroy eventually became the influential fringe-cultural magazine Re/Search. Some punk fanzines from the 80s, like Threatening Society are experiencing a second life by placing all past content online for free and adding new content.

In the UK Fracture and Reason To Believe were significant fanzines in the early 2000s, but both ended in late 2003. Though not technically a 'national' fanzine Rancid News has to a limited degree filled the gap left by these two zines.

Mod fanzines

In the United Kingdom, the 1979 mod revival brought with it a burst of fresh creativity from fanzines, and for the next decade, the youth subculture inspired the production of dozens of independent publications. The most successful of the first wave was Maximum Speed, which successfully captured the frenetic world of a mod revival scene that was propelling bands like Secret Affair, Purple Hearts and The Chords into the UK charts. After the genre had started to go out of fashion with mainstream audiences in 1981, the mod revival scene went underground and successfully reinvented itself through a series of clubs, bands and fanzines that breathed fresh life into the genre, culminating in another burst of creative acceptance in 1985. This success was largely driven by the network of underground fanzines, the most important and far reaching of which were Extraordinary Sensations, produced by future radio DJ Eddie Piller, and Shadows & Reflections, published by future national magazine editor Chris Hunt. The latter in particular pushed back the boundaries of fanzine production, producing glossy, professionally written and printed publications at a time (1983-86) when most fanzines were produced via photocopier and letraset.

Local music fanzines

In the UK, there were also fanzines that covered the local music scene in a particular town or city. Mainly prevalent in the 70s and 80s, all music styles were covered, whether the bands were playing rock, punk, metal, futurist, ska or dance. Featured were local gig reviews and articles that were below the radar of the mainstream music press. They were produced using the technology of the time, ie typewriter and letraset. Examples include Bombsite Fanzine (Liverpool 1977), City Fun (Manchester), 1984 and Town Hall Steps (Bolton) and more recently mono (Fanzine), (Bradford) with many more across the country.

Role-playing fanzines

Another sizable group of fanzines arose in role-playing game (RPG) fandom, where fanzines allowed people to publish their ideas and views on specific games and their role-playing campaigns. Role-playing fanzines allowed people to communicate in the 1970s and 1980s with complete editorial control in the hands of the players, as opposed to the game publishers. These early RPG fanzines were generally typed, sold in an A5 format (in the UK) and were usually illustrated with abysmal or indifferent artwork.

A fanzine community developed and was based on sale to a reading public and exchanges by editor/publishers. Many of the pioneers of RPG zinedom got their start in, or remain part of, science fiction fandom. This is also true of the small but still active board game fandom scene, the most prolific subset of which is centered around play-by-mail Diplomacy.

Wargaming fanzines

Several fanzines exist within the hobby of wargaming. Among them is Charge!, a leading international fanzine exclusively for miniature wargaming enthusiasts for the American Civil War period. Other fanzines support Warhammer and other popular rules sets.

Sport fanzines

In the UK, most Premier League or Football League football clubs have one or more fanzines which supplement, oppose and complement the club's official magazine or matchday programme. A reasonably priced 'zine has a guaranteed audience, as is the culture of passion in being a football fan. Examples of UK football fanzines include Heroes & Villains, TOOFIF, 4000 Holes and War of the Monster Trucks (a Sheffield Wednesday Fanzine named after a local TV station elected not to show the final scenes of an unlikely cup victory). Fanzines are not exclusive to the top tiers of football however, with Northern Counties East League side Scarborough Athletic FC having a fanzine entitled Abandon Chip!, a pun based on both the perilous situation of predecessor club Scarborough FC and that club's sponsors, McCain. There are also a number of fanzines to be found in Ireland of which Shelbourne's Red Inc. is the longest running.

And also away from the world of Football there are a number of established fanzines, for example Rugby League has such notable publications as Who The Hell Was St.George Anyway? (the world's longest-running Rugby League fanzine by supporters of Doncaster RLFC) and Scarlet Turkey of National League One club Salford Reds.

Recent developments

In recent years the traditional paper zine has begun to give way to the webzine (or "e-zine") that is easier to produce and uses the potential of the Internet to reach an ever larger, possibly global, audience. Nonetheless, printed fanzines are still produced, either out of preference for the format or to reach people who don't have convenient Web access. Online versions of approximately 200 science fiction fanzines will be found at Bill Burns'eFanzines web site, along with links to other SF fanzine sites.

References

Schelly, Bill. The Golden Age of Comic Fandom. Introduction by Roy Thomas. Seattle, WA: Hamster Press, 1995.
Lupoff, Dick [Richard A.] and Don Thompson, eds. All in Color for a Dime. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1970.