Genre Magazines Thread

Yesterday , I bought FILMFAX , ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE* , THE STRAND , and an OTR-focused thing titled NOSTALGIA DIGEST...I almost bought FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION , but money was low...! Get the picture ??

  Let's discuss " real " - um , newsstand-distributed - magazines , " upscale fanzine/semi-pro " , and maybe even some actual fanzine-level magazines either ABOUT genre material or (fiction) containing it...There's not as many as there used to were , y'know !!!!!!!!! That Innernet thingy...

*-Finally corrected my mis-possessive :-) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  • You found a good newsstand to have all those. I have one near me that has almost every magazine published,and some of them are pretty low-circulation and near fan level. They even carry CBG! I think they still carry TCJ, but it comes out so rarely that I haven't seen it there in a long while, but that could just be their schedule. I think some bookstores have beefed up their newsstands as other options have shut down, but I haven't paid that much attention.

    The problem with many of those magazines is that they have little advertising, and the cover prices are up around $7-8 a copy. There are several Doctor Who magazines, which I think are imports, and they're $10 per issue. A lot of them don't offer subscriptions and if they do, there's no savings over per-issue prices.

    Alter Ego has had that problem for awhile, with the savings on a subscription being only that you didn't pay for postage to get it at home. So Roy apparently had a hard time getting people to buy every issue, and they'd cherry-pick the best (ie, Marvel and DC topics) and ignore the others.

    I still get a few fanzines by mail.  I haven't seen the HoLLywood Electern in a couple years, though, so it may be gone--but you just never know with fanzines. I also get It's A Fanzine, but it only comes out about once a year or less, and didn't come out for many years in a row before another issue suddenly popped up. Not moving is a definite benefit with fanzines.

    I also get Fadeaway, by Robert Jennings, who started sending it to me after my article on fanzines in CBG last year (http://www.cbgxtra.com/columnists/craig-shutt-ask-mr-silver-age/my-...) that we talked about for awhile here. We've talked about fanzines other times, too. Fadeaway is mostly about old sci-fi pulps, Old Time Radio and movie serials, so it's not of that much interest.

    The Internet has done away with a lot of fanzines, but as someone in the latest Fadeaway noted, reading Forums and reports online is different from getting a package of articles and letters. There are pros and cons to both, but they aren't the same.

    One guy sent me some copies of a digital fanzine he does. He creates the package, burns it to CDs and sends it out that way. People read it on their computers, but it's a set "magazine" type presentation. I'd think he'd do better to email the package rather than burn it to CDs and eliminate the postage cost and chances of breakage, but that might be a pretty big email.

    So it's actually pretty surprising how many magazines there still are out there, considering how few newsstands there are and how few of those carry that kind of stuff.

    -- MSA

  • ...Yeah , thank you , MSA , I didn't really mean for this line(and the other one) to land in your sub-forum , but it did , after the fact , strike me as fitting in with the " Fanzines/Comic Magazines " one I put here , so...

      I kind of explained it succiently up above , magazines more or less about/examining other forms of " genre/pulp/trash/whatever " , not really comics-focused , and sorta " semi-pro " print magazines on/of gener fiction , which do carry actual examples of it , up to , on the professional level , the five remaining " pulp-style " digest-sized descendants that are essentially 100% genre fiction , two of which I name-dropped above and four of which are owned by Dell , and anything else which comes up !!!:-)...........

  • ...Geeessshhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!! It took til' NOW to see that I'd confused which one of those two " pulp-style digest survivors " which focus on crime fiction I had boughtwith the other !!!!!!!!!!! If Jim Hutton and David Wayne came back to life they'd drop dead again of chagrin !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • ...TCJ switched to " annual , super-thick , ' nearly ' book-looking thingy " with?? #300 , I have precisely seen it - in the hands of someone else - ONCE since then , when I was in San Francisco , in a Carl's Jr. !!!!!!!!!!! ( A burger/etc. chain that I don't believe is West of the Rockies/Pacific Coast-Southwestern U.S. states , though they also own Hardees and , when in Minnesota 11 years ago , I saw the name used inside a Hardees . ) At ever-so fab and sophisticated U.N. Plaza , to boot . ( THAT reference's - um , sub-meaning ????? - may escape those not familiar with The Cool Grey City Of Love . )

  • ...Specific to Doctor Who , there are several officially-liscenced DW mags , two from Britain - DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE , which is the formerly-UK Marvel magazine that started about 1980 as DOCTOR WHO WEEKLY .

      It is published by Panini ( which a company that Marvel bought around the Ron Perlman period and then sold/spun off about the bankruptcy period ) .

      It is in comics shops , and I have seen it at super-deep newsstands ( My use of that phrase: See below . ) .

      They apparently also publish a " for younger Who fans " magazine titled DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES , mass-distributed in the UK , which I have seen plugged in DWM when I have bought it .

      Just recently , the US division of Titan launched what I believe is an officially liscenced Who magazine for the USA , DOCTOR WHO INSIDER . I bought one issue because of curiosity/them having an article on the vintage Target paperbacks !

      The reading level/amount of text in it seemed fairly low , almost ( If maybe not quite . ) an " Adventures "-title level .

      DWM has a lot of text , written to at least a - Smart junior high schooler ? Um , " fourth-former " in the U.K. ????????? - level , anyways .

      Both DWM and DWA include a " comic strip " in each issue , just as the old Marvel version did - which means an eightish-pageslong  comic book story . I wonder if this is a manifestation of a more European , if not Brit , useage that a " comic BOOK " (emphasis mine) -formatted story is referred to as a " comic STRIP " (e.m.) , rather than the greater emphasis on different terminology for the two methods of presenting a comics story that it appears to me we Yanks follow.

  • ...And speaking of sub-group/ings' use of certain phrases , MSA , I was using " newsstand " in the sense ( Alluding to it , actually . ) that we comic fans use it...A store selling magazines that is not a comics shop !!!!!!!!!

      It was in fact the Bookshop Santa Cruz

    www.bookshopsantacruz.com

    , if truth be told , though the fact that they sell the standard area/national daily newspapers ( Well , for the latter category mebbe no WSJ but they sell the " Grey Lady " and " McPaper " :-) . ) might I guess mean you could refer to them as a " newsstand " , no ???????????

  • TCJ switched to " annual , super-thick , ' nearly ' book-looking thingy " with?? #300 

    If you've seen it once since then, then you've seen the latest issue. It's changed a number of times in recent years after it stopped being a magazine. Sometime around 2005, I think, It first went to a magazine-sized "annual" kind of thing that was much thicker with a long color section reprinting some classic comic strip for about $20 or so. That's the point at which I left it behind, although I still occasionally saw a copy at my magazine store.

    The last couple of issues, I think, #299 and #300, were more square-sized, thicker books with color at least in some places throughout. Here's #300: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ie2znSnN18 It says it's a 288-page book that costs $12. I'd also say that's one of the odder videos I've seen on YouTube, but that's a big universe. And hey, I watched it!

    I just picked up #301 at the Chicago Comic-Con in a bargain bin for $4, and it's changed again. This one is a *624* page square-shaped phone-book like thing with a few color signatures and a color strip reprint section in the back for $30. Yikes. I just can't imagine there's much of a market for that, but who knows.

    It's the usual TCJ stuff, with coverage of esoteric comics I'll never see, including lots of overseas stuff and a long interview and review of R. Crumb's Bible comic. I picked it up mostly for theAl Jaffe interview, the Crumb retrospective and art, and the *70-page* color section of Gerald McBoing-Boing comics in the back.

    Gerald was a classic kid's strip written by Theodore Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss). Here's a sample: http://www.bigblogcomics.com/2009/10/gerald-mcboing-boing.html 

    So I got a great deal; I'm not sure about anyone who paid $30 for the issue. It came out in February 2011, but it doesn't look like the next issue is out yet.

    Amazingly enough, if you want to read older Journal articles, up through about 2005, a lot of good ones are online for free at TCJ's archive: http://www.tcj.com/category/tcj-archive/

    A store selling magazines that is not a comics shop !

    There are more of those now, and I find that B&N and Books a Million have pretty extensive magazine sections, divided by genres, which didn't used to be the case. They definitely have better selections that typical drugstores. I call any of those "newsstands," but some are better than others.

    However, the one I go to when I really want to see what's out there or find something unusual is a few blocks away from me and is called The City Newsstand: http://www.citynewsstand.com/. It's a big storefront shop and sells *only* magazines and newspapers, although it's now being remodeled to include a cafe. There goes the neighborhood.

    They put out a monthly four-page newsletter of news and notes, including new titles they've gotten in, including annuals. I'm always amazed at the stuff that keeps getting put out. The print industry can't be doing THAT bad if all these magazines keep getting started!

    -- MSA

  • I didn't really mean for this line(and the other one) to land in your sub-forum , but it did , after the fact , strike me as fitting in with the " Fanzines/Comic Magazines " 

    I (and possibly you) can correct that if you want by moving it to another Forum with the Options button up top. But I think you're right that it fits here as well as anywhere in talking about genre magazines and fanzines. Ideally, people look at both the General and SA Forums and skim through looking for interesting topics, so it doesn't matter so much.

    Although, I have to admit, there are days when I only have time to check out this one, so I didn't see the Green Glob thread that was started in the General section for  a few days. There's something to be said for putting things in the place where the most like-minded people will see it. But for this one, I think it's a toss-up.

    -- MSA

  • ...Ah , leave it here.........

  • ...I have bought all 3 of the latest issues of three mystery-oriented ones with my purchase of AHMM to-day , with The Strand before and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine before that . ( Um . Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine . )

      The two " MM " ones are digest-sized , published by Dell , and have pulp ~ I guess ~ paper .

      The Strand is magazine-sized , and on slick , full-color , coated paper .

      I know that the first Sherlock Holmes story appeared in the British Victorian-era magazine The Strand , which is obviously the reason for this magazine's name...However , I believe Vicki's one was a " general magazine " oif its day , not a " mystery magazine " , was it ??? Was it even an all-primarily fiction magazine...A " pulp " , in the sense that that genre could be said to have existed at all in Britain , especially during the last century  BEFORE the last ?...( There is a George Orwell cultural criticism piece that related here which I should hunt down and read again...)

      EQMM and AHMM include some B&W frontipiece illustrations to their stories .

      Strand does too , larger and in at least semi-color .

      Frankly , the real suprise is how many advertisements The Strand has ! A couple dozen pages of them ?

      For new mystery...crime...thriller books , apparently their definition of " crime fiction " is a bit less " classical that the " New James M. Cain " story (sorta what got me to purchase it) and , yepper , the inclusion of a Sherlock Holmes pastiche , a new story , inside , would indicate . ( Mystery fans tend to use " pastiche " to signify a continuation of an old series/character under a new author , I have observed . )

      Actually , of the , IIRC , five stories...Two aren't really " mystery " at all...One ( No spoiling , but . ) is a science-fictional/fable , the other a WWI story (with a character's pre-military criminal past mentioned , true)...In fact , the Cain story doen't really involve " crime " ( apart from , um , no spoiling , so...) , either . AHMM has a 1/2 page classified section , I think no other outside ads , just house ads !!!!!!!!!!! The EQMM (from last month) had a color bacover ad...from the L. Ron Hubbard " people " , offering books/audiodramas of his vintage pulp short stories !!!!!!!!!

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