BLOG TO COMM

IT'S A FANZINE (fanzine edited by Gene Kehoe, 2265 Byron Ave., Waterloo IA 50702 USA)

Yessir, if I can't get my fanzine kicks one way I'll hafta get 'em another! And with the death of the good ol' rock & roll fanzine having ended with the demise of a certain publication that's been mocked and ridiculed by the populace at large, and with the dribble of classic seventies-era mags like HYPERION and NIX ON PIX slowing down to an absolute halt it's not like I've been having a steady diet of high energy self-produced rambles to satisfy my own inner cravings as of late. So with the lack of rock & roll fanzines that don't look like NEWSWEEK making their way to my door I'll just have to look elsewhere for my kicks let alone KICKS, to the comic book fanzine idiom which surprisingly enough seems to have some life to it even though I woulda thought that the internet and major comic book publications would have put an end to the entire genre years ago.

IT'S A FANZINE is an oddity in whatever is left of comic fandom, a magazine that not only started up right around the time the original comic fanzine era had died out ('79/'80) but continues into the here and now with fifty issues under editor Gene Kehoe's belt and one more on the way any time now.

What we got here's a good thirty years of fanzinedom that at least attempted a regular production schedule just jam-packed with information, news, opines and LOTS OF ILLUSTRATIONS BOTH AMATEUR AND PROFESSIONAL having to do with the previous seventy-plus years of comic book history (w/a few healthy sidesteps into the funny papers) that certainly makes for a few solid evenings of intense perusing and absorption of enough information to make your head swell just like that guy's on THE WILD WILD WEST.

Naturally with my ltd. amt. of time and equally ltd. attention span it wasn't like I had the opportunity to become deeply engrossed in each and every issue received (almost the entire print run!), but I did scan 'em all and settled in on the Golden/Silver Age articles that naturally held the most interest. And held my interest they did...okay, an article on the history of EC comics ain't gonna be breaking any new ground as would the reams of pieces dealing with various superheroes we could easily enough read about online for free, but then again there's nothing like holding a fanzine in your mitts and absorbing info regarding your various longtime faves or even discovering some old ones you passed on the first time around! Kehoe and company generally have a good keen sense of what's good and what's not so hot, and between the reprints and the original art and alla the brainy postulating there's plenty of great material to be had in IT'S A FANZINE. I only wish that there was something like this permeating the underground rock sphere, a regular rag that blabbed on about the great acts past and present that came out on a quarterly, or even more frequent basis just like there were back in the seventies and eighties!

You get it all...stories on your favorite artists and writers (as well as your least faves...nobody's perfect), reviews of pertinent comic book issues, writers who like Steve Ditko but can't come to terms with his politics, plugs for favorite recent comic books and strips, writers trying to justify their liking the Archie Comics Group w/o looking like teenyboppers and loadsa Reagan-era angst!!! What more could you want in a fanzine anyway???