Fangoria Announces New "Legends" Magazine: George A Romero

Those folks at Fangoria continue to try new things. After an apparently successful one-shot revival of its old Gorezone sibling magazine last year, Fango is announcing a one-shot magazine devoted to horror legend George A. Romero. It's appropriately dubbed Fangoria Legends Presents George A. Romero, and it will be sold only via Fangoria's website beginning in March 2012.

They're only printing 1,000 copies of it, so order it ASAP when it's available, because it's not likely to last long in the online store.

Fangoria Web Site Brought Back to Life

Since I covered this so extensively before, I thought I'd mention that the folks at Fangoria magazine have gotten their web site back up and running. Welcome back to the land of the living. (Note: If you were a forums user, you apparently have to create a new account and can't use your old one.)

Now, if they could just pay a little attention to their big brother, Starlog.com, which has fallen and can't get up (image at bottom).

Rumors about Fangoria's Fate

Blogger JadedViewer provides a roundup of rumors and questions concerning longtime horror film magazine Fangoria (and its related online operations and other media).

As I've noted recently (here and here), the web sites for Fango and science fiction sister brand Starlog have been down for weeks. Starlog's web site has been restored to life, or at least existence; but the Fangoria site has not. If you do some hunting on Twitter and Facebook, you can piece together a bit of the story. It sounds like the online staff walked off the job a in January. I haven't found out the reasons why, but generally when you have a mass defection from a company, either it's not paying its staff or there are terrible management problems.

Fango/Starlog have been through hell and back in the past decade. After original owners Starlog Group fell on rough times in 2001 and had to close most of their dozen-or-so titles, the rump company continued under that management for a few years before being sold to Creative Group. A couple years later, Creative Group went bust, and Tom DeFeo -- one of the Creative leaders -- bought the two brands and continued as The Brooklyn Company. Earlier this year, Starlog ceased publication as a print magazine, continuing as an online-only property; in December, longtime editor David McDonnell resigned -- again, no further info, but there's probably an interesting story there.

It's interesting to read the online comments from readers. There's the usual claptrap about "print is dying anyway," which simply isn't true. Magazine readership is actually up over the past decade. What there is right now is an advertising depression, and there's a near impossibility even for successful small businesses to get the financing they need to stay afloat. You can thank the global financial collapse for that. Companies generally need a steady supply of credit, because there is always a lag between the expenditure of money (salaries, printing costs, office rent, insurance, etc.) and the receipt of revenue (advertising, newsstand sales, etc.). I have no inside knowledge whatsoever about The Brooklyn Company's situation; I'm just suggesting that tight credit is hobbling a lot of companies these days and could well be a factor if there are money problems there. (The credit issue is the reason President Obama is planning to pump $30 billion into small banks for loans to small businesses. There's only so long a business can stretch and delay paying its suppliers before it runs into hard money problems.)

So how does this all relate to Starlog and Fangoria? As I noted, nothing conclusive. I suspect the two titles aren't dead (and magazines are kind of like Spock: even death isn't the end of life). Whether The Brooklyn Company knows how to make the titles flourish again as print magazines is an open question. Personally, I now believe the field is wide open for a smart publisher to create a new title and take over Starlog's old science fiction media magazine territory -- and I write that as a longtime Starlog supporter. It's sad, but I think it's true. And I'm working on something in that space. We'll see.

As for Fangoria, the magazine is still alive and lively. Inveterate readers of magazine staff boxes, like I am,  will probably glean some info from the next issue due to come out later this month. But by then, we might already have heard more about the future of the longest-running horror film magazine in this country.

UPDATE: Inside the turmoil.

David McDonnell Leaves Starlog

Wow. It's quite a day for media news, isn't it? Bob Greenberger, who has toiled for years in the comics and fiction worlds, reports that his old friend and former coworker David McDonnell is leaving Starlog after nearly three decades at the science fiction media magazine/web site.

Starlog magazine's print edition ceased publication earlier this year. As a web-only property (with unrealized hints of a return to the print world at some point), the title carried on under McDonnell. Now, the title has lost its longtime leader, and Greenberger suggests that this development represents "pretty much turning off the light on a property that a generation or two of us grew up on as the primary source of news and interviews before the Internet eventually sounded its death knell."

Best wishes to McDonnell, wherever he might land. As for Starlog, who knows? The company hasn't seemed to have a clear strategy for its science fiction title for a while, and the company's focus seems to be all on its horror titles. Naturally, you go with what's hot, but I think they're leaving a lot of money on the table by letting Starlog waste away. Will they sell the title? Try to carry on under a different leader?

The Redesigned Starlog Logo

So, let's return to talking about magazines on this blog. Let's start with an oldie but goodie: Starlog magazine, a 30-something monthly that chronicles science fiction and fantasy films, television, and books, has redesigned its iconic logo for its newest issue, December 2008.

You see the old logo from the October 2008 issue at top left. The new logo is at bottom left. It's a radical change, and I'll admit I'm a conservative when it comes to magazine design, but the new logo has the advantage of being bold, stretching across the entire cover (rather than crammed in the middle), and by being set off in a separate box, should be better able to stand out against various-colored backgrounds.

This change follows the purchase of Starlog and its sister magazine, Fangoria, by The Brooklyn Company (headed by Tom DeFeo), after the bankruptcy of previous owner The Creative Group (which, to make things even more complicated, bought the two brands several years ago from founder Norman Jacobs).

More on this soon, after I've seen an actual copy of the magazine and can critique the entire issue.