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.

Cover News: Fangoria Does Its First-Ever Split Run

For the first time in its 9,000-year history (something like that, at least), horror film magazine Fangoria has produced a split run of its next issue, #307, due out in September. See the two covers below.

This'll give buyers a chance to vote, in essence, on the widened "lifestyle" content in Fangoria, including the greater presence of music. Which will be more popular: Music or classic Howling?

Fangoria Announces Bloody Best of Gorezone Special Edition Magazine

In its weekly newsletter, horror magazine Fangoria announced a sort-of resurrection of Gorezone magazine, a dormant sister publication published by the Fango staff in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The Blood Best of Gorezone magazine will feature reprinted articles from the dead (now undead?) magazine. But don't rush to your local Barnes & Noble; the magazine will only be available at Comic Con and through the Fangoria web site.

Gorezone was one of the horror magazines – along with the even shorter-lived Toxic Horror – that Fangoria's former publisher, Starlog Group, produced in an attempt to suck up newsstand space from competitors. Gorezone (not to be confused with the unrelated British Gorezone magazine that is published today) was sort of like Fango's messier little brother, covering more edgy and bloody films than even Fango covered (which is saying something, because Fangoria earned its fame by being the bloody, new wave horror film mag of the 1980s). Aside from the requisite film reports, it included some things Fangoria didn't, such as posters, short fiction, and a number of critical columns.

According to Fangoria, this Bloody Best of Gorezone is the brainchild of current Fango editor Chris Alexander, who had teased the project on his Facebook page a while back. It's just the latest welcome thing Alexander has done to shake up the Fangoria franchise.

Will it lead to a full-scale, ongoing return to print of new Gorezone issues? Fango didn't say, but its reception at Comic Con and online could be a good indicator to the current publisher of reader appetite for the magazine.

Hint, hint.

Fangoria Becomes the Posterchild for Print Posters

Class is in session, my fellow magazine editors and publishers. Our topic today: How to get people excited about buying a print magazine in the age of the internet.

Now, I've written at length on this blog and in my inaugural issue of Magma magazine about this topic. Go in-depth; don't compete with the web (online and print can complement each other, they don't have to cannibalize); use great design. But one thing goes further, and I'm thrilled to see an example of it. To wit: Include in the magazine premiums and special stuff that can't be easily scanned by fans who post your mag to their web sites and blogs.

Horror film bible Fangoria magazine, which has been undergoing a thorough revamp under new (as of last year) editor Chris Alexander, has been including a poster every couple issues. As you can see in the cover reproduced above, they're continuing this with the latest issue that Alexander has just started promoting in his social media.

Posters, see, can't be easily scanned. And what would be the point, anyway? You wouldn't post a poster on your blog at full size. You wouldn't download a poster and then print it on giant-sized paper. A poster only has value in original print form. It also induces the occasional purchase of more than one copy of an issue, if the reader wants to have his cake and eat it, too (have the unblemished magazine to save and have a copy of the poster to hang on his wall).

I've been working on a plan for a magazine that deals with this very issue, and I'm very pleased to see that I'm not alone. So a tip of the hat to the Fango crew.

Class dismissed.

Fangoria #300 - Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Red

Chris Alexander, editor of horror magazine Fangoria, posted the cover of issue #300 on Facebook a few days ago, and it's already the talk of the internet (if, by "the internet," you mean the dozen or so people who have commented on the page). Even former editor "Uncle Bob" Martin weighs in.

What has people talkin' and squawkin' is the return of the logo used in the mag's earliest years, beginning with issue #2. Hey, they even threw in the "Monsters, Aliens, Bizarre Creatures" tagline that adorned the first couple dozen issues or so of the magazine until Martin was able to give it the old heave-ho.

Frankly, I always liked this version of the logo; I thought it stood out on newsstands and it was clean yet had depth. I particularly did not like the logo that replaced it and which lasted for decades until a recent redesign which, oddly, made it look great. I don't know if this is a permanent change or just a 300th-issue homage. I also don't know if the tagline will remain. It's all up to the mag's publisher, editor, and designers. And newsstand feedback, no doubt.

But, as I hinted when I noted the inaugural issue by editor Alexander seven months ago, I think it's great that he's confident enough to make changes to the magazine. The mag is arguably more interesting than it has been in many years, and I find myself reading far more of each issue these days than I did when there was an overload of teen-torture films previewed inside. The magazine's smart, quirky, unpredictable, energetic, and sorta gross – exactly as Fango should be.

Fangoria #300 goes on sale in January.

The Chris Alexander Era at Fangoria

The editor is gone, long live the editor.

It's not got quite the ring of the king's death, but you get the point. When an editor leaves a publication, especially if that editor has been there a long time, it's a momentous event. It can be an exciting time for readers, as they wonder what will change. Will their favorite parts of the publication be ruined? Will their most disliked parts of the magazine be remedied? Will the changes be refreshing?

Some magazines barely change when there's an editor. For you old-timers, do you really remember a change in Omni or Future Life when their editors switched? Of course not. And until recently, Playboy's editors (called editorial directors, because Hugh Hefner really calls the editorial shots) were somewhat commoditized. But for many periodicals, a new editor is an opportunity to take a fresh look at things. Sometimes that means things that were hallowed for good reasons are given short shrift; other times things that were ignored or given short shrift finally get their due. That's just life.

Earlier this winter, Tony Timpone gave up the reigns of Fangoria magazine, the horror film bible. Timpone joined the Starlog Group (then known as O'Quinn Studios) family as a contributor, first as a freelancer, then as a junior staffer. When first Bob Martin and then David Everitt left their Fangorian editor's desks in the mid-1980s, Starlog editor David McDonnell temporarily took over editing Fangoria while a young Timpone was brought up to speed. (Or so goes the lore.) Timpone then assumed command, after a bit more than a year of McDonnell's leadership, and remained there for about a quarter century.

In this past decade, Fangoria ran into a rough patch, not unlike that faced by many periodicals publishers. At its height, Starlog Group published dozens of magazines a year. As of 2000, it was publishing about a dozen (let's see if I can remember them all: Starlog, Fangoria, Comics Scene 2000, Teen Girl Power, Black Elegance, Belle, Wrestling All-Stars, TV Wrestlers, Wrestling Scene, Fight Game, Sci-Fi Teen, Sci-Fi TV, and probably some more (there were a number of wrestling titles I don't remember nor do I care to). Then the financial rug was pulled out from under the company, and it was sold to Creative Group, with only Starlog and Fangoria ultimately surviving. A few years later, Creative Group itself went belly-up, and the two magazines were bought by former Creative Group executive Tom DeFeo. And there you are, up to the present.

I started this blog post by noting that sometimes a change of editors doesn't make much difference, but that does not seem to be the case here. Alexander has been putting his stamp on the publication, and he promises to keep changing as he goes. His initial moves appear to be focused on moving away from a frantic coverage of every possible major film of the day (though Fango still covers them), and more toward a wide-ranging coverage of the horror – for lack of a better word – lifestyle. Music. Classics. Monsters. Exploitation films. Games. We can probably expect that mix to change over time, as Alexander gets his editor's feet underneath him and as the horror film and TV worlds evolve. But for now, it's a nice change, especially if it results in one less article about some tortured-teens movie.

Like most readers, I like some and don't like some of what he's doing. (I would, for example, dearly love to see the magazine redesigned; it's about 15 years behind schedule for a visual revamp.) But I am pleased to see he's confident enough to make changes, so that makes me, as a reader, confident enough to sit back and see what he continues to do with his new baby.

We're also seeing a lot of Alexander in the current issue (number 294); his byline (solely or shared) is on about seven feature articles (depending on how you define some of the articles), not counting departments. That's a lot of Alexander in one magazine, but it's not unprecedented. As former editor Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin has written elsewhere, he and his co-editor David Everitt were writing practically the entire magazine back in the early 1980s. Sooner or later, Alexander might crack, and police will find him on the top of a high-rise with a dangerous weapon. But for now, this über-hands-on approach will also help him really establish his mark on the magazine.

Fango itself will continue to change, of course. Fangoria #294 is the first one I can think of that includes an ad (a one-third pager) for adult videos; even Playboy doesn't advertise X-rated products, so Fangoria's powers that be have obviously chosen to go in a direction never before visited by this magazine, as far as I know. But when times are tough, as they are in almost every business these days, it's hard to say no to almost any ad.

I'm sure some readers, who grew up with Timpone's Fangoria, will be sad to see him go. Others are probably eager for a change. I have no horse in this race. I only tangentially met Timpone; I was being given a tour of the Starlog Group offices in 1999 by a former publisher, when he engaged Timpone in an animated discussion about David Cronenberg's latest film. (Always being more a Starlogger than a Fangorian, I was more excited about seeing all the cool space art paintings on the wall and seeing Starlog editor David McDonnell's office. Sorry, Fango Faithful.) And I have never met Chris Alexander. (I mean, we're best buds on Facebook, but by that measure, I'm pals with Barack Obama, too. Me and 8 million other people.)

However, I am currently a magazine editor and have served in various editorial positions at publications for more than two decades. So I kind of instinctively sympathize with -- and envy -- anyone who gets the chance to sit in the editor's chair of a publication. Especially if that publication focuses on horror, fantasy, or science fiction. How much more fun can life be? My web site sports the following quote from German politician (and future post-war chancellor) Konrad Adenauer in 1917: "There is nothing better that life can offer than to allow a person to expend himself fully with all the strength of his mind and soul and to devote his entire being to creative activity."

If you love and enjoy genre entertainment, what better thing in life is there than editing a leading magazine that covers these topics?

And a New Issue of Fangoria Is Unveiled

The folks at the Fangoria News blog have released the cover image (see left) and contents list for the next issue of Fangoria magazine, #291.

Considering all of the upheaval within the Fango/Starlog world, this announcement should go some way to calm fears that the title was going away. The news that Chris Alexander will succeed Tony Timpone as editor of the magazine will keep people talking for a while.

Timpone has been editor of Fango for longer than some of its readers have been alive. Beloved by many (though not by some), he will be watched closely for his next moves.

For now, at least subscribers can expect to receive another mag.

Chris Alexander the New Editor at Fangoria

There's a changing-of-the-guard at Fangoria magazine, reports Ryan Rotten. Long(longlonglong)-time editor Tony Timpone is said to be moving on to other duties in the Fangoria empire, while contributor (and Rue Morgue veteran) Chris Alexander will take the reigns in an issue or two. Managing Editor Michael Gingold will also be staying aboard.

Read Rotten's report, which includes the news (and some interesting comments about the internal turmoil at Fango's offices).