Pew! Pew! Pew! Zzzzaaap!

Why post this? Because I like to think I live in a world – er, universe – in which spacemen can have laser battles with robotic warriors in orbit. That's why. Is that a crime?

Creepy #3 Finally About to Debut

Fangoria has a preview of some of the pages from the next (third) edition of Dark Horse's wonderful Creepy revival.

I still wish Dark Horse would increase the frequency of this title.

Media Roundup: Levi Johnston, redux; Creepy wait; Funding Bookstores; Oprah and Ellen

The latest from the worlds of media:

•  Esquire's at it again: Supposedly, there will be 3-D something-or-other on the cover of the December issue of the magazine. I haven't received my subscription copy yet, but I hope it helps sales. That said, when was the last time you read about or heard someone talk about an article they read in Esquire? When was the last time you heard or read about some gimmick in Esquire? I suspect, for most of us, the latter is more recent (and frequent) than the former.
  
• There's been lots of are-they-or-aren't-they and finger-pointing concerning the reported plans to cease publication of long-running gay news magazine The Advocate. Gay blog Towleroad recently reported about a blistering attack on the magazine written by a former Advocate editor, but today the blogger says that the editor didn't mean to be so, well, mean. What's up here? There have also been denials that the magazine's going to be canceled (and turned into a 32-page insert into sister mag Out). Is this just a case of people trying not to burn bridges they might need someday, or is the final decision (and the resulting fallout) not yet final after all?
• The Daily Beast carries an article this morning by Jacob Bernstein on how Playgirl magazine is being reinvented and relaunched one year after it ceased print publication and went online-only. The high-profile figure involved in this is, of course, Levi Johnston, the father of right-wing Republican "author" Sarah Palin's grandchild. As has been reported everywhere, Johnston is going to pose nude for Playgirl. Originally, it was assumed this was going to be an online exercise, but the Beast's Bernstein profiles the man who's helping to bring the magazine back as a print product, though it's not yet decided if it'll be bimonthly or quarterly.
• In one of my earlier roundups, I included a note about how much I liked the new comics-sized version of the (formerly magazine-sized) legendary horror comic Creepy. The first issue really was wonderful, capturing the spirit and the look of the iconic Warren magazine while still updating it and not be too imitative. The release of the second issue of this (sadly only quarterly) comic was announced for October. Now well into November, I checked publisher Dark Horse Comics' web site and see the release date has been set at November 25. Production delay? I don't know the reason. My desire is definitely to see this comic go monthly, but if they're having delays producing it on a quarterly schedule, monthly might not be in the offing.
• United Business Media reported earnings in line with expectations, but it is expected to close more magazines, on top of the 15 it closed earlier this year, reports Folio:. I hope the UBM folks I know are doing okay.
  
• No hard-hitting reporting here (okay, not that my Creepy item will win a Pulitzer), but I enjoyed this post by Starlog editor David McDonnell about feeling required to buy something when you enter a bookstore. As you can tell from my response on that page, I feel much the same, and I'm often pleased with what I end up buying. Other times, I head home and I'm already regretting what I paid for. Do I really need to own a copy of ESPN magazine? Why am I buying the newest issue of Der Spiegel when I haven't even started my previous issue? Alas. It keeps the economy moving! (A side note: Is anyone else bothered that the background of the Starlog web site features images from sister magazine Fangoria, but not Starlog? Mistake? Marketing decision for their recent Las Vegas convention? Who knows?)
• And, finally, one of my favorite TV personalities/comedians, Ellen Degeneres, appears on the December cover of Oprah Winfrey's O magazine. When two TV talk giants combine, you can expect a media publicity overdose, and sure enough, you're getting it. There are video segments covering the photo shoot, reader polls (there are two versions of the cover), and much hooplah.
  

My previous media roundup.

Magazine News Roundup: Levi Johnson, Creepy, Gay GOPers, Obamas on Covers, & More

Oh, what a week in magazines!

• Levi Johnson, the father of Sarah Palin's granddaughter, wrote an article in Vanity Fair that manages to surprise us even more -- and we thought we were immune to further Palinalia.
• Oh, and Levi Johnson is reportedly going to pose nude or semi-nude for Playgirl (presumably for its web site, because it ceased printing issues last year).
• Meanwhile, "actress" Linday Lohan has turned down nearly $1 million offered to her to pose nude for Playboy.
• The Obama takeover of America's publishing industry continues. One of the Obamas will be on covers of a number of Rodale magazines, including the newly launched Children's Health. President Obama will be the cover man of Men's Health's October issue. They will not be nude.
• Print magazines are dead, eh? Then why did a record 75 new titles launch in August? Huh, Mr./Ms. Smarty-Pants?
• Disgraced South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's wife Jenny does a tell-all in the September issue of Vogue. And it doesn't look good for him.
• Also, bad-boy Sanford is being tipped as the culprit behind rumors that Andre Bauer, his lt. governor and fellow Republican, is gay. It doesn't take a Ph.D. to figure this out: If Sanford is behind it, he's pretty clearly trying to scare off the easily-scared conservatives in the state government from forcing him out of office, because his position would then be filled by the presumably unfit-to-redecorate-the-governor's-mansion Bauer.
• Dark Horse Comics launched its new comics-size edition of former magazine-sized comics magazine Creepy. It's got all-new material; it's still continuing to publish its excellent hard-bound reprint editions collecting all of the original Warren Creepy magazines (and separately the Eerie magazines).

James Warren Loses Famous Monsters Court Case

Abandoned. That's the ruling of a recent Philadelphia court hearing the case from legendary publisher James Warren, seeking to assert copyright over images of his former monster movie magazine, Famous Monsters of Filmland.

Famous Monsters ceased publication in 1983 when Warren's publishing mini-empire went out of business. Later, the title was revived by publisher Ray Ferry, who published it for a number of years before ending in a legal free-for-all. At issue in the court case was whether a book, Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos, had violated Warren's copyrights on the cover paintings by the famed Gogos by reprinting images of the covers in the book.

The court said no. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:

[The federal judge ruled] that James Warren - the publisher who created Famous Monsters of Filmland - had effectively abandoned any claim to the title of the magazine that began the horror-fan magazine genre 51 years ago.

Warren's association with the magazine ended in 1983, wrote U.S. District Judge Michael M. Baylson, and since then, "Warren has taken virtually no action to retain his common-law ownership of the mark. Indeed, for almost 25 years, he has not published another issue of the magazine, and has not engaged in a substantial attempt to sell memorabilia or anything else with the Famous Monsters name."

The Legal Intelligencer notes:

Baylson also rejected Warren's contention that publication of the book interfered with Warren's plans for a coffee-table book on his magazines, noting that Warren had taken no significant steps to produce a book until after Spurlock's book was published, and that witnesses had testified that Spurlock's book would not adversely affect the market for Warren's book if it were published.

Frankly, I hope Warren does plan such a book, especially if it only focuses on Famous Monsters. That could be quite a book. On a different track, other Warren titles -- the comics magazines Creepy and Eerie -- are being collected and republished by Dark Horse in a series of deluxe coffee table editions. Could Warren also (or instead) publish a collection of reprints of Famous Monsters? I think they'd have a good chance at finding an appreciative audience.

All of which does suggest I just might have been correct when I wondered on this blog many moons ago whether Starlog was keeping its claim alive to discontinued print titles (Comics Scene, Future Life, Cinemagic, Fantasy Worlds) by using them as headers for special sections of that magazine. Just wanted you to know how darned perceptive this blog is ...

After Magazines Die: What Would the Next Issue Have Looked Like?

When a magazine goes to periodicals heaven, the news often strikes readers and staff alike with a sudden blow. They may have seen the writing on the wall -- falling sales, skyrocketing costs, the loss of irreplaceable editors or a publisher -- but the final decision itself is often a sudden one. I've been through the process myself, as a reader (anyone remember Epic Illustrated? my all-time favorite, Future Life? Comics Scene? Car Design?) and as an editor (Internet World, which was dearly missed, and another smaller publication that wasn't). Assuming it's a magazine I enjoyed reading, I'm often left wondering just what the next, never-to-be-published issue of the magazine would have been like had it been published -- had the publisher's axe been stayed at the last minute. Often, that issue is all prepared, ready to ship to the printer, when the bad news arrives.

So I've got a suggestion. With the recent popularity of digital versions of magazines, either current ones or resurrected ones, comes the possibility of publishers dusting off those old pasteboards or CDs or whatever media they have the unpublished "post-final" issue in, and making it available. Intellectual property rights seem to be working out much more easily these days than they were in the early days of the internet, when it was still unclear how to treat reproduction rights to articles and artwork created years before the Web browser caught on.
And surely those publishers can make a small buck off a property they never thought they'd see again produce a penny.

So let's see issue #32 of Future Life, and issue #146 of Creepy, or #140 of Eerie, or issue #4 of Comics Scene 2000 (or issue #57 of the second series of Comics Scene or issue #12 of the first series of Comics Scene -- it gets complicated; don't ask)! Because in the digital age, old magazines never die; they can always find new life and old audiences.
What do you think?

Forrest J Ackerman, RIP

Back to the topic of magazines. A real path-breaker passed away this past week, Forrest J Ackerman. The founding editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, the creator of Vampirella, the literary agent who brought us Ray Bradbury and others, the man who (with his wife Wendayne) brought us the U.S. versions of the German Perry Rhodan science fiction novels, passed away at the age of 92.

There are obviously lots of fans of his in the filmmaking world -- Steven Spielberg, Steven King, etc. But there are also lots of fans of his in the magazine world, or at least in the science fiction and horror magazine world. That's because Famous Monsters was a groundbreaking magazine devoted to horror films, their stars, and not much else. It was presented in an unabashedly enthusiastic way, and I think people of a generation or two before me loved the magazine for that.

It's not an appreciation I can claim to share. When I got into reading science fiction books and magazines, there was a magazine called Starlog that captured my attention, love, imagination, and weekly allowance. Starlog also produced a sister publication, Fangoria, to cover horror movies and related topics. Starlog and Fangoria are still being published, though Famous Monsters died along with the rest of the Warren magazine publishing empire in the early 1980s.

I didn't pay attention to Famous Monsters much at the time, because whenever I took a look, I found it to be lacking in substance, intelligence, and quality. I've occasionally bought an issue (thanks, eBay) in recent years to test my original reactions, and if anything, my views then were overly charitable.

But Ackerman himself (in an interview in Fangoria after he was ousted from his Famous Monsters position just a couple issues before the magazine's death) has lamented the chains with which his publisher, James Warren, shackled him with the magazine, and he apparently couldn't produce the magazine he would have liked. That's a shame. Warren, after all, produced some incredibly fun and exciting magazines like Creepy and Eerie during the 1960s and 1970s. If Famous Monsters had been allowed more freedom, then perhaps Ackerman would be remembered not only as a groundbreaking editor but as a great one.

But Ackerman's triumph is most likely his ability to transmit his enthusiasm to young science fiction and horror fans, through his magazines, books, and personal appearances (for many years, he allowed fans to tour his legendary collection of science fiction memorabilia in his homes, on Saturdays). I never had the opportunity to meet him, but if I had, it wouldn't have been magazines of which we would have spoken, it would have been Rhodan, movie monsters, film directors, and deep space shows. I would have liked that a great deal, and I feel bad that we've lost such a personality and talent.

RIP