Here's a short-lived fanzine from the comic industry's (equally short-lived) boom years of the early 1990s.
COMIC SPECULATOR NEWS, sold in comic book stores, was the nearest rival to (the considerably longer-lived) COMICS INTERNATIONAL but, as the name suggests, it favoured the WIZARD approach of hyping everything that moved as being "the next sure-fire investment". Which, of course, they weren't.
This issue, from June 1993, covers the launch of Jim Shooter's DEFIANT COMICS (a short-lived venture most noted for issuing one comic as a set of trading cards and getting into a legal battle with his ex-employer, Marvel Comics, over the copyright of Plasm) and Marvel UK's FRONTIER COMICS (a not-at-all-like-VERTIGO, honest, sub-brand intended to spin non-superhero yarns. It closed within months).
Details of CSN are few-and-far between but, if Slow Robot's memory banks are correct, it switched from a paid to a free, advertiser-funded, model (the reverse of COMICS INTERNATIONAL) and then, as the market crashed, faded away.
I just posted a lengthy comment on your other, more recent Comic Speculator News post so I'll keep it brief here, but I gotta say reading these more closely only reinforces my argument on these guys. Sure some of those books they recommended are worth now about what they were worth then but what about some of those others - Spider-man 360 and 361, X-Men 266, Marvel Premiere 15...those would be pretty big boons at this point. Plus, I'd point to this line in there: "Fans, Speculators and retailers are all asking themselves the same question... - how can every issue of a title be hot and sought after and when will the bubble burst." Pretty prescient on some level. But, again, really doesn't matter much - I think the most fun is just seeing these old mags. Thanks for posting them!!!
ReplyDeleteNice to see new comments going up here even if the blog is now in-active.
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