Fanzines

During those dark ages before the Age of the Computer.  Comics and SF fans would keep in touch with small crudely made magazines called Fanzines.  There were many different kinds, some were fan fiction, some were fan comics, some were reviews of movies, books, and comics.  Production values ranged from hand done to some that raveled professional magazines.

The hand made usually were done using carbon paper and were of the lowest press runs - usually about ten or so copies with the ones toward the bottom of the stack very hard to read.

Next was ditto.  (remember the purple test papers in school - ah if your over 40).  These had a master that had a harden ink and you used an alcohol based substance that you put in the machine.  The masters you could type or write on and the harden ink was moved from one part of the master to the part you were going to print with.  Add paper and crank and out would come your printed copies - a hundred if you were lucky - again the ones toward the end of the run were hard to read.  If you were an artist or had one for the magazine they would have to draw pictures right to the master. These could be picked up in second hand stores for under $20 as many of the places that were using them were switching to mimeograph.

Next was Mimeograph.  Like the ditto you had a master you could type or burn. (If you could burn it you could add art)  You could get a print run of up to 500, all just as good as the first.  After about 500 the master would start to rip. (sometime sooner) You needed to know someone in an office that would let you use one.  Usually had to supply your own masters and pay something toward the ink you used.

OFFSET PRINTING.  This was big time for the small time.  On paper plates you could get about a 1000 pages.  You would make a paste up and take it to you local sir speedy or jiffy print.  100 issue run about 25 - 30 dollars.

WEB PRINTING - This was only used by the big boys like RBCC.  You would take the paste ups to the printer and they would shoot them.  The whole zine was usually made on two to four plates. and the machine did everything.  Out would come the finished product.  You could print as many as you needed.

Copiers - this came latter and just in time.  When we first started our fanzine Florida Fandom.  Copy machine were 25 cents a page and you were lucky if you could read them.  Put just about the time off set jumped to a level were small print runs were going to become to expensive  Copy machine came out that printed as nice if not better than offset and the price was about two cents a page and if you wanted to print both sides it was three cents.  A double sided page was four pages in the zines.  Most small zines were 12 - 20 pages long - so this made them 15 cents each. or a low $15 a hounded. ( Unless you were one of the big boys this was the normal press run)

The first fanzine I worked on was called the Tholian Registry and it was the newsletter of Star Trek Federation of Fans.  The first few were done with a ditto machine that I had found in a second hand store for $20.  Any alcohol based liquid could be used in them.  And they would smell of what ever you used.  Could be fun.   I was never officially the editor of the zine, but as each editor resigned before the issue was out - it turned out to be my job to edited it and put it together along with John R. Ellis (google the name) He would do the artwork and I would do the typing. 

A local private school wanted to borrow some films that were owned by members of the club to show the kids and in exchanged they let us use their Mimeograph machine which could burn the master.  Made my life in one way easier and in another harder.  We now had to paste up the newsletter to be burned.  Rubber cement - wonderful stuff - press type for titles and our IBM electric typewriter that we picked up for $50, with three font balls! (For you who are too young to know a typewriter is how we were able to type things before the PC with a word processing program - NO SPELL CHECKS - and the IBM was the top of the typewriters.)  With a little luck we would have more than just John and I putting it together. Editors still seemed to go faster than anything, never to be seen again.  Then after printing we would have to put them together - another fun thing - usually made that into a small party and would get plenty of people to help.

We ran out of films that school wanted to borrow and the days of the mimeograph faded.  We couldn't go back to ditto - one we had gotten too big and two it just looked crappy compared to the mimeograph - so we bite the bullet and went to offset which the newsletter stayed until it end.

I had it in my blood.  It was time to start my own fanzine and Florida Fandom was born - a month after I got married.  We were both fans, having met my wife through the Star Trek club (and still married 31 years latter).  We went right to offset.  Had to get a brother electric typewriter. 

Computers came into being.  My first a Commodore 64 had a word processing program and a wonderful program called Print Shop.  We couldn't use the horrible printing of the dot matrix printer - it just looked bad and was hard to read.  But press type was replace by print shop.  It made life just a little better. 

The last of the print issues before we went to the web was printed with an Ink Jet printer. But we still had to put paste up because of no scanners cheap enough.

Today with what I have setting in front of me I could put the zine together without any problems.  I even have more than one program to use.  Including Print Shop (version 21 - the one for the C-64 was version 1C64, as they had version for apple, IBM, Atari and others.)  Scanner for adding artwork and pictures (if we wanted a picture we would have to use what was called a screen when printing the picture in the darkroom, which a friend had) Print a color cover using the ink jet and all inside non color pages do with the laser printer.  What really bad is that what I have now cost just about the same as the setup I had with the C-64  The computers were $300 add a floppy drive, which you needed two was $300 each - we are now at $900 added a b/w TV for $50.  Dot Matrix printer another $300 (my laser 5 in one was only $250 and the ink jet $29 - so the two of them was less than a dot matrix that you could barely read)  A modem with was baud was another $100.(no Internet but you could call friends computers and type back and forth and send pictures if you had a long time on your hands and you had local BBC and a national one for C64 called Quantum Link - it had two sister sites PC on Line and Apple on Line - they were working on a site that any PC could come to - once the race got down to just apple and PCs they combined and became America on Line.)

Now what good were these 100 press run 12 - 20 pages zines.  They were our Internet!  We would mail them to others fanzine owners and to the people who sent stuff to be put into it.  And we would write to one another letters of comment about their zines.  Some zines became more popular and grew. Two small zines the Rockets Blast and the Comic Collector combined under the editorship of GB Love and became the RBCC.  It became the largest of the Comic fanzines with articles about both comics and SF.  It was a business for the guys who put it out.  GB went on to do some Star Trek zines and Jim Van Hise took over the RBCC.  Unlike other fanzines this looked professional and it cost more.  There were other zines that were up there, the Star Trek Federation Fans Miami chapter did a zine called Dimensions - never as big as RBCC it was still a very professional looking zine.  A few dozen other very professional zines came out - many of the people that had art and articles and stories in them are now professionals.  But some of the people that appeared in the smaller zines made it big also. )google Ken Mitchrony - his art appeared in quite a few issues of Florida Fandom - but then he also had work in the RBCC.

Would love to a print zine again with all the computers and things that would help bring it about - but the web is cheaper than the postage to send them out.