Comic Book Creator Running Pieces From Dead Magazines

Comic Book Creator #10

The latest issue of Comic Book Creator, #10, has a couple of interesting announcements tucked in amongst editorial comments. Under the theory that good journalism doesn’t date, I assume, the TwoMorrows publication will be running several pieces planned for magazines no longer with us.

The first comment comes in the opening editor’s note. Jon B. Cooke confirms that his 2015 new periodical launch, ACE, All Comics Evaluated, is defunct. As he puts it, it “suffered from low order numbers that proved unsustainable, so we shut the magazine down after three issues.” He goes on to say that there was a backlog of material prepared in advance which will be appearing in Comic Book Creator over the next few issues, including an article on Wacky Packages illustrated by Jay Lynch.

The lengthy focus piece this issue covers Warp, a 1973 Broadway production canceled after two weeks. That’s the cover feature, with an illustration by Neal Adams. It’s in a comic book magazine because it was “conceived as homage to Marvel’s Doctor Strange and Mighty Thor” and Adams did some set and costume designs. (I’m not sure that justifies 22 pages on it, though.)

Comic Book Creator #10

The other major piece is a “career-spanning conversation” with Peter Bagge that was originally planned to run in 2006 in Comic Book Artist #7 from Top Shelf. That magazine ended with #6 in late 2005. The interview has been updated to mention some of his newer works.

Comic Book Creator has done this before, actually. Issue #6 of CBC, out January 2015, printed what was originally supposed to be a stand-alone book, Swampmen: Muck-Monsters and Their Makers, due out a dozen years ago.

Recycling will save our planet! But I’m not sure what it does for magazine sales. I’m glad that the pieces finally get to appear — it can be frustrating, as a writer, to have something you think deserves to be seen never make it out — but that they can be moved around may indicate a certain lack of diversity in these publication outlets. Then again, kudos to TwoMorrows for still publishing comic book magazines, which resemble dinosaurs in still existing. Good for them keeping on.



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