FANZINE!

..

/’fanzi:n/

noun

 

1. A magazine, usually produced by amateurs, for fans of a particular performer, group, or form of entertainment.

Today I will be giving a quick look at fanzines and their origin and history, simply because I have always been intrigued and interested in them but have never taken the time to look into them or make one. And as an illustrator, I really should have. So here’s a start.

 

Fanzines started in the 1940s and the term was created by Louis Russell Chauvenet in his own fanzine ‘Detours’. Chauvenet was a science fiction fan and one of the founders of science fiction ‘fandom, to describe small self-published publications by science fiction fans who wanted to differentiate themselves from professional science fiction magazines. But fan magazines existed  more than 50 years before that, known at the time under terms such as ”amzine”, ”fmzine” and ”fanmag”.

Fanzines are usually given out for free or for a very low cost, simply to cover the cost of production or postage. They exist for all forms of entertainment; science fiction fanzines, Comics fanzines, Horror films fanzines, Rock & Roll music fanzines, Punk fanzines, Mod fanzines, Video gaming fanzines, Sport fanzines, etc…

In the UK, fanzines have been associated with the 1970s punk scene where they surged as a  countercultural alternative to established print media. The first and most popular fanzine from the punk scene is ‘Sniffing Glue’, as seen in the images above. ‘Sniffing Glue’ was produced by Mark Perry, Deptford fan, it ran for 12 photocopied issues.

Then in the 1980s football fanzines were the most popular, 10.000 were published. Similar to the punk fanzines, the football fans used them to discuss the politics and issues of their community and their generation and express a point of view not necessarily expressed by the club itself.

In the 1990s fanzines gained popularity and became overground. There was a change in how we communicated as individuals within communities, they became about education and individual expression empowerment.

Nowadays fanzines are about self expression and how strongly ones voice can come across, which is crucial when being an illustrator and that is why I am, starting from today, taking great interest in fanzines. They are distributed online and through zine fairs, so lets all attend zine fairs and learn a lot more about them, because I need to!

 ..