This is the first issue of THE COMICS JOURNAL I can remember buying new, probably from Omaha's Dragon's Lair Comics (also the store where I bought my first issue of LOVE AND ROCKETS, permanently poisoning my comics brain). I've had a love/yawn relationship with the magazine over the years, somehow completely missing the Tom Spurgeon years for example. Anyway, thanks to THE COMICS JOURNAL ARCHIVE I can go and revisit, or discover, past issues and ruminate on them for all the other fans and haters out there.
1. That Don Simpson cover was the perfect bridge between mainstream comics to cool mainstream comics to groundlevel comics to alternative comics to underground comix. An amazing mix of characters I followed and, then unknown to me, future favorites.
2. It's hard to imagine what a shit show the Direct Market was in 1987 with the end of the so-called Black and White Boom. This issue has some in-depth coverage of that, as well as several articles on one of the true characters of that era: Scott Rosenberg. "Distributor Finances Five Publishers; Sunrise Distributor's Scott Rosenberg finances and assumes presidency of five comics publishers"; "The Battle for Amazing, Wonder Color Titles: Pied Piper Comics and Scott Rosenberg claim the rights to publish the same titles"; and, "Sunrise announces it may not pay some publishers until July" all three articles written by Managing Editor Kim Fryer.
3. "It would be a lot easier to take Milo Manara seriously if he'd learn when to keep his thing in his pants." Boom, drop the mic. Review over. Seriously though, this is the classic opening line of R. Fiore's review of Hugo Pratt and Milo Manara's INDIAN SUMMER, as well as two other less salacious Catalan Communications books. (page 31, column 1)
4. Jim Shooter's Michael Fleisher libel trial testimony (pages 75-107) is summed up by publisher Gary Groth in his own inimitable loquaciousness: "In his role of Enemy of Artists Everywhere, Shooter proudly endorses the work-made-for-hire concept, which legally institutionalizes the function of the artist as nothing more than a commodities broker, as well as legitimating, however spuriously, the view that human imagination may have no moral obligation beyond that of being an adjunct to corporate profit-making." (page 63, column 3)
5. Joe "Scoop" Sacco, as he's referred to on the credits page. All kidding aside, his article on the Friendly Frank's obscenity case is very well done. (page 24)
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