Date: Mon, 11 Sep 1995 15:39:42 -0400
From: [g--l--n] at [bgnet.bgsu.edu] (Metroplex)
Subject: FtP 535

THIS IS FIT TO PRINT NUMBER 535:  This has been one of the most
nostalgia-filled weeks i have spent in many a year. Bob Beerbohm, a long time
fan, former distributor, and currently a retailer in old comics and ephemera
by mail order and conventions, has been visiting. As i write this, he is
poring through my archives (read: crumbling piles of paper) in search of data
for his monumental book on the history of the comics industry and comics
fandom.

We've been opening boxes of stuff i haven't looked at in years, scanning the
pages of Star-Studded, Instant Gratification, Alter Ego, The Comic Reader,
and The Buyer's Guide for names, dates, rumours, interviews, and ancient news
reports. And almost every page brings back some buried memory:

The Alley Awards, Joe Brancatelli, Julie Schwartz's Law of Comics Artists,
who stole the artwork from Marvel, the death of Wally Wood, dittozines,
mimeozines, the Berkeley Con, the warehouse find of Captain Marvel Popped
Wheat premiums in Omaha, the forged Frazetta sketches, the Texas Trio and Jim
Starlin, the unpublished Death of George Reeves, who really counterfeited
Cerebus #1, Fredric Wertham and Gershon Legman, The First Kingdom, Will
Eisner and Lou Fine at Tudor City, the manipulated speculation in Avengers
Annual #10 and X-Men #150, E. Nelson Bridwell, Alan Light's mother, Carol
Kalish's cash register program, the time Kay Rudin told Robert Crumb to give
up drawing-and he almost did, Milton Caniff's obituary tribute to Noel
Sickles, Michael Fleisher's lawsuit against Gary Groth and Harlan Ellison,
and Jack Kirby's heartfelt semi-autobiographical tales in Foxhole.
We've got a lot of memories to share. Bob's career in retailing goes back to
the 1960s, and i first joined fandom in 1964. The industry wasn't an
"industry" when we entered it; the product wasn't "product" when we first
began to buy and sell.

Back then, if a fan had a mind to, he or she could actually undertake some
research, pack a bag, and travel across the country to talk with the pioneers
of the comics, for most of them were still alive and many were willing to
talk to interested youngsters. The trouble is, fans who did such interviews
tended to publish the results in little ditto-zines with circulations of 50
copies. It is these rare fanzines Bob is looking for.

He's also in search of stripzines containing art by would be pros. For
years, it was assumed that the earliest of these zines circulated during the
mid-1940s, but Bob has recently uncovered an amazing stripzine from 1936,
produced in full colour via the obsolete hectograph duplication system.
Details on this find will be set forth in his book, along with reproductions,
of course.

Finally, Bob wants documentation on comic strip and comic book circulation
and price figures from the 1890s onward. Industry trade mags, office memos,
zine articles that mention circulation and price changes-all of those are of
interest to him.

Like me, Bob saved tons of old paper-and like me, he lost a lot of it in a
flood, when the roof of his warehouse leaked. He has been recollecting zines
lately, but some of these items are hard to find. Strangely, my own decimated
and damaged collection contained zines he hadn't seen in years. I gave him a
box of early "pro" zines from the late 1970s, and he has been xeroxing the
rest of what i have for about three days now.

After Bob leaves here, he'll be going to Bill Blackbeard's San Francisco
Academy of Comic Art. Bill is best known for his incomparable collection of
newspaper strips, but he also has choice assortments of science fiction and
comics fanzines, and a sampling of underground newspapers from the 1960s. The
latter material will help Bob document the links between underground
newspaper and comix distribution network of the 1960s and the rise of the
direct sales market in the 1970s.

If you have old paper of the type outlined above, for sale or to copy,
please get hold of Bob at P. O. Box 507, Fremont, NE, 76522; or via e-mail at
[c--to--r] at [aol.com.] His project is the first of its kind and it needs all the
help fandom can give.

NOTE: This e-mail address is apparently no longer working.

====

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