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A Bit of Nostalgia
By Darren Hick
Note: In addition to his other duties, Darren Hick served as Webmaster to The Comics Journal during the latter part of the 1990s; he inaugurated an expanded version of TCJ Online shortly after he came to the Journal. It goes without saying that others have mucked around with his website since his departure, and some of the announcements he makes here are now out of date. Especially that "weekly updates" part. Read with this in mind.
The Comics Journal has been through countless changes since its inception
in 1976. And even the first issue of TCJ was, in a way, a rebirth.
If you go hunting for TCJ #1, best of luck to you. Should you actually
manage to find it, please be sure to let us know, because someone'll be
getting sued for copyright infringement. Confused? Read on.
What was to become the Comics Journal that you know and love
(or hate, or maybe just read) started life as The Nostalgia Journal
way, way back in the halcyon days of bell-bottoms and sideburns that is
to say, the original halcyon days of bell-bottoms and side-burns.
How confusing. When Fantagraphics took over TNJ with issue #27 (August,
1976), the Journal's logo proudly read, The NEW Nostalgia Journal.
Clearly, something was afoot.
As Gary Groth wrote in his premier editorial, "The NEW Nostalgia Journal?
An Editorial by whom? What's going on? Sit back. There's a lot to
tell you." Like the bell-bottoms and sideburns, history has come full-circle
again. Get comfortable, and I'll try to catch you up to speed.
In the years that would follow this initial rebirth, the publication would
evolve from The Nostalgia Journal ("the collector's guide to
comics, science fiction, fantasy, and art"), a 36-page newspaper fanzine,
to The Comics Journal ("The Magazine of Comics News and Criticism"),
the 120- to 280-page glossy you're familiar with today. There's a lot of
ground to cover in the interim, but I'll try to be brief...
The original Journal carried columns on the current state of comics,
science fiction, and fantasy art, and with its ad-laden pages, much resembled
the Comics Buyer's Guide of today. It was designed to unite and enlighten
the community of comics fandom, but continued to evolve over the years as
it attempted to find the best manner of going about this. And even in its
beginnings, some of its content greatly foreshadowed today's TCJ.
The first issue contained an interview with Jack "King" Kirby,
and further issues would begin to highlight news, criticism and comics history
with great earnest.
The New Nostalgia Journal became The Comics Journal with issue
#31, and soon thereafter, adopted the more familiar magazine format of today's
Journal. Changes were happening, and the Journal began to
take on a new shape, making its place in the industry. Some elements of
this Journal would look strangely out of place in today's format,
while others would become traditional mainstays of the Journal's
pages. Yes, it was a different time and, as L.P. Hartley once said, "The past is
a foreign country; they do things differently there." The early Journal carried the Sunday pages of
Marvel's Howard the Duck and Spider-Man, but also began to
delve heavily into news coverage and comics reviews, adopting a long tradition
of interviews with comics professionals. More than this, though, the
Journal began to make known its strong commitment to ferret out the
pap in comics, emphasizing the best of the medium and industry.
Later issues would run fiction by Harlan Ellison (as illustrated by Gil
Kane), the last real bastion of fanzine in TCJ. The Journal would
move steadily into a dichotomy of objective criticism and subjective
In 1981, the Journal's sister magazine, Amazing Heroes, was
spun off, picking up the more straightforward mainstream fans that the Journal
was leaving behind with its more streamlined analytic approach to comics.
When the split was made from comics "fandom," and as the Journal's
coverage moved from what was merely popular to what was good,
the Journal placed itself in an adversarial position, and has long
since been the devil's advocate of the comics industry a stance reflected
in the re-naming of the letters column from "Viewpoints" to "Blood
and Thunder" (wa-a-ay back in issue #38). This publication has pissed
off a lot of people. That's the drawback to criticism.
Groth wrote in the introduction to The New Comics, "The Journal
was the first magazine to assert the need for critical standards in a profession
and an artform until then unfamiliar with (and, as it turned out, downright
hostile to) such standards. The Journal's two consistent editorial
imperatives were, first, to discuss (and debate) the merits of particular
comics artists as well as the artistic capacities of the medium itself,
and second, to illuminate (and usually to oppose) the various social and
business instrumentalities that made comics the medium it was and prevented
comics from becoming the medium it was not."
The same commitment to the best of comics also begat Fantagraphics Books'
forays into comic book publication putting their money where their mouth
was, so to speak.
As the Journal made its roots, its design continued to evolve along
with its content. Regular columns appeared, regular writers became familiar
to the readers, and the critical content became, if anything, only stronger.
The commitment to the medium of comics has given the Journal a foundation
despite (or, perhaps because of) its infamy. Some things never change.
A few years back, Journal readers got the first glimpse of TCJ
Online, the internet supplement to the Journal. Always on the
forefront of technology!
There have been more changes to the editorial staff at the Journal
than I care to count (one former editor having been sued by Fantagraphics,
and others simply having gone off into obscurity... er... onto greener pastures)
and, as most of you are probably aware by now, The Comics Journal
has taken on a new editorial team consisting of myself and Eric Evans as
the new managing editors, and Michael Dean as the new news editor. Upon
coming aboard, one of our many mandates was to resurrect the long-since
(seemingly) abandoned TCJ Online. Insert phoenix metaphor here. Although
it is still a work in progress (catch-phrase: "under construction"),
there should be enough to hold your interest as we approach full capacity
in the coming weeks.
For those of you familiar with the earlier incarnations of TCJ Online,
some features will already be familiar to you, while others will be new
to you completely. What will be new to all of you is the format proposed
for this incarnation: Unlike the last version of TCJ Online which
(theoretically) was updated in full every fortnight, different sections
of this new incarnation will have their own schedules. Editorials will be
updated weekly (with pieces by myself, Eric Evans, Mike Dean, Kim Thompson
and Gary Groth), while "Newswatch Newsflashes" will appear on
a monthly basis in conjunction with the release of the newest issue of the
Journal. The reviews in "Thrown to the Wolves" and the
rants and raves of the "Raging Bullpen" shall be updated as such
material becomes available. Also, keep you eye out for new online-only resources
("Untangling the Laurels" and "Genesis of a Hullabaloo"
among them). In other words, there ought to be enough to keep your interest.
Also, keep an eye out for further columns special to TCJ Online due
to start this summer.
By no means, however, will TCJ Online be the only notable change
to the Journal following this new editorial coup. Changes will be
made to the print edition of the Journal as well, as we editors begin
to settle in, and as the Journal begins to reflect our personal idiosyncracies.
Some of these changes are already in the works. As for others, only time
will tell.
When Gary took over The Nostalgia Journal, he was about the age that
I am now. Expectations seem higher, and competition seems much more fierce.
But, for some reason, people are wearing bell-bottoms and growing sideburns
again. The Journal has been through a lot of changes. We hope you
like the ones that will appear in the coming months.
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