When David Caruso was trying to break into movies and Robert Mitchum had just died, Spy rang concert promoters trying to blag free tickets for each one; the response was almost invariably “Mitchum’s a Prince fan? Sure, how many does he want?”, and “Sorry, David who?”.
Ditto National Lampoon, OMNI, Spy, and Film Threat.
My favorite Spy article: One of their contributors pretended to be an NRA spokesman looking for celebrity endorsements. He called up Winona Ryder’s publicity agent, who was obviously young and had no idea she was being played. He said he was interested in Ryder because of the expert way she used a firearm in Heathers. The agent was nearly in tears, begging him not to use Ryder’s name.
Film Threat had an article where they surveyed a panel of underground comics artists and asked them questions such as “If Jesus Christ and Superman got into a fight, who would win?” The best answer came from Paul Mavrides, founding member of the Church of the SubGenius and collaborator of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. He said, “Jesus Christ, because of his unique ability to return from the dead. Superman could pound Jesus into jelly and hurl him into the sun, but the plucky Savior of Souls would come back, ready to begin the fight anew. Superman would eventually go bored and give up.”
The folks at PC World were pretty straight shooters. The website is still around, but the magazine disappeared in the past couple of years.
I read Scientific American during the 1990s and early 2000s. They were past their peak then, but hadn’t totally gone the way of Discover Magazine. Science magazine is pretty good though and the first section of it can be read by a lay audience. They do pretty solid reporting. Recommended. It won’t kill you if you can’t understand all of the articles.
I enjoyed Brill’s Content, but I knew they wouldn’t last. They had some great stories early on, but the media beat just isn’t large enough for a mass market publication.
Reaching the end of a manga series is often bitter sweet. Examples include Death Note, Bakuman, Monster, Negima and Pluto.
I miss the old Southern Living with its long feature stories and fantastic recipes. When it presented a recipe for a bowl of fresh fruit topped with yogurt, I cancelled my subscription.
Sounds scandalous.
Omni, Nat’l Lampoon, Starlog, Creepy, and Eerie.
BUT Famous Monsters of Filmland IS back!
I wrote a strongly worded letter, you betcha.
I keep reading that as “Finland”
No wonder they gave the USSR such trouble in WWII
I thought I was the lone subscriber to Brill’s Content! It went belly up in the middle of my subscription and they decided to fulfill it by giving me the rest of my months in Mother Jones. Blech.
Another Spy fan. It was at times preternatural.
Back then, Donald Trump was little known nationally. Could you imagine the fun they’d have with him the last few years?
You misspelled “BLETCH”.
Yeah, but there’s a difference between just straight up making a clone of Maxim and making a clone of Maxim and calling it Cracked. It’s like if you tried to clone Highlights and called it Playgirl.
Ooh, I’ve got a few…
I was a computer nerd in the 80s and my bible was Zzap!64. There was CRASH for the Spectrum, but I pretty much thought the center of the universe was Ludlow, Shropshire. I even had my aunt send me copies into the late 80s when we moved to the U.S.
Also Smash Hits! - seems that it was something of the music bible for British music for teens who couldn’t handle the NME. Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys was a writer for the magazine!
I also was a fan of Spy Magazine, and I was going to add RE/Search - but it’s still around, yay!
but with Forry…
CD Review - late 80’s to early 90’s - reviews of new (or newly released) music coming out your … It died, sadly.
Electronic Gaming Monthly-I grew up with this magazine and picked it up again sporadically. last issue I got was also the last time it featured the Hsu and Chan comic, which I liked. It was the magazine that got me most excited about video games during the 8-bit and 16-bit era. In its last years I thought it was still well put together magazine with good articles, interviews, design and features. Even though its easier and faster to get the latest news on video games from the internet, I thought it was still a good magazine to get.
OMNI
I never got a chance to really get this magazine when I was younger but ever since I saw it in Ghostbusters I wanted to read it. I bought some old issues and really enjoyed them.
Why “technically”? What do you miss about the '90s-era Games that isn’t in the recent issues?
I was never that into Games, though I did occasionally browse through it in the mid-'80s. I recently bought a couple issues from this year and I don’t see that much has changed.
You could hardly call Maledicta a magazine – it was more a cross between a scholarly and literary journal. But I agree it’s too bad that Aman’s no longer producing new issues. I wonder why he shuttered the publication.
It came out periodically with a date on it. It was broken into articles. It had a single overall theme. I consider that close enough to a magazine. Aman is 78 years old and apparently completely broke.