Into The 'Zine Zone

Recently, my pal David of Xenorama fame has been entertaining the notion of reviving the fanzine of the same name. I'm all aboard for this idea, and not just because it would mean my name in print again. (Well, there is that, too.) No, Xenorama was one of the more entertaining fanzines I read back in the 1990s, so it would be really keen to have it back - even for just one issue.

By sheer co-inky-dink, I was doing some tidying the other day and unearthed my cache of copies of MY 'zine, the ever-obscure OWARI. Despite structuring the later issues so that I could produce them on demand, I resolved to put the whole thing on the shelf around 2006 or so. Naturally, most of what I have is from the 21st century period of the 'zine, but I STILL have a copy of #2 from 1996!

So, will I be deciding to revive the print version of my own fanzine? Well, never say never, but I just don't see it happening. OWARI never managed to garner much interest even in its heyday, and that was when fanzines were still in fashion. I mean, I was essentially giving them away at the end, and I still couldn't get people to take them. I will never forget leaving a stack on the counter at my local comic shop and the only time I ever saw someone pick one up...was to use as scratch paper to write themself a note. Bit deflating, that.

Besides, I abandoned OWARI as a fanzine in 2002. The only reason I even did that last issue in 2005 was to give a sense of closure to the run. Even that didn't work out so well in the end, but I'm glad I did that last issue. I think it got my last lingering desire to do a fanzine out of my system.

Of course, just because I'm not going to do OWARI as a fanzine again doesn't mean that there might not be alternative ideas that come into play. We'll just have to wait and see.

And yes, one of these days, I'm going to get around to doing entries on my old fanzines.