Review: 'The World of Twomorrows: Celebrating 25 Years of the Future of Fandom'

In his introduction to The World of Twomorrows: Celebrating 25 Years of the Future of Fandom, Mark Evanier rewrites a quote from playwright George S. Kaufman to declare, “If you want to get revenge on a publisher, convince them there’s an audience out there for books and magazines about comic book history.”

Review: 'Retro Fan' Issue #5

Next month will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and this month marks the first anniversary of Retro Fan magazine. To commemorate both events, Retro Fan is devoting much of its fifth issue to all things spacey. Yes, the pop cultural legacy of the actual Apollo 11 crew gets its own two-page article, but the big draw of issue 5 is undoubtedly its cover boy. Mark Hamill sat down with Glen Greenberg for a 15-page interview—well, maybe interview is the wrong word since Greenberg rarely gets to do much more than slip in the occasional “Right, right” or “[laughs].” Mostly he just steps aside to let the always-delightful Hamill expound on his work and legacy as Luke Skywalker. Before you start drooling for big revelations about Episode IX, be aware that the interview was actually conducted back in the summer of 2017 before The Last Jedi had even been released. Though bits of it were apparently included in an article Greenberg wrote for TIME Magazine for Kids, this is the first time the unabridged interview is being published. Fortunately, it is being published in Retro Fan, which means that a slew of boffo color photos of Hamill-centric memorabilia accompany the interview.

Other spacernalia featured in issue 5 includes a feature on astronaut-toy line Major Matt Mason, an article about the alien-abetted Greatest American Hero and an interview with star William Katt (who was also a frontrunner for the role of Skywalker), and a groovy12-page history of seventies sci-fi series Jason of Star Commander that got a pretty big squeal of “Hey…I totally forgot about that... I used to love that!” from yours truly. You know an issue of Retro Fan is worth its salt when it elicits that reaction.

Review: 'Retro Fan' Issue #2

Michael Eury’s new magazine Retro Fan has a very singular purpose: to hit the nostalgia sweet spot. With the arguable exception of Christmas, no holiday hits that spot like Halloween, so you can bet that Retro Fan’s autumnal issue will give you that deep bath in ghouls you crave at this time every year. Articles cover such gruesome yet wistful topics as horror hosts (including a brief interview with this issue’s cover-girl, Elvira), 1960s monster TV (specifically Bewitched, The Munsters, and The Addams Family), The Groovie Goolies, and those delightfully garish Ben Cooper costumes.

While these topics have all been discussed many times before, the Retro Fan writing staff always hits just the right note. The writers’ references to their own, very relatable, childhood experiences maximize the nostalgia value without upstaging the topics. The tone is friendly, but the articles are almost absurdly in depth. Did I previously know that Bob Clampett was preparing an animated feature with basically the same premise as The Munsters way back in the 1940s? Nope. Do I now ache for the existence of such a film? You bet your abbie-normal brain I do. Did I know that there were also plans for a sort of Muppet Babies-esque spin off of The Groovie Goolies in the 1980s? Hell, most ex-employees of Filmation didn’t even know that!

For those who do not have a predilection for monsters and the macabre, there are also articles about such non-Halloweeny topics as Sindy: the British Barbie (good to see a female writer being invited to the show this issue…hopefully there will be more in issue #3), a now defunct dinosaur theme park in San Diego, a fab collection of lunch boxes, and super hero View-Master reels. If I have any beef with this issue, it’s that I wish the lunch box photos were bigger and it would have been nice if the View-Master article were more seasonal, focusing on those wonderful adaptations of creepy classics such as Dracula and Frankenstein featuring creepy dolls. I loved those.

But the biggest disappointment is not Retro Fan’s fault at all. As soon as I glanced at an article about a pop culture museum in Baltimore, I was poised to buy a bus ticket to Charm City—then I read the sidebar explaining that the museum closed for business between the article’s writing and the magazine’s publication! It’s just another reminder of how quickly things change, how constantly the past replaces the present. At least we have Retro Fan to memorialize such lost things with humanity and love.