Magazines

[SuperBacon]

6 hours ago, TheBurningRed said:

Completely forgot about the Sonic comic. 

Also forgot about Smash Hits. My sister would get that every two weeks and I’d read it after. Always loved the lyrics cards they had printed in there. 

I used to love reading my sisters more and Just Seventeen to be honest.

[DavidB6937]

My mate at school always had Inside Soap and I'd always love the spoilers. Between that and the wrestling magazines I really don't understand why I didn't have a girlfriend.

[BomberPat]

I'm an absolute nerd for magazines, I have a lifetime of nostalgia all wrapped up in them.

As a kid, I used to go to my grandparents' house every Sunday. They lived in the same village, only about a five or six minute walk away. After my parents left, my Gran would give us our pocket money, and a comic - The Beano for me, The Dandy for my brother. Over time that changed, and from either my Gran or my parents I started getting Spider-Man and X-Men comics, 2000AD, and Sonic The Comic. If I went on a big shop with my Dad, he'd buy me a games magazine to keep me happy - first it was Sega Power, and then Official Playstation Magazine; the latter becoming something he'd buy for us every month regardless of whether I was coming with him on the shop or not. Gaming magazine-wise, there were other Playstation magazines I'd sometimes buy, though without the allure of a demo disc it was a rarity, whereas I had no such commitments when it came to PC mags - PC Gamer, PC Gaming World, whatever, just let me have whatever catches my fancy. By the time I had a Nintendo Wii, NGamer and Retro Gamer were my jam.

Living in Jersey as a teenager, and not really knowing anywhere I could hang out as a kid, most of my weekends were spent traipsing around town with one or two mates, and that usually involved just looking through the same shops. There was a nerdy sci-fi collectible place, but it closed. There was a little shop that sold trading cards and stuff like that, but we got barred for shoplifting Pokémon and WWF cards because we were stupid kids. There was Blockbusters, and the Music & Video Exchange, but they were a little off the high street, so may as well have been in another country as far as being bothered to walk all of ten minutes to go there. So most Saturdays just ended up as a loop between HMV, Woolworths, WH Smiths, and a little independent newsagents. Buying magazines just to have something to show for my day became part of the ritual.

 

There were wrestling magazines, obviously, and I was so desperate for any wrestling content I could get my hands on that I was never picky, I'd get whatever was there. Powerslam and later FSM were favourites, but I'd get PWI, WOW, probably other Apter mags I'm forgetting even existed, sometimes even the WWF magazine. I got quite obsessed, aged around 14 or 15, with plastering my bedroom walls with stuff cut out of magazines - first it was actual poster spreads, but later just any photos I liked, so my tiny bedroom was covered in cut-outs from wrestling and music magazines.

Music was my real obsession then, so in came Q, Uncut, Mojo, Classic Rock, NME, and from time to time Kerrang!, Rocksound or even Terrorizer for the really heavy stuff. The deciding factor was usually the free CD. Bizarre Magazine was around a lot then too - sometimes I bought it, more often than not I was anxious of the newsagent refusing to sell it to me, as I assumed it was an 18+ thing, so more often than not I read other people's copies. I imagine if I looked back at it now, I'd find it a load of cringeworthy try-hard bollocks, but that magazine felt like a signifier of inclusion in a marginalised group. That most of that "marginalised" group were posh public school kids playing at being edgelords never would have occurred to me at the time.

Aged around 16, and starting a Media Studies AVCE, I got it into my head that I wanted to be a music journalist. I stumbled on a magazine called Plan B in our local newsagent, and it seemed tailor-made for me - every page mentioned a band I loved, and one that barely got any coverage in other magazines. It was, by design, eclectic and inclusive, and didn't impose a house style on its writers, which was something that was increasingly dragging the quality of other music mags downhill. The first issue I bought had Sonic Youth on the cover, subsequent covers featured SunnO))), Boris, Battles, Sparks, and Grinderman. If they covered an artist I hadn't heard of, that was endorsement enough for me to look into them, and they were a huge part of shaping my tastes, moving away from punk and metal as my baseline, and towards a more open-minded approach; they introduced me to everyone from Lee Hazlewood to Wiley.

 

Going back to childhood, growing up in a village with very few other children meant you kind of made friends with whoever was around, and my brother's best mate was a kid a few years older than us. He used to get a magazine called The X-Factor; all alien autopsies, Area 51, and spontaneous human combustion, the kind of paranormal and weird stuff that seemed to be everywhere in the early '90s. Years later, still harbouring a fascination for that kind of thing, I picked up a copy of Fortean Times, and that became something I'd revisit every now and then over the years, if I spotted a copy with an interesting cover story. When I started travelling more, FT and Private Eye became my go-to thing to buy to read at the airport. I have a subscription to FT today, so it's the only magazine I still get and read regularly.

There were some others I subscribed to over the years - The Chap, the "anarcho-dandyist" magazine all about men's fashion and culture, absolutely bogged down by the weight of its own in-jokes. Briefly The Idler, for similar ground covered to The Chap, and The Skeptical Enquirer, until it started getting all a bit TERF-y. 

I bloody love a magazine, and their decline is a genuine source of sadness for me. Compared to the immediacy and knee-jerk nature of social media and 24 hour news, there's a real space for well-presented, lovingly produced long-form writing.

[TheBurningRed]

This has just shown up on my Twitter. Is this something you might have stumbled across @SuperBacon? Looks dreadful.
 

John O’Shea joining Le Saux and Ashley Cole in the gay rumours. I don’t know why the left backs were targeted in that nonsense. 

[SuperBacon]

Ha, I saw that as well. Not something I remember ever seeing.

This is another one I remember picking up a few times as well, but I can't believe it ran for 6 years!

[Harry Wiseau]

4 hours ago, BomberPat said:

 

Aged around 16, and starting a Media Studies AVCE, I got it into my head that I wanted to be a music journalist. I stumbled on a magazine called Plan B in our local newsagent, and it seemed tailor-made for me - every page mentioned a band I loved, and one that barely got any coverage in other magazines. It was, by design, eclectic and inclusive, and didn't impose a house style on its writers, which was something that was increasingly dragging the quality of other music mags downhill. The first issue I bought had Sonic Youth on the cover, subsequent covers featured SunnO))), Boris, Battles, Sparks, and Grinderman

That was a spin off from Careless Talk Costs Lives, another magazine I loved and had every copy of until the pub garage flood (there were only six, or maybe twelve, it was Everett True and a few others who decided to change music journalism and the issues were numbered in reverse order, they failed in the alloted time so came up with Plan B) great magazines

 

As a youth I used to love Oink which was like Viz but for younger children, it was where I first encountered Frank Sidebottom so I'll always be grateful to Uncle Pig

[BomberPat]

Just now, Harry Wiseau said:

That was a spin off from Careless Talk Costs Lives, another magazine I loved and had every copy of until the pub garage flood (there were only six, or maybe twelve, it was Everett True and a few others who decided to change music journalism and the issues were numbered in reverse order, they failed in the alloted time so came up with Plan B) great magazines

Yes! I didn't know Careless Talk until later, but I eventually bought all of them from somewhere, can't remember if it was eBay or through more official channels. No idea what happened to them - disappeared in one house move or another, I suspect.

I wanted to do the "start at 12 and count backwards" pretentious numbering system for a run of wrestling shows, but never did. 

[SuperBacon]

The next issue of Play will be the last one.

Amazed at its longevity and always sad to see a publication go.

[TheScarlettChad]

I love the gaming mags the most, will be sad to see them all go. The PS2 mags were right bad weren't they? Didn't one ask you to send nudes in of your mrs and they'd print them in the magazine?! What was all that about?!

[HarmonicGenerator]

Same for Total Film. ?

 

[RedTwoster]

2 hours ago, TheScarlettChad said:

I love the gaming mags the most, will be sad to see them all go. The PS2 mags were right bad weren't they? Didn't one ask you to send nudes in of your mrs and they'd print them in the magazine?! What was all that about?!

What?! Surely not?? 

It’s really sad to see Play and Total Film disappear from our shelves. I’m subscribed to Retro Gamer, but I’d absolutely be interested in subscribing to a cross-format magazine focused on modern gaming that took a more interesting approach to its writing than Edge does. It’s a shame that there doesn’t seem to be room for it in this marketplace.

[SuperBacon]

That's sad about Total Film. Back in the day I loved getting it and I think I preferred it to Empire as it was a more irreverent read, and Empire seemed a bit po faced.

Think this the first issue I ever bought and will probably pick up the final one.

[DavidB6937]

Real shame about Total Film. I dipped in and out but always enjoyed it when I read it.

[Dr. Alan Grant]

That is sad news. I’ve still got a huge stack of TF that I can’t bring myself to get rid of. I hope Empire doesn’t go the same way.

[RIDDUM_N_STYLE]

4 hours ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

Same for Total Film. ?

 

Aww damn it, TF was/is a great read, less serious and snobby than Empire with fairly fair reviews. One of my favourite articles is always the short interview with a star using movie quotes as questions just to see how the interviewee reacts