Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: Comics, dez skinn

The Return Of FA – And A Look At Its Past

Published Wed, 10 Nov 2010 05:42:43 -0600

Last updated Wed, 10 Nov 2010 05:42:50 -0600

It's possibly the most influential fanzine in British comicdom. Fantasy Advertiser or FA was at one point edited by Dez Skinn, had verbose contibutions by Alan Moore and was at one point published officially by Trident, part of Neptune Distribution. Indeed it was Trident that doomed the magazine as the final editor Martin Skidmore found he had to spend all his time editing the Trident line of comics, including Mark Millar's first published comic, Saviour. And when Neptune went bust, Trident closed, FA was no more…

Well, Skidmore has found a way to revive this venerable British institution online as a new fanzine website, featuring articles and reviews much in the spirit of the original. Just a little less fantasy advertising, I guess.

Buit at the same time, ex-editor Dez Skinn (also of Marvel UK, Warrior and Comics International) has his own memories of Fantasy Advertiser to share on his own website, with contributions from Dave Gibbons, Kevin O'Neill, Steve Parkhouse, Frank Bellamy and much more.

I remember another subscriber, Frank Bellamy, getting quietly cross – Frank never got noisily cross – bemoaning that I never put issue numbers on the covers. To keep them in order, he told me he wrote the numbers on the top right corner of the covers. small and in pencil (he said he didn't want to spoil them with ink). So, from #39, the issue numbers appeared on the covers, usually!

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