Mediascene / Prevue was one of the more solid, non-fanboy-ish fantasy media publications of the 70s and 80s; where Cinefantastique was a pretentious rag run by a pretentious ass, Famous Monsters of Filmland could be fun, but never in-depth, and occasionally repetitive, and Starlog was trying too hard to be studio insiders but came off like obsessed fan work too often for my tastes, Steranko's publications were fairly straight-shooting in their analysis and coverage.

If Cinefantastique was pretentious than add me to the list. I wasn't a regular buyer; but bought several and enjoyed their in-depth coverage of many movies and production articles. Paul Sammon's writing on Blade Runner was definitive and formed the basis for his excellent Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner, which is an excellent and exhaustive read and THE reference to that film and its creation. It factored heavily into the Dangerous Days documentary, which was included in the Ultimate Edition release of the film.

Cinefantastique was also responsible for busting James Cameron for his plagiarism of Harlan Ellison, with Terminator, leading to the studio settling with Ellison when he brought suit. Cameron's own words in the interview were largely why they settled.

I read several media magazines, including both Cinefatastique and Starlog, as well as Prevue, Filmfax, Cult Movies and some of the others (occasional Psychotronic, Shock Cinema, etc) and they all had their good and bad points.

He was not: I brought up the other magazines as a contrast to Steranko's Mediascene / Prevue, and felt his magazines had advantages over the others, whether they were lightweight (Starlog, Fangoria, Fantastic Films, etc.), pretentious (Cinefantastique or some 70s Marvel/Curtis magazines which featured articles on films and TV), or stuck in a formulaic routine (Famous Monsters of Filmland.



That depends on what one expected out of Steranko as a publisher, which would not necessarily be comparable to his work as an artist, so there's no balancing of scales in terms of expectation. That said, because Steranko was a true artist, his perspective and approach to publishing--what he decided to cover and how he covered it felt different than the other magazines listed above, even those from Marvel, where their own talents contributed articles (including Roy Thomas, Claremont, et al.). I've always appreciated comic talents who occasionally tried other formats or mediums, and I also appreciated artists who did not want (or in some cases need) to be a workhorse cranking out endless pages, instead of a more restrained output.

Steranko's may not have produced as much as other top artists, but when he created, it was head and shoulders above many of his contemporaries, and a standout, such as his Prevue wraparound painted cover of The Empire Strikes Back, conceptual art for Raiders of the Lost Ark, and his wondrous adaptation of Outland serialized in Heavy Metal.

There is an interview with Ken Bruzenak, in Comic Book Artist #8, which focused on the independent comics of the 80s and spoke with him about his work on American Flagg. In it, he talks about having been an assistant for Steranko, at Supergraphics. A large part of the time, he was helping him renovate a house and it sounded like a lot of unfinished work. I got the impression that Steranko had a fertile creative period, but then it dried up and he sent most of his time doing commercial work, giving the client what they want and just never got back in the creative groove on his own material. He developed some interesting graphic techniques, through his commercial work; but, didn't seem to know how to apply them to comics work, beyond window dressing.

Personally, I think the style he used on Outland and the Superman #400 story, probably grew out of a combination of doing paperback covers and concept pin-ups, as the panels were really just that, pin-ups or single moment illustrations, designed to capture a single moment, rather than a sequential set of images to convey a portion of the story. It was closer to book illustration, really, like he never progressed after Chandler, in terms of storytelling, just in graphic design. It looked spectacular, which is the design element; but, it ended up being a lot of exposition and then brief moments.

I still think he was a graphic genius; but, one whose body of work was limited by many factors, starting with the speed at which he could work, to earn a living in comics. The advertising work took priority because it paid better. I also think he was full of himself, based on stuff he said in that Steranko: Graphic Prince of Darkness thing, from the 90s. The stories he told in it largely had me going "bull*COUGH*!" I couldn't take it seriously, after the first couple of stories; but, it was a nice collection of his images.

The whole debate is a moot point, since it is all subjective. Some artists speak to you more than others and no two people have the same experience. I keep hearing Romita's name thrown around. His art is nice; but, it has never bowled me over and made me buy a comic, like Colan or Steranko. He was very good at what he did; but, it doesn't invoke a reaction in me the way that , say, P Craig Russell's work did, or Kirby or Chaykin, or Ken Steacy or Steve Rude. To me, he is like Stephen Spielberg: very good at what he does and very successful at it; but, he doesn't invoke emotions in me like Fritz Lang or Billy Wilder. That doesn't take anything away from Romita or Spielberg; just that they don't speak to me the way others do. I enjoy their work, just not at the same level as others.

If I ever bought one of those fantasy/sci-fi movie mags -- which I didn't very often -- but if I did, it was always either Starlog or Starburst. I recall Fangoria on the newsagent's shelves, but it always looked pretty scary and I wasn't really into horror anyway. I don't recall ever seeing Mediascene or Cinefantastique in the UK at the time.

I'm not sure I was a discerning enough reader to choose between the quality of the reporting in Starlog or Starburst or pick up on any editorial bias, as I was only 11-14 when I would've been buying them. But Starlog seemed to have the better Star Wars content of the two, as a rule of thumb. The Star Wars 10th Anniversary issue from 1987 in particular was packed full of really fascinating articles about different aspects of the franchise. It's the only issue of Starlog that I've hung onto.

In its early years, Starlog was a great source for information about sci-fi media properties and literature (more the movies and tv than the literature, though).  However, you ran into a problem of them promoting projects that really weren't very good, possibly for fear of being cut off from access to other projects.  So, you would get articles for films like Heartbeeps, that made it sound like it would be great cinema, then the finished project bombs and is savaged by critics and those who payed to see it and Starlog would then call it a failure in their year-end round ups.  The lack of a critical stance made them a bit suspect, when it came to upcoming projects; but, they were pretty good at exploring existing ones you knew were good; or, at least interesting.  They also had a tendency tp trot out interviews with minor supporting actors, who appeared in one Star Trek episode or Twilight Zone or similar, when they were spare on content.  You also get some questionable exploration of not very good movies, from the 50s and early 60s, because that was the only sci-fi they had to look at.  When I would later see some of these films, they were often huge disappointments; not just from primitive effects work; but just poorly written and acted.  It is no surprise that more than a few ended up as fodder for MST3K.

On the other hand, they did serve to introduce me to real classics, like Forbidden Planet and The Day The Earth Stood Still, plus, furnished me with the earliest information about Battle of the Planets (Kagaku Ninjatai Gatchaman, in Japan, and later, G-Force, Guardians of Space, in another English dubbing and edit). after seeing a handful of random episodes, while visiting relatives and on vacation. 

It had eras, like any publication that last more than a few years, with the glory days of having inside access to Star Wars and Star Trek developments, to the expansion of sci-fi on tv and film, to becoming more of a Hollywood hype vehicle, while giving lip service to literary sci-fi and fantasy.  There were times that they were starved for sci-fi content and other times where they couldn't cover it all, but might pick it up in the next issue.  It could be rather dull when there wasn't a good property on tv or at the movies, or coming soon.

Cinefantastique often went deeper into productions, covering more than effects and story...looking at the writing or set design, or what have you; but, it varied a lot based on the cover subject.  Some issues, like their Blade Runner coverage could be amazing, while others could be deadly dull.  Starlog had a glitzier look, which made it attractive, while Cinefantastique might have more interesting production details, if you had an interest in that.

Fangoria was never my cup of tea, since I am not a horror fan, especially in an era of slasher films, compared to the Universal stuff or Hammer.

Filmfax was a nice look at all kinds of pop culture things, not just sci-fi, though it was rather Boomer-centric.  Still, they had some nice pieces on things like Things to Come, or movie serials, or things like the surf music revival of the 90s, which introduced me to Los Straightjackets and took me down a whole rabbit hole of instrumental bands, like Laika and the Cosmonauts, The Bomboras, Man or Astroman, The Ghastly Ones, and Teisco Del Rey (one person, a guitarist and journalist).  Stuff like Psychotronic weren't exactly my cup of tea, unless their cult films crossed into my interest, like the Billy Jack series, or Dr Mabuse film series.  Same with Shock Cinema.  Cult Movies tended to tread my cult areas of interests more, but lasted a shorter span (when magazines, as a whole, were in decline).  Too young for Famous Monsters, but wasn't big on monster movies, then.  Some of that grew on me over the years.

I have some digital copies of Comixscene and Mediascene (just a handful), which are a bit more of a fanzine style of things, while Prevue was a more professional-looking product, but also more costly and I only had a few of those, including his look at the Burton Batman film.  At least one I had was more like a Supergraphics catalog, as I had very little interest in the film articles and picked it up solely to then order products from his ads.


As a historian, though, his (Steranko) two published comic book history volumes are terrific reads, in an era where there wasn't much.  Great stuff about Blackhawk and Airboy that you don't find in other histories of comics, which tend to focus on superhero comics.

If nothing else, I envy his head of hair.  Mine's not even balding evenly.