So, Alter Ego is a magazine published by Twomorrows.  It's a revival of the old-school fanzine, headed up by Roy Thomas and is now in its 24th year of its current incarnation.  It mostly focuses on Golden and Silver Age comics...dipping its toe in to the Bronze Age now and then.  There's generally a cover feature, some other articles, a small bit devoted to the Fawcett Collectors of America, etc.  It's very well done prozine and has featured work by our own Cei-U! .



The first issue I got in the current batch was issue #101, cover featuring the comics of Victor Fox.  I certainly know the name and that he was a Golden Age comic publisher with questionable ethics (which may well be a redundancy).  I'm not 100% this issue really filled in many blanks.  The main feature was a reprint of Richard Kyle's 1962 article "The Education of Victor Fox" which ran in the fanzine Xero under the "All in Color For a Dime" header.  It's a fine fanzine article and a somewhat interesting relic, but as actual history or scholarship it's not much.  It's really mostly a review of some then twenty year old comics and a bit of speculation.  Ultimately very forgettable. 

Much better is the article by Ken Quattro about the lawsuit between DC and Fox over Wonder Comics and Wonder Man.  Particularly revealing were the transcripts from the testimony of the trial, which cast a huge light on Will Eisner and his, very false, portrayal of his part in the trial.  This was honestly some bombshell stuff and I was shocked that I hadn't heard anything about it (the magazine is dated May 2011).  Maybe I just missed it.  But...damn.  Amazing work.  

We then get part one of Jim Amash's interview with Jack Mendelsohn.  I very vaguely knew of Mendelsohn as the creator behind the comic strip Jacky's Diary, but that was about it.  And I only knew that strip by reputation.  The interview was interesting and kind of cemented the fact that comics history is just horribly super-hero centric.  Mendelsohn did a ton of work in the 40s and 50s, a lot of it with Howie Post, but most of it is was on funny animal and Archie type comics so it tends to get forgotten.  I really love this kind of stuff.  

Michael T. Gilbert's "Mr. Monster" section looks at the disappearance of Spirit letterer Abe Kanegson.  Not a name I knew, but I definitely knew his lettering.  If you've read The Spirit during the time period that Kanegson was working with Eisner, you know tht the lettering was simply incredible.  But he fell out with Eisner (probably over money) and just absolutely disappeared.  So Mr. Monster decided to track him down.  This first installment is a look back at Kanegson's work as a letterer.  Very interesting stuff.  

The FCA section has the regular "We Didn't Know it Was Golden" by Marc Swayze.  Swayze was one of the main artists on Captain Marvel, designed Mary Marvel and also worked on the comic strip Flyin' Jenny.  I've always liked the feature it's short and well-written and just very conversational.  This time around Swayze's wife talks about meeting him.  Very sweet. 

There's also a short essay from C.C. Beck.  Honestly I don't even remember what it was about and don't feel like looking at it.  I mostly find that when I read anything by Beck I get less of a curmudgeon vibe and more of a full-on jerk vibe.  

All-in-all a pretty typical issue of Alter Ego.  If you aren't in to Golden Age stuff it's one to miss.  I was overall pleased.  A lot of it wasn't particularly successful, but it was entertaining at the time and some of it was just super good stuff.  Mixed bag...which is kind of to be expected.  

I came late to the party for the Kirby Collector; but, I was with Comic Book Artist, from the start, with Alter Ego as a flip book, until they split them apart. I switched to digital, after a while. CBA was a bit more my alley; but, Alter Ego had a lot of stuff to interest me.

I was a regular reader of Comic Scene, in its second volume, though I hunted down all of the first volume, which was more industry centered. The second volume focused a bit more on film adaptations and other media use, rather than mainly the comics industry, though they gave some decent attention to indie publishers (way more than Wizard di, for a long time.

I had multiple issues of Amazing Heroes, Comics Interview, Comic Book Collector, The Comics Journal and was a subscriber to the Comic Buyer's Guide. I acquired digital of all of these, plus the original Alter Ego, some of the other fanzines of the era, Back Issue, FOOM, Amazing World of DC, Charlton Bullseye, Ron Goulart's Golden Age, Bill Black's fanzine stuff, Fantagraphics' Honk and Nemo, and some odds and ends.

After reading Ron Goulart's first history of comics reference book and Jules Feiffer's The Great Comic book heroes, I sought out anything with both comics history and articles about plots and characters, creator interviews and such and use to hunt some of that stuff with back issue comics. Twomorros puts together good stuff and CBA provided a lot of reference material for my Other Guys thread, for histories of some of the other companies, like their invaluable issue devoted to Western/Dell/Gold Key/Whitman, their Atlas/Seaboard issue, Harvey, Tower, the excellent two issues devoted to Charlton, as well as their coverage of Bronze Age DC and Marvel. It supplemented Will Jacobs & Gerard Jones' The Comic Book Heroes well.

I remember Fantaco's Chronicles series. They were terrific. I had 'em all once upon a time but they were victims of The Great Fanzine Purge of 1990 when I got rid of hundreds of CBGs, comics Journals, Amazing Heroes, Comics Scenes, and the like. I'll have to see if I can find digital copies online. I'd love to read them again.

Cei-U!
I summon the nostalgia for nostalgia!

Those interview type books were cool. I had stacks of them but I just threw them away after a while. 

I don’t know how expensive it is to have them shipped to the UK, but Twomorrows has frequent sales. If you’re not opposed to PDF’s they also sell those pretty cheap.