This has been an interesting new year… hell, an interesting week – for me, certainly – but also for the music industry. It’s possible some other things and people were affected by various other events as well. You...
Read moreReg Everbest Goes to The Magic Store
“Miss Tracie, Prepare the standard ‘rich and famous’contract for Steve Gerber.” It starts when we’re kids… a show-off at school. Makin’ faces at friends. You’re a clown and a fool. After the biggest...
Read moreWow Cool @25 CNN’s Boom or Bust 1994
Wow Cool was paid a visit by CNN in mid-1994 for a feature on the venomous werewolves of Generation X and their sinister plan to devour the sad old hippies and their filth. It was called Boom or Bust? and originally aired on Sunday, August 14...
Read moreWow Cool @25 Tuna Casserole 7 Foldout 1989
I spent a little while today digging through the archives trying to find something cool to post from our rich history… didn’t find too much exciting… So, in the spirit of this self-congratulatory project, I picked one of my own...
Read moreWow Cool @25 The Reviews Are In 1994
There was a time when hundreds of thousands of printed fanzines were published every single day. These three fondly remembered rags – Factsheet 5, Yakuza (this issue here) and Flipside – gave our catalog glowing reviews. What a...
Read moreWow Cool @25 The Bobby Madness Method 1995
As far as I know this deep examination of the global behemoth that was Wow Cool in the mid-90s by Bobby Madness only ever appeared in one of our monthly wholesale catalogs. Edition of 200 or so. Wow Cool published four issues of Bobby’s Mad...
Read moreWow Cool @25 The New Smile Pad SDCC 1989
Bonus nostalgia content! A peak inside the New Smile Pad that I took to San Diego Comic-Con in 1989. Contributors are – clockwise from the cover: Dan Clowes, Krystine Kryttre, Marc Arsenault, Mark Martin, Ron Turner. Enjoy! “Keep...
Read moreWow Cool @25 Wholesale Catalog Boards 1995
Once upon a time in the mid-1990s Wow Cool was an active distributor of zines and independent comic books to retail markets. Apart from the indie-friendly comic books shops, many of our clients were cafes, regular bookstores and record shops...
Read moreWow Cool @25 The First Mail Order Catalog 1989
This is the first item in our nostalgic look back that has a serious cringe element for me. The first couple of posts were not really my work. This one is another story. The very first Wow Cool mailorder catalog is a spectacular mess on the...
Read moreWow Cool @25: Tuna Casserole #1 1988
Tuna Casserole #1, January 1988. Edited and published by Sam Henderson and Tom Hart. This is a scan of the original paste-up boards. Contributing artists included Rob Schreiber, Brett Bondar, Bob Guglielmo, Joe Walden, Ted Bolman, Mikko Meronen...
Read moreWow Cool @25: Pieces Of APE 1994
Happy birthday to us! Sometime in 1988 the editorial crew behind School of Visual Arts off-Campus publication Tuna Casserole changed it’s name from The Art Dicks to Wow Cool. Tuna Casserole was launched by Sam Henderson and Tom Hart in the...
Read moreWhat is the Zabriskie Point Of It All
About 31 minutes into Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Zabriskie Point, our star Mark Frechette walks into Frank’s Liquor in Hawthorne, CA, where he strolls past the awesome array of late 1968 comic books you see above. I can make out...
Read more