Wow Cool got a whole page in the old small press comics tabloid Comics F/X back in July 1989. The man incorrectly identified as Marc is actually the sculptor Paul Komoda. Sam cleverly altered minor details of Wow Cool history to protect the guilty parties.
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We just got a new scanner here in Wow Cool land, and instead of picking some stunning and masterful piece of art, I chose this crappy jam comic from long ago. Phil Felix stopped by Harvey Kurtzman’s class at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) one day back in the mid-late 80s to do a
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Tom Hart did this strip and another one about zen for me when I was the comics editor at the School of Visual Arts newspaper – Canvas – way back in 1988. So, not technically a Wow Cool thing… also it’s a bit of an in-joke, but I think it works pretty well without that
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Sam Henderson drew this back when Beverly Hills 90210 was still pretty new. 20+ years later it’s relevant again! What a world! I don’t remember where – if anywhere – this was ever published before. Sam? I’ve started to dig into the old sketchbooks… some...
Read moreMy former studio mate at the School of Visual Arts, co-founder of Wow Cool – back in 1988, and Chieftain (as he likes to be called) at Alternative Comics, Tom Hart is just barely a year in as the director of the Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW) in Gainesville, Florida, and, as these...
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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, 1994. Baby Boomer Culture withering under the wave...
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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 – the foldout poster from Tuna Casserole #7...
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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 strange dark age that was!
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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 Soul Comics from 1995-1997. You can get...
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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 Smile is The Most Important Thing In Your Life.”...
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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. Sadly, there does not seem to be any sort of active...
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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 inside. Typography and stats and scans were begged...
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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 and myself. WLH was Sam’s publishing imprint...
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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 studio that Tom and I shared at the SVA dorms in...
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