I have been reading Fangoria close to the beginning. Not exactly all the way back (I would murder just about anyone for a Godzilla cover #1), but at least back to the fifth issue. Without belaboring things too much, I recently unleashed the oldest box of Fangoria issues in my collection for the first time in about a decade (I had the box taped shut from my move down from Alaska to California), and it was with extreme giddiness that I encountered some old friends again.
Meet the family...
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| #5, April 1980 |
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| #7, August 1980 |
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| #8, October 1980 |
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| #9, November 1980 |
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| #10, December 1980 |
I saw many a copy of Fangoria confiscated by the teachers and narcs at school in my time. Myself, I had at least three copies snagged from me in my high school days. I had buddies that had them confiscated regularly. While Fangoria was not officially an "adult" magazine, or even close to pornographic in any means, the gore and violence displayed in the magazine (along with occasional slips of nudity) meant that the book was not considered proper material for the youth haunting the hallways of America's schools. Some stores refused to carry it, and of those that did, some did classify it as an adult magazine, and would refuse to sell it to minors. The trick in obtaining Fangoria at the time – as well as National Lampoon, another magazine that walked the "adult" line that was a must in those days – was finding the stores that would sell it to you. I had a couple of ringers where most, if not all, of the clerks were pretty open to just making a buck as long as they didn't get hassled about it.
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| #11, February 1981 |
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| #13, June 1981 |
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| #15, October 1981 |
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| #18, April 1982 |
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| #21, August 1982 |
After school, I started working for a news agency that supplied most of Alaska (and that had a couple of stores in Hawaii at the time) with magazines and books. Having an apartment meant bills and more bills, and since I had a pretty big comic and baseball card habit at the time, some things had to go by the wayside. Working for the agency made it a little easier in one way: we were allowed to take a certain number of magazines home each week after all open orders had been pulled, as long as we tore the covers off of them. For an older teenage guy, it was a great way to get dirty magazines for free, but I also discovered that I didn't have to pay for Fangoria anymore. I regret the decision now, because while I still have the issues from those days and I continued to read the magazine faithfully, they don't have any covers.
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| #25, February 1983 |
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| #33, February 1984 |
These last two issues are the odd ones out, issues that I did buy with covers within that "cover tearing" span, probably because I had some extra cash at the time, or in the case of Videodrome, wanted to have one with a cover. When I started making more money a few years later after being promoted, I started buying Fango again properly, but I still have big chunks in my collection that are coverless. Still, while covers might give certain issues some very modest resale value, it's the material inside that counts. And I don't plan to sell my old Fangos anyway...
RTJ
[Note: The photos in this article are fresh scans of my own covers in my collection. If you want to snag them and post them, that's fine. I don't care.]
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