Hunt continues for early British comic zines at The Fanscene Project

Artist and comics archivist David Hathaway-Price is still busy adding rare British comic fanzines to  The Fanscene Project – but there are still titles out there yet to be added. Can you help?

Founded back in 2015 as the Classic UK Comic Zines site The Fanscene Project – located online at comicsfanzines.co.uk – is an online, read-only archive of British comic fanzines published across the last 60 years, including, with the permission of their original editors, titles such as BEMComic Media NewsFantasy TraderInfinitySpeakeasy, and many more. It even includes incredibly rare digital editions of very early zines such as Ka-Pow, published by Phil Clarke and Steve Moore back in 1967/68.

One of many gems in the digital collection is ZEPHYR a general ‘zine published in 1973 and 1974 by the late Trevor Hughes, featuring covers by artists such as Steve Craddock, Geoff Barton and Mike Docherty. Alongside plenty of “For Sale” ads, the zine featured various comic strips, American comic news, convention reports, “Tolkien News” (in early issues) and more.

Stan Lee himself was one of the title’s correspondents in the Letters of Comment in Issue 5. British luminaries such as Alan Austin, Ramsey Campbell, Kevin O’Donnell (also an art contributor) Pete Scott, also wrote in to other issues.

An extract from a featur on Trevor Hughes Fanzine Lending Library in Zephyr Issue 7
An extract from a featur on Trevor Hughes Fanzine Lending Library in Zephyr Issue 7

“Trevor was very kind in giving me access to his zine collection,” says David. “In the early to mid 1970s Trev’ ran a fanzine lending library, generously allowing fans to borrow zines they might not have otherwise been able to read.

“Unfortunately, he didn’t have a full collection of his own work, so some of the early issues are missing, and I haven’t managed to find them elsewhere. The search goes on…”

If you were a follower of Trevor Hughes publications, you can contact David via The Fanscene Project

If you would like to see a full PDF of ZEPHYR #6 (read only), it can be found with other issues here

• Alongside providing this treasure trove of zines, David has also published FANSCENE, “a love letter to British Comics fandom”; celebrating the comics and zines from the 1960s through to the present day. This terrific series of eight digital and print magazines offer a huge range of material on fandom, and more



Categories: British Comics, Comics, Digital Media, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News, Other Worlds

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