Longtime comicbook fans will often lament the absence of comics from newsstands in recent decades, suggesting that the medium would be more visible there to newer, younger readers than they currently are in comics specialty shops. "How are kids supposed to find out about comics?" they will ask. "You can't find them at the neighborhood drugstore, like when I was a kid!"
But this might not be the solution that some fans think it is. Do kids today (or in the past couple decades) "haunt the magazine stand" the way that they did when you were their age? When was the last time that you saw someone under the age of 20 reading a magazine, or browsing the magazine shelf at a drugstore or supermarket? Not just a comic, but any magazine?
Things have changed a lot since I was a kid. I still check to see what magazines are on the shelves whenever I go to a place that sells them. This is a habit I developed in the 1980s, when I was a teenager. But I doubt that it is a habit that teenagers today (in 2023) have cultivated, since their entertainment and informational needs are likely met elsewhere -- probably in the smartphone that they already have in their hand or their pocket.
I thought that it might be worthwhile to explore here my own history of buying magazines when I was young. This should not be considered a complete list by any means, as I'm sure I've forgotten many magazines that I bought, read, and later discarded during the 1980s. The list reflects my own personal taste, of course, heavy on comic books and related matter. For other people, their favorite reading material growing up may have been magazines that I ignored like Seventeen, Teen Beat, Pro Wrestling Illustrated or Cat Fancy. Each individual would have their own story to tell about what they bought based on their own interests.
I have limited this list to magazines that I bought at local bookstores, drugstores, supermarkets and convenience stores (like 7-11) with the exception of four titles: The Electric Company (purchased through school), The Comics Journal (bought at comics shops and later subscribed), Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (I had a subscription) and Doctor Who Magazine (mailed to me by a friend living overseas). Aside from those four exceptions, no magazines that I likely bought at comics shops or acquired via the mail in the 1980s are listed below.
While reading the following post, however, ask yourself this question: Would a kid today, at the ages mentioned below, do the same as I did back then? Or would my interest in magazines be unusual and outside the norm? And how did my own buying habits compare to yours at that age?
The earliest magazines that I owned or read were ones that I hadn't bought for myself, but were purchased for me, when I was in elementary school in the late 1970s. Some of them were acquired or discovered at school, like Highlights magazine. My family briefly had a subscription to Children's Digest in the late 1970s when Hergé's Tintin comic was being serialized in its pages (although I wouldn't appreciate Tintin until decades later, after I was an adult). I recall buying a copy of The Electric Company magazine through my school, probably the June 1979 issue shown at left, which came out when I was 8 years old. The main attraction there, of course, was the presence of Spider-Man, whose Marvel comics I was already buying. I also vaguely recall buying an issue of the educational 3-2-1 Contact magazine during this time.
Probably the first magazine that many kids of my generation bought was Mad magazine. Looking through a cover gallery of Mad and its thicker companion Mad Super Special, however, very few covers jumped out at me as ones I knew that I bought back then. I know that I did get Mad Super Special #28 (Fall 1979) which contained a color reprint insert of a 1950s Mad comic. I was born in late 1970, so I would have been around 9 years old when that issue came out. I know that I had an earlier issue, too, #26 (1978) which contained a flexidisc record, that I probably also got new, when I was 7 or 8 years old! None of the covers of the regular Mad series ring a bell with me, although it's likely that I would have bought one or two of those as well back then, during my elementary school days, circa 1978 to 1981.
Cracked was the poor man's Mad, but I occasionally bought it as well when I was a pre-teen. I know that I bought King-Sized Cracked #13 (1979). Of the regular Cracked series, I think I bought #166 (Jan. 1980), #174 (Dec. 1980), #176 (March 1981), #177 (May 1981), and #180 (Sept. 1981). Hmmm, seems that I liked Cracked more than Mad! For whatever reason, apparently I stopped buying either series by the time I turned 11 years old in late 1981. Perhaps I felt that I had outgrown them.
Crazy was Marvel's own attempt to compete with Mad. I may have bought an occasional issue earlier than this, but the first issue that I'm certain I bought was #68 (Nov. 1980), shown here. I also bought #69, #70, possibly #71, #73, and possibly #82 (Jan. 1982) which had the X-Men on the cover. The series' final issue was #94 (April 1983) but I had stopped buying it long before that -- again, probably because I felt that I had outgrown its brand of humor.
Just as I was outgrowing the other humor mags, the boy who lived next door let me know about one I'd never heard of before: CARtoons. This was like Mad, but all about cars. I bought the next issue that I saw at the local drugstore, my first one being the July-August 1981 issue. I bought CARtoons for the next couple years until I "outgrew" it as well. Looking at a cover gallery, I bought the following issues when they came out: September-October 1981; November-December 1981; January-February 1982; March-April 1982; May-June 1982; September 1982; January-February 1983; May-June 1983; September 1983; November-December 1983; and finally (my last issue) July-August 1984. As I recall, I stopped buying it in 1984 (by then I was 13 years old) because I didn't enjoy its contents as much as I had when I first started buying it in 1981 at age 10.
This era was not only the heyday of humor mags, but also magazines about science fiction movies and TV, most notably Starlog. Looking at a cover gallery, however, none of the issues looked particularly familiar to me. It's a bit surprising that I would not have bought it back then, given my interest in Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the first two Superman movies at that age. I did buy (and still have) Best of Starlog #2 from 1981, which reprinted articles from previous issues. I assume that I bought it at the local drugstore (West Grange Drugs, the same place that I bought CARtoons, and which incidentally removed their comicbook spinner rack around 1981). This issue contained a short news item about Doctor Who, which was one of my earliest encounters with that TV series. (My oldest brother had also gifted me a hardcover book of three Doctor Who novelizations around the same time. I don't think I actually saw an episode on TV, though, until 1982 when it began airing on local TV channel 62 in May of that year.)
I also bought (or perhaps someone else bought for me) Fangoria #3 (Dec. 1979) -- if memory serves, at the local Kroger grocery store -- around the time I turned 9 years old. Although we now associate Fangoria with horror movies, particularly gory ones (of which I'm not a fan), back then I must have assumed it was another Starlog-type mag about fantasy films. As far as I know, this was the only issue of Fangoria that I have ever bought.
Naturally enough, the next type of magazines that I began buying were magazines about comic books. One of the first magazines about comics that I ever bought was Comics Scene #11 (Sept. 1983), which I'd mentioned before on this blog in an April 2014 post. I was 12 years old when the issue came out and probably bought the issue at a local bookstore. This magazine was my introduction to many creators and comics that I knew nothing about, including many of the new independents available only at comics shops (which I went to every few months or so). I considered myself too "old" for Archie comics, but this issue of Comics Scene had noted that an evidently-notable person named Bob Bolling was going to be writing and drawing Archie & Me beginning with issue #141. I'd been buying superhero comics at the local Lawson's convenience store for many years without shame, but suddenly I felt a little embarrassed bringing my copy of #142 (I missed #141) to the man at the cash register. When I got the issue home and read it, however, I loved it. I no longer felt any discomfort buying an Archie comic in public.
Comics Scene #11 was the final issue of that series for the next several years. (It was revived in the late 1980s, although I don't think I bought it then.) Thankfully, another publication, Comics Collector (edited by Don & Maggie Thompson) stepped in to fill the void. My first issue was #2 (Winter 1984) which came out in late 1983, around the time that I turned 13 years old. As with Comics Scene #11, fan favorites the X-Men were on the cover. (The issue even continued the Chris Claremont interview that had begun in Comics Scene #11.) Likewise CC #2 introduced me to things I knew nothing about, such as a 1950s publisher called EC Comics and an independent comic called Ms. Tree. The artist of that comic said in his interview that he didn't "follow any of those rules" that were in the book How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way. Wait, you mean there was another way to draw comics?? This was a freeing thought.
I bought the next issue, Comics Collector #3 (Spring 1984) when it came out, which had an article about other 1950s horror comics (beyond EC) and Will Murray on the "pre-Marvel" monster anthology comics. I'd read a few of Stan Lee's "Origins" books, which made it sound like Marvel hadn't done anything worthwhile until FF #1. Now here was Will Murray suggesting that those pre-FF comics had merit, even feeling nostalgic for them. I began hunting down reprints of these old comics to find out for myself. Murray's article referred to Steve Ditko's 5-page fantasy tales as "the Brothers Grimm by way of O. Henry and Rod Serling." I'd heard the name O. Henry once or twice before, but Murray's mention of it here caused me to seek out a book of O. Henry's tales from my local library, which introduced me to his famous story "The Gift of the Magi," among others.
I bought Comics Collector #2-4 and #8 when they came out, and learned a lot about comics history from them. It's too bad, however, that I didn't buy #7 (Spring 1985) back then, since it contained an informative overview of Doctor Who. At the time my exposure to the TV show was limited mainly to a couple Tom Baker stories. It wasn't until 1989 that I really became a fan of Doctor Who and wanted to learn more about its history. A lot of my questions would have been answered much earlier if I'd simply bought Comics Collector #7 when it came out in 1985!
1983-85 was a time of transition and growth for me as a comics reader, but sometimes I wonder if it might have never taken place if I hadn't bought these comics fan magazines at precisely that time, to introduce me to those comics and creators that I hadn't known about before. It's possible that I might have drifted away from buying comics entirely, moving over to focus on prose fiction instead. Also during this time I bought my first issue of The Comics Journal (#83, August 1983), which featured the second part of a lengthy Dave Sim interview. I assume that I bought the issue at a local comics shop. However I was too young to appreciate the issue, and was in fact a bit disturbed by some of its more mature contents, so I didn't keep the issue around. I wouldn't buy another issue until #118 (December 1987), by which time I was 17 years old and much more appreciative of its combative style. In fact, I got a mail subscription beginning with #129 (May 1989), since I couldn't rely on comics shops to always carry a copy on their shelves.
Since I had begun buying Archie's teen humor titles in late 1983, I finally got around to buying the digest magazines a year later. These consisted of reprints of older Archie stories, mostly from the 1960s and 1970s with an occasional 1950s strip thrown in. I think the first digest I bought was Archie... Archie Andrews, Where Are You #34 (Oct. 1984), followed closely by Laugh Comics Digest #55 and Betty & Veronica Comics Digest #10 (both Nov. 1984) and Archie Comics Digest #69 (Dec. 1984). I then bought others in Archie's digest line throughout 1985. I also bought the first two Gladstone digests (Uncle Scrooge Goes to Disneyland and Walt Disney's Disneyland Birthday) when I saw them at a local convenience store in 1985. (Needless to say, Archie still publishes digest magazines today, which can usually be found in the checkout aisles of your local supermarket.)
DC was also publishing a digest at that time, The Best of DC (a.k.a. Blue Ribbon Digest), which were sold at local convenience stores like Lawson's. I had begun buying DC comics more regularly in 1983, having grown bored with Marvel, and by 1985 was buying more DC titles than anything else. The first DC digest that I bought was #46 (March 1984) which featured several old Jimmy Olsen stories, causing me to become a fan of them. I also bought #48 (May 1984), but wouldn't buy an issue again until #60 (May 1985) which reprinted 1970s Plop! stories. I also bought #63 (August 1985, more Plop!) and #67 (December 1985; 1960s Legion of Super-Heroes reprints). The final issue was #71 (April 1986). In retrospect, it's odd that I didn't buy the series more often than I did, since I very much enjoyed the ones I had gotten. And looking at the covers now of the ones I missed, I'm pretty sure that I would have been at least intrigued by many of them, had I seen them.
In late 1983, around the time I turned 13 years old, I was increasingly interested in not only old comicbooks, but old anything. I had been fascinated by "The Bloody Pulps" chapter of Jim Steranko's History of Comics Volume One (1970) which was my introduction to old-time radio (via The Shadow), H. P. Lovecraft and Weird Tales, Nick Carter, and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (EQMM, for short). I had noticed the new Nick Carter Killmaster paperback novels at the local Kmart store and began buying them with book #183 (December 1983). I would also sometimes buy a Mack Bolan (The Executioner) novel in 1984, and saw them as being like the modern-day equivalents of the old pulp heroes that Steranko had written about. I had bought a few back issues of EQMM at a local hobby shop around that time, and also noticed that the magazine was still being published. However I never bought a copy of EQMM on the magazine shelves during the 1980s because I got myself a mail subscription that began with the May 1984 issue. I was 13 years old at the time. Shown here is my well-worn copy; I always tore the mailing labels off the covers, even though this inevitably damaged them. Incidentally, I would occasionally see an issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine on the magazine shelf at local grocery stores, but I never bought an issue of that series in the 1980s. I think the caricature of Alfred Hitchcock's face that appeared on their covers at the time didn't appeal to my desire to replicate the experience of reading an old pulp-like magazine. (Neither did EQMM's cheesy photo covers of the 1980s, of course, but I had gotten hooked on the series by reading older issues.)
I had been hoping to find a modern-day equivalent of the old magazines like The Saturday Evening Post (back when the covers were painted by Norman Rockwell). I actually bought an issue of the Post in 1984, but of course it failed to satisfy my longing to experience the lost world of the past since it seemed to be aimed more at older housewives. So when I stumbled upon an issue of Good Old Days at the local Farmer Jack grocery store's magazine rack, I bought it immediately and knew I'd found what I'd been looking for. In a journal entry for school soon after Christmas that year, I swiped a line from a poem called "The Mystic's Christmas" in this issue, saying that I celebrated the spirit of Christmas "every morn" and not just on one day of the year.
On my old website, back in 2002, I noted about this issue that "a blurb at the top said, '72 pages in this issue,' a line reminiscent perhaps of the old comicbooks, like Superman #1 which had “64 pages of action” on its cover." (Superman #1, which I had read in the treasury-sized reprint, was one of my all-time favorite comic books.) "Like that Superman cover, the scene on the cover of this Good Old Days Christmas Annual was contained inside a circle. It was a painting showing an old man giving a boy a star-shaped cookie from a basket. The boy is holding a snowball behind his back, which suggests that he had intended originally to throw a snowball at the old man, until his mind was changed by the old man’s kindness to him. The houses in the background are reminiscent of the quaint houses of a European village, the kind that Ditko tends to draw. This was the kind of cover I’d been looking for!"
The first issue of the regular
Good Old Days series that I ever bought was the January 1985 issue, shown here. On my website in 2002, I said of this issue:
"Is that a great cover or what? I seem to recall that it was snowy out when I bought that issue, and the cover helped me connect my current snowy present with the snowy days of the past." I think I realized back then that my nostalgia-influenced present was itself "the good old days," too, as long as it was filled with living examples of yesterday, such as this magazine. Although I was only 14 years old, and not really its target audience, I bought
Good Old Days regularly throughout 1985. Each issue was filled with reader-submitted anecdotes about the old days, usually the turn of the century up to the 1940s, and each story was short (only a few pages at most) which kept me from getting bored. The
"Looking Hollywood Way" column in each issue was also my introduction to old Hollywood films (including silent movies), long before I ever took much of an interest in reading about them in books.
Before writing this post, I assumed that I began buying
Omni magazine in the late 1980s, since I recall reading about the drug MDMA in its pages circa December 1987. It was difficult to determine now which issues I had owned back then, though, since the covers all have a generally similar look. But then I remembered that I had quoted a Gardner Dozios story at the beginning of a short story I'd written in 1984, at age 13. Surely the only place that I would have encountered Dozios at that age was in
Omni. Checking an index online, I discovered that the Dozios story I had quoted (its first paragraph, about an old house) appeared in the January 1984 issue of
Omni. Further investigation revealed that I had owned the March 1984 issue as well. So, I was buying it as early as 13 years old, which kinda blows my mind.
The Twilight Zone was (and is) my all-time favorite TV series, so it was natural that I would eventually buy an issue of
Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine. However, I can recall buying only one issue, dated February 1985, which featured Stephen King and Peter Straub on the cover. I was a fan of both authors at the time. If memory serves, I bought it at the local Kmart store. In early 1989, I submitted a short story to the magazine, promptly receiving a rejection slip in reply -- and never dreaming that the magazine would soon be cancelled. The final issue was published in June 1989.
I believe the first issue of
Comics Feature that I ever bought was #34 (March 1985) which I recall buying at the local Page One bookstore. I no longer have a copy of the issue, however, and was unable to find any interior pages online to help jog my memory. I definitely bought #40 (January 1986) when it came out, and also #43 (April 1986), probably also at Page One. In retrospect it's odd to me that I didn't take better care of my magazines, and while I no longer have #43, my copy of #40 is tattered and missing pages that I had clipped out at some point during my teenage years.
Comics Feature was cancelled with #57 (July 1987) which is too bad since it was an interesting (if somewhat sloppily laid-out) magazine about comics aimed at general readers.
I began buying Fate magazine at age 14 at the local Page One bookstore after my dad had mentioned buying Fate back in the day. Each digest-sized issue was filled with supposedly "true" accounts of encounters with ghosts, flying saucers, and other strange phenomena. My first issue was April 1985, still being run by Curtis Fuller who co-founded Fate in 1948. I bought Fate occasionally in 1985-86, but had drifted on when Fuller left in 1988. I did buy an issue again in 1992, and then later got a mail subscription to Fate when it was a full-size magazine, from 1996 to 2001. Fate is still being published today (back to its original digest size) but much more infrequently than before, sad to say.
The only issue of Creepy magazine that I ever bought was #146 (Summer 1985), the last one published. I had been aware of Creepy and Eerie since the late 1970s because one of my older brothers was on the staff at Warren and he had brought home several back issues that I had read. Creepy was cancelled with #145 (February 1983) but I don't recall ever seeing the magazine on the stands in the early 1980s. So I was surprised when I discovered this new issue on the shelf at West Grange Drugs in mid-1985 and bought it. It turned out to be a short-lived revival, a one-shot published by Harris Comics. Probably my favorite stories in the issue were the ones drawn by John Severin (inked by Wally Wood) and Russ Heath. I was unfamiliar with Heath's work, but the solid realism of his figures made me a fan right away. Typical of how casually I treated magazines, I put starred ratings next to each story that was listed on the Table of Contents page, ranking them by how much I had enjoyed them. This is a common practice that people do for prose short story anthologies, but would horrify most comic collectors.
The only issue of Epic Illustrated that I recall ever buying was #31 (August 1985). Epic was Marvel's attempt to compete with Heavy Metal (which I never bought prior to the 1990s) -- a glossy magazine containing fantasy and science fiction strips (including foreign material) aimed at an older audience. So, it's only natural that I didn't get around to buying a copy of Epic until 1985 when I was 14 years old, and a bit more interested in trying that sort of artsy publication. (I never did buy an issue of Marvel's most successful magazine Savage Sword of Conan, however.) I was intrigued by this issue of Epic, and probably would have bought it more often, but the series was soon cancelled with #34 (February 1986). I give Marvel credit for having tried to do something more mature than their usual fare, and in an impressive format more appealing to adult readers.
Another Marvel magazine that I tried back then was Savage Tales #3 (February 1986). This was a short-lived B&W series focusing on military action and adventure, copying the trends of the decade that gave us Rambo and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. I didn't think much of the magazine, however, and didn't keep a copy. Interestingly, the blood-stained smiley-face in the corner box of the cover anticipates the famous motif in Watchmen, whose first issue would not appear until later that year. Anyway, Savage Tales didn't last long; its final issue was #8 (December 1986).
The Suspect Magazine was like a cross between a puzzle magazine and a mystery digest, of the type that can still occasionally be found at the checkout aisles of supermarkets, racked next to Reader's Digest and the like. I bought it off the magazine shelf at a local bookstore in early 1986, during a period when I was trying out various prose magazines to see if I liked them or not. It seemed unusual, so I bought it. Unfortunately, it looked so boring inside that I never actually read it, ever. Most of the issue is devoted to a long prose story titled "The Medical Mafia." The ending is left off, and the readers are supposed to write in with their own ending. Then the next issue will feature the ending of the story, and whichever reader's answer matches the ending will win a prize. This issue also contains the ending of the previous issue's mystery story. There's also some one-page mini-mysteries, reprinted from a 1957 publication. It sounds more interesting than it is! (It's certainly obscure. The cover image shown here is from a scan of my own copy that I made in 2014. Good luck trying to find one elsewhere on the internet.)
The first digest-size prose fiction science fiction magazines that I ever bought are shown here, all purchased at a local bookstore in 1986 when I was 15 years old. At the time, I aspired to become a professional short story writer, so I figured that I ought to acquaint myself with the market outside of EQMM. Unfortunately, I didn't quite warm up to the SF mags. I thought they were cool and interesting, but I didn't buy them regularly again in the 1980s. (I did briefly get a mail subscription to Asimov's, however, in 1989.) The issues shown above are: the March 1986 issue of Asimov's, the April 1986 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (or F&SF, for short) and the May 1986 issue of Amazing Stories.
In 1986, I began taking more of an interest in music. This was the year that I really became a true fan of the Beatles (previously I enjoyed them in a more casual, uninformed way), Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, and many others. It was also the year that I began writing my own songs, imitating the styles of my favorite artists. I also began paying more attention to new artists, especially lesser-known ones like Scritti Politti, Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Jesus & Mary Chain. The latter group (as well as another favorite at the time, Dream Academy) were mentioned on the cover of the May 1986 issue of Creem magazine, which would explain why I bought it. Unlike many of the other magazines on this list, however, I no longer have a copy of the issue.
Although I generally took care of my comic books, I considered magazines to be more functional than collectible, and at some point I clipped out the articles in this issue and likely discarded the rest of it. I probably bought other music-related mags around this time, including an issue of Charlton's Song Hits, but I was unable to ascertain which ones all these years later. (Speaking of Charlton, I recall being so disappointed at being unable to buy a new Charlton comic in the late 1980s -- since they had stopped publishing them -- that one day at the local drugstore I bought one of their thick crossword puzzle magazines, just to be able to buy a Charlton again.) I recall buying a magazine about ninjas in the mid-1980s at the local Lawson's store, but that issue is also long gone, so I don't even know what its name was. So, this list of what magazines I bought as a teenager is obviously incomplete.
The Life and Times of Sinatra was a one-shot special about singer Frank Sinatra published in 1986 by Lady's Circle magazine. I bought this at the local 7-11 (I think) when I saw it on the stands, at either age 15 or 16. It was an impulse purchase, since I wanted to learn more about this important singer who was recently in the news due to the controversial unauthorized biography of him by Kitty Kelley, published the same year. This magazine consisted primarily of B&W photos from the 1940s era, which at the time would have been more interesting to me than his long career's subsequent decades. (Unlike the Creem issue described above, I think I still have a copy of this Sinatra magazine somewhere in my collection.)
I was uninterested in politics prior to the election year of 1988, when I was 17 years old. I was following the race for the U.S. presidency as an observer, but was still too young to vote. I don't know if I actually bought the April 11, 1988 issue of Time magazine when I saw it on the stands, probably at Lawson's (which by then was renamed Dairy Mart, and would close the following year), but its cover certainly got my attention. I was rooting for Jesse Jackson to win the Democratic nomination, since I felt that having a Black president would by a symbolic message to the world about the opportunities available to anyone in America, regardless of race (an overly-optimistic view, I admit). Incidentally, a month earlier, Time had a John Byrne illustration of Superman on the cover, to celebrate the character's 50th anniverary. I probably noticed it on the stands when it came out, although I'm not sure if I bought that issue either. At any rate, by 1992 I was finally old enough to vote in a Presidential election, and followed that race even more closely than I had the 1988 election, buying a few issues of both Newsweek and Time that had Bill Clinton on their covers and rooting for him to win.
It's possible that I bought an issue of
SPIN magazine prior to this August 1988 issue that cover-featured the exploding independent comics scene. If so, those earlier issues have faded from memory. But this issue was a must-have when I saw it on the magazine shelf at the time, since comicbooks typically didn't have the kind of mainstream coverage back then that they sometimes receive today. (Incidentally, Frank Miller was name-checked on the cover of the May 1986 issue, since there was a brief article inside about his recently-released
Dark Knight Returns series for DC.) My sister had a subscription to
Rolling Stone, so I was able to read her copy of the February 1988 issue that had articles about Alan Moore and Clive Barker when it came out.
The first issue of Analog that I ever bought was the November 1988 issue, around the time that I turned 18 years old. I think I bought it at a local bookstore. This was a few months before I graduated high school, when I was planning to become a professional writer and intending to submit short stories to various publications. So, like I had done two years previously, I figured that I ought to buy some of the current magazines and read them, to know what their editors were looking for. But once again, I found that I wasn't much interested in modern science fiction prose magazines, and wouldn't buy another issue of Analog until 2011.
I began watching Doctor Who regularly in early 1989, taping it off the local PBS station every week, and gradually becoming a big fan of the show. (I have long considered it my 2nd favorite TV series, after The Twilight Zone.) Sometime in 1989, a friend of mine who was then living in England mailed me a copy of Doctor Who Magazine #127 (August 1987). This was the first issue of DWM that I ever read, and I was hooked! This led to him mailing me additional issues of the magazine, as well as related fanzines like DWB, The Frame, Skaro and Proteus that were difficult to obtain in the States. I never even saw a copy of DWM in a U.S. bookstore until sometime in the mid-1990s. I had a letter published in DWM #175 (July 1991) but wouldn't learn about it until circa 2008 when I bought it as a back issue at a local comics shop and saw my name in print.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I began buying more magazines at comics shops, too numerous to discuss here. These were generally low-circulation fan-oriented publications, not the kind that was typically found on the shelves of a drugstore or supermarket. However I still kept my eye on the traditional magazine shelves, and have occasionally purchased something of interest there over the years. When I bought the magazines listed above, their presence on the shelf was usually a surprise to me, since I generally had no advance knowledge of release dates. So a person had to pay attention to the magazine racks and not ignore them, in order to not miss out on something unexpected that had arrived.
At any rate, this seems to be a good place to bring this post to an end.
It could be argued that the above list is proof that if comics were available on newsstands again that kids today would be more likely to see them. Yes, I had a habit of checking out the new magazines whenever I went shopping, but it seems to me unlikely that the children and teenagers of today are doing the same. There are just too many other things to hold their interest than thin paper objects that cost money. If they want to look at pictures or read articles, they are more likely to look them up online rather than opening the pages of a book or magazine.
For most young people nowadays, their internet service being down or disrupted is intolerable, but for people my age the internet was "down" during the entirety of our youth. How did we stand it? Weren't we bored out of our minds? Somehow we survived, and I'm kinda glad that I grew up when I did, so that I was able to experience the joy of reading and the thrill of discovery that was awaiting me on the magazine stands.
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