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morgandawnBack in the olden days, fanzine publishers had to physically pick up their K/S fic and art and hand carry it to a local print shop. And then another. And then another. The tales of their journeys to find a print shop that would publish Captain Krik and Mr Spock in...intimate situations.....are epic, amusing and inspiring. All hail to our brave Foresmutters.
Here are a few of them
Publisher 1:
"Once I finished "T'hy'la" #1, I needed to get the zine in print and that would require finding a new printer. If I took "T'hy'la" to the printer I'd been using for my genzine, he'd have a heart attack....It was, I admit, a bit difficult to go in there for the first time. I was a bit...embarrassed. After all, I was asking them to print explicit art of naked men doing sexual things with each other...The people who owned the print shop were as cool as they could be....My printer really enjoyed printing my zines. By the time I'd done my 3rd or 4th issue, he told me the women in the bindery always looked forward to my zines. They'd post prints of the artwork on the bindery walls to keep them entertained while they worked."
Publisher 2:
"The manager, long inured to what she's been so faithfully producing for us, engaged me in a discussion about a Gayle F picture! The one where Kirk is straddling Spock in the grass, he is obviously being penetrated, Spock is raised up just a bit so he can twist Kirk's nipples, Kirk has Spock's cock in his hand, and our captain's head is thrown back in a fair imitation of ecstasy. I don't know if you can get more explicit that this picture.
Publisher 3:
"K/S Tale of Woe of the Month: So I was having [my K/S zine] printed a few weeks ago, along with some additional artwork reprints that I needed. Specifically, a computer-generated piece of art (CGA) that had been done..... It's a fabulous work of art, one of my absolute favorites, and if I ever get a K/S room of my own, it will be up on my wall. Anyway, this work is reproduced by using a disk and not an original on a piece of paper. I was picking my order up when I casually asked the manager if there had been any problems with reproduction. She replied that she and her trusty assistant (both of them women in their 60s who aren't too computer literate) hadn't been able to get the disk to work properly, so they had enlisted the aid of "Jeremy." I blanched. "Jeremy?" I asked. He is young and enthusiastic and has never impressed me as a reasoned thinker. "Did he, uh, give you any trouble with the content?" (The picture in question shows Spock in a white shirt sitting on the floor against the side of a bed, between Kirk's knees, as Kirk sits, naked, behind him on the bed. Yeah, I did say it was a favorite....) "Oh, don't worry about it," the manager reassured me. "By now, almost everybody around here has seen your pictures. If they have a problem with what you're doing, they keep it to themselves." Oh. Great. So now I know why occasionally I get some strange looks.... Why the fellow who carries most of my boxes out to the car seems intent on talking about God all the time, and why the women up front seem so friendly.... "
Publisher 4
"The fanzine is a little late. Some of this is in the nature of fanzines, which always seem to take longer than planned to produce. A good chunk of the delay may be laid at the door of my original color printer. This man managed to leaf through [my sample zines] Mirrors of Mind and Flesh, The Price and The Prize, Greater California K/S, and T'Hy'La without noticing anything explicit enough to bother him. He seemed bemused but accepting of the project. Then, when I brought in my color art, he announced he couldn't print it. Upsetting in the waste of time, and the additional expense, but who wants a blind printer?"
Here are a few of them
Publisher 1:
"Once I finished "T'hy'la" #1, I needed to get the zine in print and that would require finding a new printer. If I took "T'hy'la" to the printer I'd been using for my genzine, he'd have a heart attack....It was, I admit, a bit difficult to go in there for the first time. I was a bit...embarrassed. After all, I was asking them to print explicit art of naked men doing sexual things with each other...The people who owned the print shop were as cool as they could be....My printer really enjoyed printing my zines. By the time I'd done my 3rd or 4th issue, he told me the women in the bindery always looked forward to my zines. They'd post prints of the artwork on the bindery walls to keep them entertained while they worked."
Publisher 2:
"The manager, long inured to what she's been so faithfully producing for us, engaged me in a discussion about a Gayle F picture! The one where Kirk is straddling Spock in the grass, he is obviously being penetrated, Spock is raised up just a bit so he can twist Kirk's nipples, Kirk has Spock's cock in his hand, and our captain's head is thrown back in a fair imitation of ecstasy. I don't know if you can get more explicit that this picture.
- "Oh, look at this," she said. That's really nice."
- "Yes," I enthused." She's a terrific artist."
- "No," the manager chided me. "I meant the quality. We caught most of the details."
Publisher 3:
"K/S Tale of Woe of the Month: So I was having [my K/S zine] printed a few weeks ago, along with some additional artwork reprints that I needed. Specifically, a computer-generated piece of art (CGA) that had been done..... It's a fabulous work of art, one of my absolute favorites, and if I ever get a K/S room of my own, it will be up on my wall. Anyway, this work is reproduced by using a disk and not an original on a piece of paper. I was picking my order up when I casually asked the manager if there had been any problems with reproduction. She replied that she and her trusty assistant (both of them women in their 60s who aren't too computer literate) hadn't been able to get the disk to work properly, so they had enlisted the aid of "Jeremy." I blanched. "Jeremy?" I asked. He is young and enthusiastic and has never impressed me as a reasoned thinker. "Did he, uh, give you any trouble with the content?" (The picture in question shows Spock in a white shirt sitting on the floor against the side of a bed, between Kirk's knees, as Kirk sits, naked, behind him on the bed. Yeah, I did say it was a favorite....) "Oh, don't worry about it," the manager reassured me. "By now, almost everybody around here has seen your pictures. If they have a problem with what you're doing, they keep it to themselves." Oh. Great. So now I know why occasionally I get some strange looks.... Why the fellow who carries most of my boxes out to the car seems intent on talking about God all the time, and why the women up front seem so friendly.... "
Publisher 4
"The fanzine is a little late. Some of this is in the nature of fanzines, which always seem to take longer than planned to produce. A good chunk of the delay may be laid at the door of my original color printer. This man managed to leaf through [my sample zines] Mirrors of Mind and Flesh, The Price and The Prize, Greater California K/S, and T'Hy'La without noticing anything explicit enough to bother him. He seemed bemused but accepting of the project. Then, when I brought in my color art, he announced he couldn't print it. Upsetting in the waste of time, and the additional expense, but who wants a blind printer?"
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Date: 2013-08-08 04:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-08 05:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2013-08-09 05:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-10 03:48 am (UTC)and still today...
Date: 2013-08-10 04:07 am (UTC)My own printer of 10 years went out of business just before I was planning to print 3 new slash Starsky & Hutch zines in 2012. So I found myself traveling around my neighborhood (suburban Maryland) talking to printers, trying to explain what I publish, while showing them copies of previous zines. Found a printer within walking distance of my home who was very familiar with the printer I lost. During the initial conversation with the owner (male, straight, maybe mid-50's), he assured me he had always been supportive of marriage equality and had worked with our local LGBT community on printing projects. I showed him two previous zines, and its art, and he seemed very comfortable with it. However, then the conversation got down to specifics.
Him: "This looks fine. Of course, you don't publish anything with bondage or S&M in it, right?"
Me (getting ready to publish a huge bondage novel with 4 pieces of explicit art: "Uh...well...as a matter of fact yes."
Him (looking a little uncomfortable): "But it's all consensual, right?"
Me (getting a sinking feeling): "Not always. Is that a problem?"
Him (with just a little squirm): "No one's underage are they?"
Me (confidently): "Absolutely not. Everyone's an adult."
Him (clearly feeling on better footing): "Well, that's fine then!"
They published actually 4 zines, including the bondage one. Though the nice man who helped me haul the heavy boxes out to the car very respectfully asked, "How did you ever get permission to use those images of Starsky and Hutch?" Clearly, he meant the bondage pics. I could only laugh. "Oh, we don't have permission! We don't even ask." And then I explained about fanfiction history, small distribution, and the fact that Spelling-Goldberg, fortunately, has never cared what their fans did with their shows. He's a great printer, and I love working with them, but I can't imagine what the guys in the back discussed when they first got a good look at those zines.
Re: and still today...
Date: 2013-08-10 04:15 am (UTC)hopefully,it wasn't "hey Verne that's even bigger than you!"