Yip!*: Back Issue

If you read comic books in the late 20th Century, then you'll likely also enjoy this magazine, which covers comics from that era.  Similar to what Roy Thomas does for mid-20th century comics in Alter Ego, Back Issue's writers examine comics in a critical and enthusiastic light, so you get interviews with creators, retrospectives of various series, and other features that illuminate the subject.  Founding editor Michael Eury has retired, but with luck the magazine will continue to be fun.  There's some danger that after more than 150 issues that they may have exhausted the subject, but they could always expand into the early 21st-Century at this point seeing how we're a quarter-century in now.  Every once in a while, the publisher will have a crazy sale.  I picked up a number of "back issues" of Back Issue for $5 a pop each.  There are very few ads, so the magazine is dense at 80 pages or so.  They also keep their eversions available, so one can read the entire run electronically if one were so inclined.  I found it better to dip into the issues where the comics covered were of particular interest to me, but the magazine is very good, so I am more likely now to read it regularly even when that issue's theme doesn't strike me as particularly interesting.  If, like me, you deplore much of what passes for contemporary comic books (variant covers, recycled storylines, cramming everything into 6-issue arcs, horrible computer-assisted art, too many unnecessary staffers causing the comics to be too expensive, and I'll stop ranting now, though I could go on and on and on), then Back Issue is a good way to still enjoy comics as it can point the way to overlooked gems from the past and get one to reappraise works one has read before.

*Yips! are good things!  So is my latest novel, Fast Guy Slows Down!