A Selection of Fictional Narratives, 1971
Editor and publisher: Gary Groth
Hello everyone and welcome to another installment of Ink Stains, where I cover a fanzine from long ago, cover to cover, including a pdf of the entire publication.
I recently saw this fanzine for sale on a Facebook group and gobbled it up! I realized I had this long ago, and totally forgotten it even existed, but I recognized many of the images immediately upon seeing them again. Here we are lucky enough to see Hawaii native and Steve Ditko fan supreme, Dennis Fujitake, at the height of his beautifully sinuous style, way back in 1971. In my opinion, by this time, Dennis had assumed his final form! The incongruous combination of Ditko and Jeff Jones was complete.
Though this zine is slight (only 16 pages), it is a viewing of an artist at the height of his creative powers. If you want to read an interview with Dennis within an earlier installment of this column, check out the column featuring RBCC here. For now, let’s jump into the first of the two stories, The Pearl.
while you see Fujitake’s own command of humor in panel 2.
On page two, there is so much evidence of an artist making all the right choices. A variety of angles and viewpoints adorn each panel. The figures, even just standing, have naturalized postures, while the scenery establishes the otherworldly aspect of the environment. And the last panel, in addition to being interestingly composed, literally points us to the next page.
More variety greets the eye on the third page seen above, including an intelligent use of negative space. I won’t show more and give away the EC like ending, but you can see it all in the pdf! Moving on to science fiction in the second story, A Better Choice, more intelligent use of both negative space to emphasize the scale and emptiness of the environment is seen, as well as the cramped surroundings of the main figure on the left.
This story is a little less inventive from a storytelling aspect, but it doesn’t need to be, as it is more about the relationships between the three characters. Several twists and turns in events transpired before, again, a sort of EC like twist ending.
And that is pretty much it. As I said, a bit slight…I wish there had been more stories, but maybe it was put together to whet the reader’s appetite for more. Assembled with the aid of Gary Groth in 1971, when Fantastic Fanzine was still in heavy rotation in the zine charts of readers like myself, but long before Groth would use Fujitake repeatedly in his flagship publication, The Comics Journal. Another place you can see Dennis and his work is at the Hawaii Herald here (thanks to a Facebook reader!)
This column sorta reflects the shortness of the subject itself, but I wanted to leave enough to the imagination so you would download the pdf! Head over to my website at kenmeyerjr.com to do that and please, leave a comment or two after reading the column. Come back again next time for more fanzine goodness from years past! As Dennis himself says below…
Ken Meyer Jr.
kenmeyerjr@yahoo.com
