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Lollapaloosa 4: March 1980
Editor/publisher: Mitch O’Connell

I confess, I am assembling this edition of Ink Stains at the last minute, due to a ton of work, but that works out fine in this case. Mitch O’Connell’s well put together Lollapaloosa does not need much exposition, in particular this issue, the “all art issue.” It is filled with a plethora of outstanding artists, fan and professional, starting with the John Byrne/McConnell cover seen above. Below, you can see the back cover, a nicely done McConnell version of Swamp Thing, for example.

Mitch provided me with some text from his website and book, referring to his entry into fanzine history, saying:

Combining my desire to draw comics and see my stuff in print, I took matters in my own hands and self-published five issues of my own comic themed fanzine, Lollapaloosa (apparently it’s properly spelled “Lollapalooza,” but misspellings are my trademark) from ’77 to ’80. I did show some of that other trademark, hubris, by leading off in issue #1 with an illustrated article containing every pearl of wisdom you’d ever need to know about breaking into the comic business. The savvy reader might had noticed that the author, presumably previously armed with all this knowledge, had only attained fanzine level, but no matter, I still happily filled up issue after issue with my not quite professional work. Inside the hand collated and stapled pages you’d be rib-tickled by the adventures of “Superloon” a humorous hero matching wits with his nemeses Cheeseman, to being riveted by the dark adventures of “Death-Mask,” where I’m pretty sure I made up the line, “DIE, SCUM!”
Somebody owes me royalties!
The other continuing Lollapaloosa staples were showcasing pieces by my favorite actual professional comic artists, usually commissioned in person at comic cons ($20 was the most you’d have to shell out) and often requested in pencil so I could go home and ink ’em myself. I’d also make indexes of all the places these, and other artistic role models (Wrightson, Chaykin, Smith, Starlin, Kaluta, etc.), had been published so folks like myself wouldn’t miss out on any cherished brushstroke that had been put to printed page. Oh, and the accompanying index illustrations were by me, imitating each of their styles, apparently because their own art wasn’t quite up to my Lollapaloosa standards (see “hubris” above).
Lollapaloosa came to an end when all that practicing paid off. I started to get actual work.

I distinctly remember seeing Mitch’s polished and inventive covers for The Buyer’s Guide, filling me with envy. Mitch has, of course, gone on to be one of the most expert purveyors of humorous kitsch/pop art/lowbrow there is. His humor has always appealed to me, with his social media posts being some of the most fun to read and see. You can check out his website here, by the way. Below you will a few of the many wonderful images in this issue.

One artist, still a fan at this time, is Paul Daly. We shared a few appearances here and there in various fanzines, and I was always impressed with his line work. The piece below, he says, was done with rapidiographs (an ink pen), which surprised the heck outta me!

Paul was nice enough to answer a few questions of mine within Facebook, which you can see below.

I asked Paul about his early influences and he replied that “it was the artists at Dell and Gold Key, such as Sam Glanzman, Russ Manning, Dan Speigle and Albert Gillotti…then, of course Wood, Williamson, Steranko and of course Kirby and Ditko.”

When I asked about a few of his earliest favorite zines and editors (and the age at which he started in zines), like many of us, he was hard pressed to remember a ton of details, but he did say that “I don’t remember my exact age when I started, sometime during college late 70’s. I collected lots of fanzines, such as Comic Crusader, the early Comics Journal…boy, offhand I can’t remember all of them now! I think my first published art was in a contest for Warren publications’ The Rook or it could have been a pic I did of Christopher Reeve as Superman in The Comics Journal. Editors? Wow I don’t remember a one to be truthful.

Some of us formed life long friendships through fandom, and Paul was no different.

The only friends I made were local artists Don Secrease and Rick Burchett, who I met locally and who were also submitting to fanzines. We are friends to this day. Don and I are working together today. Rick is an Eisner award winning artist who seems to have worked for every comic book company in existence! It was always a thrill seeing your work in print but I had my parents always breathing down my neck saying “Yeah, that’s great but when are you going to get paid?” Of course I did win a hundred bucks for that Rook contest!

Please feel free to check out some of Paul’s recent work. He informs us that “I have a Facebook site, Paul Daly Art and www.highadventurecomics.com which has my comic strip Tempest at Hazard and The Terranauts which Don Secrease and I do. Rick has popped in to ink and do some pages as well.“

So, there you go! There are many other pieces available for view in the pdf (from my site at kenmeyerjr.com), including work by Chad Draper, Al Milgrom, Neal Adams, George Kochell, Don Martin, Walt Simonson, Terry Beatty, Mike Saenz, Paul Daly, and Alfredo Alcala.

By the way, for those of you that do not know, there are several fanzine groups on facebook (for selling and just talking about), so visit!

Thanks to Paul Daly for helping out a bit with this installment. Tune in next month for another journey in the way back machine to fanzine nirvana! Please, if you come by, leave a comment!

Ken Meyer Jr.
kenmeyerjr@yahoo.com