I’ll Be Damned 2: July, 1970
Editor/publisher: Mark Feldman
Well, I’ll be. I was SURE I had covered the first issue of this all-star zine, I’ll be Damned, but…I’ll be damned, I guess I got a few similar ones (Scream Door, for example) confused with it…time to start searching! Anyone have a copy they want to lend me? While we are on the subject, it would be great to have issue 3, since stories from this second issue continue there. Aaron? Dana? Manny? Bueller? Bueller? (EDIT! I have been informed by one of the illuminati of the fanzine world, Manny Maris, that there is no actual number 3, that number 4, which I just got, has the stories from issue 2 continued inside…so, keep an eye out!)
Above you see one of two covers by Kenneth Smith (who also provides a frontispiece illustration/contents page, the cover logo, and the back cover), so you tell where this is going from the get go! This gem came out in 1970, when a few fan artists of the highest caliber were starting to turn pro. Berni Wrightson had turned pro just a year or so earlier, but still contributed to fanzines regularly for a few years, including this one. Not much needed to say about this zine, the content speaks for itself, so first, below you will see a few pages from the first story by Alan Simons, Steve Hickman and Robert Kline called Nest Egg.
Next up might be my favorite Tom Sutton story…for the visuals at least. It has a beautifully designed first page, just gorgeous in every way. Check out Pilgrim below.
Last up in this somewhat slim zine is a story by Berni Wrightson called Stake-Out…and, visually, it is everything I love about Berni. The lighting, the rendering, the grotesque limbs…even a very EC like ending…in several ways! See for yourself.
I don’t want to give too much away, so…download the pdf to see the endings (well, sorta, since they are to be continued in issue 3). There is a funny little one pager called The Fantastic Spiderwort before the whole thing ends. Thanks for tuning in! Leave comments if you like, they are always welcome!
Before I go, though, here is the back cover by professor Smith!
Ken Meyer Jr.
kenmeyerjr@yahoo.com
What an incredible era for fanzines. I know I’ve seen that cover in color somewhere; maybe Smith released it as a print. How hard would it be for a publisher like Fantagraphics to release archive collections of some of these zines? I know they did a book of Wrightson fanzine work and, of course, Witzend.
By the way the download hasn’t been working for me on the last couple of months. Still appreciate the posts, though. I really blew it on a lot of this stuff when it came out.
Thanks for reading and commenting…I don’t know what problem you are having with the pdfs…mine downloaded fine for viewing…anyone else having a problem?
Russ I think you are doing the same thing I’ve been accidentally doing and clicking the title. Click the number for the pdf. So for this one click 149 and it downloads.