Venture 4: 1975
Publishers/editors: Frank Cirocco, Brent Anderson, Gary Winnick
Hello and welcome to yet another installment of your friendly neighborhood fanzine column, Ink Stains! This month we return to the California kids, the terrible trio of Brent Anderson, Frank Cirocco, and Gary Winnick and their awesome fanzine Venture. Issue 4 is possibly the high point of the fanzine in true fanzine form (the following issue would be comic book sized with a flashy Neal Adams cover…you can see the coverage here, a column done way back in 2011!). Above you see a typically ornate Frank Cirocco illustration that adorns the front cover…this piece has everything! Zip-a-tone, splatter, skulls, big ass capes, horny armor, little people in barbie cosplay! Ok, not that last one. Moving on…
In addition to the trio of main creators, this issue has several guest stars. You can see Eric Vincent’s piece above, and in addition, you will see work by Jim Starlin, Mike Kaluta, Tony Salmons, and several more. After the contents page and editorial, we are greeted by a Gene Day pin up, seen below.
Since Venture was always a story centric zine, the first full content is an 8 page strip by Winnick (with Jim Pinkoski lettering) called Backworld Brigands, featuring his horned character, Gukus. Gary’s art is a few steps behind his buddies, but easily serviceable for fanzines, and….zip-a-tone!
Next up is the first of 3 Brent Anderson Grimmley’s Tales, his entry into the funny alien genre. As a cool addition, right after, you see Brent Anderson’s letterhead from waaaay back then…I used to have dozens of letters from him on it!
Brent was kind enough to take the time to reflect a bit on his Venture exploits all those years ago below.
Paging through the issue, I am reflecting on just what a good designer Frank was (and still is.) I remember him laboring over the pages, becoming a nervous wreck prior to printing. Frank was meticulous against anything being “messy” or “muddy” before printing, and very upset when the printing didn’t clearly match the originals.
All of us really went overboard in the use of Zip-a-Tone screens to create weird moiré effects, little realizing how difficult it would be for our printer to faithfully reproduce them in the finished book! Frank cleverly resolved this in his own work by masking areas and using toothbrush ink spattering to create atmospheric grays, but these too printed a bit muddy.
My contributions this issue were basically just three “Grimmley’s Tales” and my Batman parody “Well Hung.” Work I had originally intended for this issue of Venture I decided to publish myself in Mindworks #1.
I’d planned to use the Batman parody as a sample in my presentation portfolio when I went to New York to get into comics. I met Carl Potts at a “Comics Day” party in 1975 hosted by the San Jose Comic Art Shop in San Jose. Carl had already made the trip to New York the year before, and I showed him the Batman piece. He said it was nicely rendered but the anatomy needed work, and recommended I not present it in my portfolio, and most importantly not to show it to Neal Adams! Carl told me Neal would not be impressed and would not be as kind in his critique as Carl had been!
As for “Grimmley’s Tales” they were really funny and people seemed to really like the strip. I figured if the whole “take comics by storm” thing didn’t pan out, I could always try and develop Grimmley into a newspaper comic strip. As fate would have it, my career turned out as it has, but I still harbor thoughts of developing Grimmley in the future.
After a lush undersea Kenneth Smith painting, the first of 3 Batman single page jokes appears, this one by Frank Cirocco. The other two are by Jim Pinkoski and Anderson…you can see 2 of em below.
I thought it incredibly timely, though unplanned that this installment will post just a week or so after the most current San Diego Comicon, because in this issue of Venture, there is coverage of the convention of 1974…almost 50 years ago!!! Wow. There is one page of text coverage and a full page of photos (the usual small, grainy, hard to see photos, but, heck, better than nothing) that you can see below.
Check out the sprawling centerspread by Cirocco below!
Following that is another Grimmley’s Tales, another Batman piece and an illustrated SF story by Frank Morant, illustrated by Cirocco, titled Synapse (a few seen below). Darn stylish!
The letters page follows, plus a little “afterward” by the trio. There are many more pinups and spot illustrations to be seen in the pdf, so don’t forget to go to my site to get that! I will show a few more things below before signing off.
Thanks again go out to Alan Williams for providing the fanzine! Also, Brent Anderson for supplying some remembrances. I hope you all have fun looking and reading, don’t forget the pdf, and see you next month!
Ken Meyer Jr.
kenmeyerjr@yahoo.com
