Not satisfied with producing The Collector, one of the best fanzines around, Bill G. Wilson decided to exhibit even more excellence with Panorama!
Panorama 1: 1971
Editor and Publisher: Bill G. Wilson
In the summer of 1971, Bill G. Wilson published Panorama 1. It was in that year that I was given Alan Light’s The Buyer’s Guide by my high school librarian. I wrote a letter to Light, who was kind enough to send me several fanzines gratis, including Wilson’s The Collector and this fanzine, which started my love affair with these wonderful amateur publications. Thanks, wherever you are! In fact, I went through my old scrapbooks and found the letter (actually, two) that you can see below!
If you have been reading this column with any regularity, you know how highly I regard Bill Wilson’s The Collector. His production standards were high, he had a great stable of artists and writers, and most important in keeping an audience, he published regularly. As mentioned above, the summer of 1971 saw a new fanzine from Wilson, Panorama. This would be the only issue of this fanzine Wilson would publish. At the time of Panorama, Wilson was up to issue 23 of The Collector, and Panorama includes many of the same contributors from Wilson’s flagship title, including cover artist John G. Fantucchio (seen above). Some would argue that this fanzine is just The Collector under a different name. One does wonder why Wilson published this and didn’t just include the material in his main fanzine. One reason could be that Wilson was experimenting with printing techniques, such as the blue super-imposed illustrations on several pages, and wanted to do it in a zine with fewer pages. Wilson himself weighs in on the subject with:
I did PANORAMA as a convention one-shot prior to Phil Seuling’s ’71 con – in fact, there are pics of my dad and Kenneth Smith (!) hawking copies of it at my table in The Collector 24. About the color: I was experimenting with color reproduction as I gained more experience running the ol’ A.B. Dick 360 offset press at Prince Printing, and John Fantucchio’s great cover gave me the opportunity and inspiration to do even more. Registering color with multiple passes on a single-color press – especially printing its max sheet size of 11×17 – was no mean feat, and the success with PANORAMA gave me the confidence to explore full four-color, which I then used throughout TC from #24-on.
At any rate, there is excellent work inside, so let’s get to it.
Following the multimedia cover, you will see an illustration by fandom stalwart and Paragon publishing mogul, Bill Black. Next, alongside a commentary by Wilson, you will see (below) a Wilson inked illustration by a very young Dave Stevens (!) of Wilson’s Hyperman character.
After this visual excursion into The Rocketeer creator’s past, there is an article by fan regular Bill Cantey on the excellence of writer (and Amazing Stories editor) Ted White, entitled Ted White Can Write!, illustrated by Fantucchio, Ed Romero, and Dan Adkins, along with a checklist of White’s work. Captain Marvel follows (seen below), in a typically whimsical Ken Don Rosa strip.
Preceding a book review by Tom Fagen called Those Saturday Afternoon Cliffhangers is a Steranko-esque Mike Roberts illustration seen below.
Alan Hanley’s wonderfully retro Rock ’em Sock ’em Comics bounds into the following page (seen below), and then Bob Kirkland delivers an imaginative and wishfully thinking round table discussion of the merits of various fanzines by a group of fan and pro luminaries, featuring Roy Thomas, Jan Strnad, Jerry Bails, G. B. Love, Bill Spicer, and Bob Jennings called It Only Goes to Show….
Jim Garrison is next with a full page sword and sorcery themed illustration, which precedes a Jeff Jones checklist by Mark Burbey (complete with a blue super-imposed Jones spot illustration). Wrapping up this comparatively thin issue are a couple of Skip Olson illustrations of John Carter of Mars, a Doug Potter Batman full page illo, and a typically clean illustration by Dan Adkins on the back cover, a selection of which appears below.
How Wilson found the time to put out all these excellent zines while going to high school is beyond me, but we fanzine fans are all glad he did! Tune in next month for another zip-a-toned adventure into the world of fanzines! For now, though, don’t forget to download the pdf here! Thanks this time go out once again to Aaron Caplan, who provided me with this particular fanzine, since I lost my copy long ago.
Ken Meyer Jr.
kenmeyerjr@yahoo.com
Where is the pdf info u usually post? love this site…brings back many warm fuzzy memories. wish there were more sites like inkstains. love the downloads when available! thx- Rick
Rick, sorry…I think I was in too much of a hurry…it is there now!
Yep- worked great…very enjoyable! I loved TC#13 too! I still don’t know if Fantuccio’s oft seen mysterious hero ever got a name and origin…was a winner announced in TC#14? Would love to find out. I remember John’s hero on the cover of TBG and in George Breo’s CHRONICLE. i loved his art & have waited 40 years to find out this cool creations name & story…lol. Did it really happen in TC#14, & if so will we get to see it next time? Thx again Ken!!!
Another great one from Ken Meyer Jr!! The front cover of Fantucchio’s Mysterious Character in flight is one of my favorite JGF drawings, showcasing John’s superb sense of design, his hand lettering capabilities, his mastery of zip-a-tone and his stylistic approach to pen & ink. I had the pleasure of viewing the original cover art a few years and was surprised to see that the Mysterious Character portion of the image was a totally separate drawing that could be moved around! This way, John could experiment and move the Character around to find the position of maximum impact before finishing the drawing.
oh what an idiot…I forgot the link for the pdf…will fix now!
Thanks for the inside scoop, Aaron!
Another interesting discovery ; thank you very much for sharing all these great fanzines from the past.
My pleasure, Cyrille!
Hmm…Rick, I don’t have an answer for you, but…Bill Wilson is on Facebook! You could surely ask him! He is on my friend’s list if you want to find him easily. Thanks for posting!