No Sex #8

This issue was published by Dan Watson under the Galactic Enterprises logo for distribution in January 1978 which meant it was some number of months after NS7. I know getting the cover in from Lari Davidson was one of the issues. The other issue was that I was on my way home from Germany to Ft Knox, KY when this issue was in the works. It featured 60 reduced digest pages on white stock. It had a hard stock wraparound cover. Somehow I remember it with fewer pages, but it does seem to be up to the standard, not the biggest but not one of the small issues either.

Contents: Cover by Lari Davidson, back cover by David Heath another small spot illo that was a waste of the space that was available to me.

This issue features part III of the never-ending Journey to Another Here Another Now by CR Oliver and illustrated by SSG Beaumont (for you CR fans, I am only joking about the length of the story, it was the 3rd longest feature in my zine besides my own No Sexist and Adventures of No Sex Reader) and the cover art illustrates that story. I provide a map for that story, Adventures of No Sex Reader, the No Sexist commentary, U-zine reviews and art all over the place including the contents page. This was my pretty much my usual contributions to all the issues so if I did not spell that out earlier, note it here now. The crazy Doc Patois strip by Rickey Campbell was a joy to get and print. if I had more stuff like that I may still be doing the zine!! An Clovis had a prose story, Guinea Pig, The Chase by Stephen Schwartz provides comic relief, a strip by me titled It's War! shows that zip-a-tone can be loved, The End by Chad Draper and 4 O'clock by Joe Caporale round out the art and story. There were ads, reviews and art by the folks noted below. Jim Gray begins his Cosmo's Lunette review column this issue with a review of Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. We were both big special effects fans and Harryhausen ruled in our minds. The thing that comes back to me is Jim explaining to me what a Lunette was and the issues he went through with me inking his pencils for the column art. He is a very meticulous guy.

Lari Davidson, David Heath, SSG Beaumont, Wayne Kaneshiro, Ken Meyer Jr., Rickey Campbell, An Clovis, Stephen Schwartz, Chap Draper, Vince Blesi, Joe Caporale, Mike Dooney, Robert Barger, Jim Gray, Mike Knowlton.

Notes:

I think it was Jim Gray who said to me that the cover of this issue looked like some people torturing some cute two-headed creature. That really made me laugh because Lari Davidson really had a different take on the five part C R Oliver story. CR had a bunch of prose throughout the issues, but Journey to Another Here Another Now was novel sized. I was honored that CR wanted me to run it, but I could not in one or two issues which meant it had to be a long running serial. I liked the idea and was a little apprehensive for piece because fanzines are not known for consistency and NS might not even last long enough to finish it. (quite the opposite from the Tide XK story written by my sister in the early issues of No Sex that I tried to finish when she got tired of doing the submission). But I loved the idea of different artists trying their hands at showing what they thought the artist was saying. In the five issues this story ran in you have renderings by the realist Stephen Schwartz, the Bodesque SSG Beaumont, myself and Lari Davidson. I was delighted with Lori's take. I later find that Lari is a Canadian artist with probably no military experience. Lari gives us a rendering from the story that Lari sees, a purist would say it is flawed. The helicopter in the center would be considered old fashioned, but I thought it had a charm for a story that places "modern day" Green Berets (with a woman Captain??) in a place where prehistoric creatures roam. Long before Jurassic Park. I consider this one of the most distinctive covers and Lari must have thought I needed help by designing the logo for me. Lari went on to publish the respected Potboiler fanzine. I will put in some interior art by me on this page to contrast the kind of thing I usually printed in No Sex, especially in the term of full page art. I really valued the idea of diverse contributions to my issue. I did want to establish continuity for the issues, but I didn't want all the covers to have the same feel. I got tired of that when I was collecting pulps and SF magazines like Analog, IF and Galaxy. To further the idea of how I wanted this cover of Lari's to set the issue apart, I will note that the cover I was going to use for NS8 to feature my story Its' War! was so typical that once I got the Davidson cover I buried it and the story on page 30 of this issue. I actually was getting a handle on zip-a-tone, that bane of the fanzine artists that most of us got sick of. If you have never used it, it is a sticky plastic that comes in sheets that features the halftone dots or lines that are useful in shading and providing depth on artwork. Once it was for sell cheaply in places like Michaels fan artists ate the stuff up. Too much. I mention later that I literally got sick of it and started using solid black shading in my art. this simple story was probably my best use of that technique.

Lari Davidson Speaks:

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