So. Do
you remember
Deathrealm?
For the past couple of decades, it's been rare for my thoughts to wander back to
the days of
that little horror magazine I managed for a ten-year
spell. Now and again, though,
reminders of
Deathrealm's existence hit me with varying degrees of intensity, and over the past year
or so, for whatever reason, those reminders have come around with more than
customary frequency, ranging from some writer or artist reminiscing on
social media to the inevitable pointed questions about whether I'd
consider reviving the property in some form or another. Since the magazine's
retirement in 1997, I've solemnly sworn I'd not do any such thing, at least not
as a quarterly publication (the horror stories behind the scenes often put to
shame those between the covers). However, this year being
Deathrealm's 30th anniversary, a few months back, I actually went so far as to propose
releasing the title as an anthology, or series of anthologies, and for a time,
the idea actually gained some traction with a noteworthy publisher. Either sadly
or not, things didn't come together, but lately I have found the idea of
reviving
Deathrealm as an anthology series at least reasonably
appealing.
From the late 1980s through the 1990s,
Deathrealm, along with
Cemetery Dance and several other publications
specializing in dark literature, had a sizable following, regularly won awards,
and helped propel any number of authors to the next level of success in the
business. In its day,
Deathrealm achieved a level of credibility
that surprised even its harried, sometimes bumbling editor. The question I keep
coming back to now is whether
this time might be right for a
Deathrealm resurgence. In the intervening years, my life has
changed in uncountable ways; my interests have evolved; priorities have changed;
and the publishing business has mutated into a whole different beast—not
necessarily better or worse, just
different. A
Deathrealm that might come out in the next few months or years
would not
—could not—be the
Deathrealm of old. And it
shouldn't be.
These are questions that the bumbling old editor will continue to wrestle with.
In the meantime, particularly for those to whom
Deathrealm might
have been a stranger, here is a history lesson. I'll spread it out over more
than one blog entry, as anyone glimpsing too much of it at once might suffer
horrible consequences.
|
|
Japanese Giants #1, circa 1974
|
Deathrealm's roots stretch back to my first publishing venture—
Japanese Giants, a daikaiju-themed fanzine, which I started in junior high school (1974).
After producing a single issue and learning an important lesson about economics,
I passed the torch to a couple of other editor/publishers, though I remained
deeply involved with the magazine. In the late 1970s,
Ed "The Great Entrepreneur" Godziszewski took the helm, and in the early
1980s, I ended up moving to Chicago, specifically to take my rightful place as
one of the official Japanese Giants guys. It was during this time that Ed,
co-editor
Bill "Wilted Greens" Gudmundson, and I began to expand the
magazine's circulation via higher production values and newsstand distribution,
and the contacts I made during this period eventually helped make
Deathrealm—still years away at this point—a reality.
1986:
In Chicago, had I met
Mike Stein of
Filmfax magazine, and
the late
Bob Weinberg—author, publisher, and book dealer/collector—both
of whom proved to be goldmines of information about the publishing business. Bob
Weinberg's shop carried
Robert M. Price's long-lived
Crypt of Cthulhu, and having discovered the joys of H. P. Lovecraft some years earlier, I fell
in love with the publication. It was
Crypt, in fact, that put the bug in my head to start up a fiction magazine. At the
time, I worked for a company that manufactured high-end typesetting systems, and
one of my jobs was to troubleshoot the machines by typesetting and printing out
endless numbers of pages—which meant I had easy access to professional
typesetting systems that virtually no other small publisher had. Through
Japanese Giants, I had acquired a network of distribution contacts. So, in early 1987, I
decided to make the leap and put together a digest-sized publication of original
horror fiction. I was already acquainted with
Wilum H. Pugmire, a regular
Crypt of Cthulhu contributor, via the aforementioned daikaiju
circles, so I approached him, and a few other writers I had discovered in
Crypt of Cthulhu, to see if they might be interested in contributing to a new horror digest.
They were interested. And fellow Japanese Giants guy Bill Gudmundson knew a
gentleman named
Jeffrey Osier, who had written a horror story called "The
Encyclopedia for Boys." I read the story, loved it, and dearly wanted to publish
it.
This new digest needed a title. I was a fan of the SF anime series
Space Cruiser Yamato, and one of the Yamato movies featured an alien space station whose name, in
Japanese phonetic characters, came out as
Dezarium. To me, the name sounded like "Deathrealm," and to this day I have no idea
whether the name was actually meant to be translated as "Deathrealm," but I decided that
this would be the title of this new little horror digest. Done, done, and
done.
With
Japanese Giants, primarily a non-fiction magazine, the editorial "staff" had provided
virtually all the writing and artwork, and I knew little about accepted
etiquette for fiction publications. My idea was that
Deathrealm would be something of a glorified chapbook, featuring
some of my own horror tales as well as the work of other writers I specifically
solicited. For the first issue, I decided I would include one of my stories
called "The Arms of Doom," Jeff Osier's "Encyclopedia for Boys," something by
Wilum Pugmire, and a poem (about Wilum) by
Jessica Amanda Salmonson. I
got a good quote for printing, put out advance notice to the distributors I
knew—which netted a good many orders—and set about the production work, which in
those days involved endless galley sheets, stat camera images, X-acto knives,
rubber cement, and manual labor.
In the 1980s, I was pretty prolific not just with my writing, but with artwork,
as I had a Bachelor of Fine Art degree from the University of Georgia. I created
the magazine cover, did an interior illustration or two, and solicited artwork from a few other artists who were established in the then-thriving small
press horror market. Things were lining up.
|
Deathrealm #1, cover art by
that old dude
|
And at last, in
Spring 1987,
Deathrealm #1 hit the street. It had some honest-to-god comic
shop distribution, attracted a sizable subscriber list, and found favor among
reviewers. With things taking off on such an encouraging note, it looked like
Deathrealm might end up being more than a one-shot deal, so I
immediately began making plans for issue #2. I knew I couldn't manage a monthly
schedule, but quarterly seemed reasonable. I approached many of the same
individuals who had helped put
Deathrealm on the map, including
Mr. Osier, Mr. Pugmire, Ms. Salmonson, as well as several other folks who had
shown serious interest in being published. I again provided the cover art and
included my story, "Threnody." I had little trouble filling the contents page
this time around, but I began to wonder about how I might fare with upcoming
issues.
In those days, there was a wonderful monthly market guide, called
Scavenger's Newsletter, published by the late
Janet Fox, and its subscriber list included many authors whose names I had become familiar with through various horror
publications.
Following the release of issue #2, I made the fateful decision to open
Deathrealm to submissions from the world at large. And for the
next few years, my life would never be the same.
READ PART 2 HERE.
