More about AFTA

AFTA was a comics fanzine with a lot of heart. And that heart was editor/publisher Bill-Dale Marcinko. Bill-Dale's wry sense of humor was infused in every page and reading his work was always a bit of an adventure.

Really though, AFTA was more than a comics fanzine. It was a pop-culture zine. Comics were well represented by reviews (like the one that I wrote and which was published in AFTA #2) and the lengthy George Perez interview that was the cover feature of AFTA #1. But also there were television reviews (Bill-Dale liked Fernwood Tonight as much as I did) and record reviews and long articles about The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

1978's AFTA #1 was 96 digest-sized pages most of which had two columns of small type, and it had a print run of 200 and a paid circulation (99 cents per copy) of 65 (and "Embarrassing, isn't it?" was Bill-Dale's self-commentary on those numbers). It was predicted in #1 that AFTA #2 would be 52 pages but in fact that issue turned out to be a double-digest totaling 208 pages! Bill-Dale put so much effort into this project of his!

I do need to mention that AFTA was an acronym for Ascension from the Ashes. Sadly, Bill-Dale Marcinko is no longer on this planet but I (and many others) think of him often, so is he really gone?

Hooray for Bill-Dale Marcinko!