When we talk about fanzine art we inevitably mean drawings - cover art, cartoons, and the like. John Roles (1925-1999) was not a fanartist in that traditional sense, but though he didn't draw he certainly created art. Most of this he produced for OMPA, the Off-trails Magazine Publisher's Association, an APA whose members would submit fanzines for distribution with its quarterly mailings. According to Vinc Clarke:
It had been thought that the small circulation would give members scope to experiment with various duplicating and artistic techniques on a suitable scale, but only John Roles really took advantage of this with a series of experimental covers and the never-to-be-forgotten edible Christmas card of the first year. For much more background and biographical detail see:
YUM (1954) Most fanzines have been ephemeral publications, intended for the moment rather than published with posterity in mind. Certainly those who created the early zines of 80 or 90 years ago would probably be amazed both that so many had survived and that anyone would still find them of interest decades later. However, ephemeral as they supposedly were they were not ephemeral enough for John Roles who created an edible zine/Christmas card on rice paper. Probably intended to last weeks at most one has, astonishingly, survived to the present day. Not surprisingly it's in very poor condition after 70 years, but we can still deduce things from it.
Clearly typed on duplicator stencils, these would have been laid over the rice paper and red ink applied as one would when silk screening. Roles presumably reasoned that the minimal amount of ink this entail would not significant affect edibility. The logo was another matter. This was probably hand painted into the space left for it using an edible substance, though what that might have been is a matter of conjecture. It would need to have been something not sticky that wouldn't smear. Whatever it was it has unfortunately rotted its way through both pages over the past seven decades. There has also been some chromatographic bleed-through of ink from one page to the other in that time. The bottoms of both pages have crumbled away, but that's obviously the top of John Roles's signature at the bottom of the first page. From this we can infer the original size of the pages which appears to have been approximately 8" x 6 1/4" (203mm x 158mm).
YUM YUM, YUM YUM YUM, YUM YUM YUM YUM, & YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM (1955-58) Subsequent iterations of YUM were issued every December with the second being titled YUM YUM, the third YUM YUM YUM, and so on. Printed using multi-coloured ink on multi-coloured paper in a dazzling variety of combinations not all of which were entirely successful, these tiny publications were prime examples of the fanzine as artefact, small objects of desire. And all non-edible. Yet none of them was the smallest fanzine ever produced. That honour probably belongs to the one Forry Ackerman stamped out on individual dog tags during WW2, none of which are known to have survived.
To fully appreciate these small gems you need to be able to view their contents, which fortunately you can at the link below:
MORPH (1954-1965) Below are the series of covers featured in the gallery. Click on these to call up the for an individual image. I was tempted to paint out the rusting staples and other blemishes, and to adjust contrast and the like to enhance these before deciding to leave them as scanned.
My thanks to Greg Pickersgill for scanning most of these. A number of issues of MORPH are available to be read at fanac.org:
ATOMIC BEANIE (1954) A one-time friend of poet Allen Ginsberg who on occasion shared an open mike with him, Ray Nelson also collaborated for a time with Michael Moorcock in smuggling Henry Miller books into the UK from France, where he was then living.
However the accomplishment that concerns us here is something he invented in 1947 but never made a penny from, despite them being sold to this day:
As a result of cartoons by Ray and others such as Lee Hoffman, drawing the propeller beanie on a figure became visual shorthand for a fan and some fans started wearing them to conventions. Several took this further by having multiple propellors on their beanies. Roles decided to take it to the limit and subvert the form entirely with his 'atomic' beanie. Whether this was also intended as a commentary on the arms race is unknown. The tie he's wearing features the famous image of one of E.E. 'Doc' Smith's lensmen as painted by Hubert Rogers for the cover of the October 1939 issue of Astounding Stories.
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