In the spring of 1992, I spent $3 to buy a copy of Counter Media, a short-lived zine that featured articles about underground cartoonists. Since there is little online about this 1990s zine -- it was literally 68 pages of copy paper folded over (no staple) and sold here and there -- I thought I would scan a small sample and show you what it was. I probably bought my copy at Forbidden Planet in NYC.
So far as I can tell, it may have been put together by writer Patrick Rosenkranz. There is no masthead, but he had written a 1974 history of underground comix, ARTSY FARTSY FUNNIES (Crown, 1974), and would author YOU CALL THIS ART? A GREG IRONS RETROSPECTIVE, published by Fantagraphics in 2006 (and so much more; see link at the bottom). So, he is my prime suspect for The Man In Charge of Counter Media. This issue, Counter Media Number 6, Spring 1992, was a dry run for his book on Greg Irons. There are also stories about cartoonists who died too soon, articles about Rick Griffin, Basil Wolverton and the people who worked at Topp's bubble gum company (Woody Gelman, Jack Davis, Wally Wood, Basil Wolverton, Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Jay Lynch, Howard Cruse, John Pound, Tom Bunk and many others) making novelty items like cards and comics that would be packaged with the gum. The Wacky Packages site has a scan of a ten page article in issue #5 by Patrick Rosenkranz here.
So here are a couple of the articles that I scanned this morning after rediscovering my copy of Counter Media in between a couple of Gold Key MAGNUS ROBOT FIGHTER comic books in a storage box.
Dead Cartoonists Society by Patrick Rosenkranz
The Last Days of the Great Basil Wolverton by Barry Bernard
Patrick Rosenkranz would also author the 2008 book REBEL VISIONS: THE UNDERGROUND COMIX REVOLUTION 1963-1975. Here's a link to a 2008 Comics Journal interview with him. He continues to write as one of the leading scholars of the underground comix movement, with books about Jay Lynch, Rand Holmes, and others. Amazon has 18 books credited to him.
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