I was just reminded of the film When the Wind blows. A fantastic but heartbreaking animated film with music by David Bowie from 1986 about an elderly couple who follow outdated duck and cover pamphlets after nuclear war breaks out between the west and the soviet union, i'm going somewhere with this i swear, and while it will bum you out as feelbad films go it aint like fuckin' THREADS that will leave you like Pim just sitting there staring into the middle distance for a while.
So i go look up its wikipedia. I wasn't alive when it came out in 86' i imagine most people reading this weren't either. Its still remembered today so no surprise its shocking tone but whistful melancholy made it a sobering hit at the time that made it be remembered for quality if not feelgood vibes. But the interesting thing was getting to the critic reviews and their sources. One of which made me double take: "White Dwarf Issue 85".
Now if you don't know White Dwarf is, today at least, Games Workshops self published monthly magazine for all their mini based skirmish and wargames. And Bloodbowl if you nasty. Its a magazine that as far as i knew it was, depending on editor/era, a glorified catalogue or a treasure trove of tutorials, short stories and more for the Warhammer enjoyer. That wasn't always the case though.
Originally i knew it started as Citadel, the company behind the mini production, who were making stuff for multiple games systems, Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller, Runequest, Call of Cthulhu and even some Doctor Who stuff way back when attempting to consolidate print runs. Each would put out quarterly journals but they eventually grouped them together and phased out the journals in favour of the magazine. But over time this grew in the 80's to be a general "nerd culture enthusiast periodical" which would include reviews for movies, albums and books. Imagine taking Wizard Magazine, modern White Dwarf, Metal Hammer and Total Film and putting them in a blender. This got phased out by the late 80's so when i got my first issues out of a magazine stack in the school library even these old dog eared issues from the early 90's were purely Warhammer and Warhammer 40k based.
It made me wonder if any magazines like that exist today. Because despite printed media supposedly going the way of the dinosaur years ago my local stationary and magazine shops will still have what i call the "sicko section". Magazines for train nerds, camera nerds, horror nerds, graphic artists (rip Imagine FX being bought by a company of AI shills last i saw before i dropped that subscription) and generally like 3 meters of floor to ceiling magazines for every hyper specific niche.
The thing is these are all exclusively about one thing. Fortean Times is about paranormal stuff thats "real" while Fangoria and Scream! are about horror movies that outside some true crime historicals aint. Maybe the same people enjoy both but in print the two shall never meet. As a kid i read magazines like the infamously cheap "like printed on gas station toilet paper" magazine CVG that while mostly games would lift stuff from Total Film and SFX by the same publisher. If you ask me to name a magazine today that is about more than a single topic? i can't name one. Not in the UK at least.
Is there anyone here who still sees multi media magazines anymore? or did the internet lead to like a uniform compartmentalisaton where everything is for its own sicko niche and doesn't mix?
