History
Paul Gravett started the Fast Fiction stall at the bimonthly Westminster Comics Mart in London, England in 1981 selling imported European comics, or Bande Dessinée. Having discovered that interesting new comics were being published in short run photocopy form he contacted the creators and offered to sell their comics on his stall and through mail order. Initially this was done for free with a small percentage cut being introduced later. The Fast Fiction stall became the defacto social centre for small press publishers along with the adjoining pub, The Westminster Arms.
Cartoonist Phil Elliott and Ian Wieczorek took over Fast Fiction in late 1981 when Gravett started working for Pssst! magazine leading to him launching Escape Magazine. The bimonthly stall and mail order distro continued along with a regular information sheet listing titles available to order, and a new anthology featuring cartoonists they sold. This was also called Fast Fiction debuting in 1982 with a print run of 100 copies and lasting until 1991 with issues 29 and 30 reviewed in Zum! #1. Ed Pinsent, another cartoonist who had been involved in the cassette culture music trading scene, subsequently took over from Elliott and continued to run things until 1990.
Following the closure of Fast Fiction their mailing list was passed on to Luke Walsh and Mike Kidson who used it to launch the small press comics review zine Zum!.
Read more about this topic: Fast Fiction
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)