SCREW #754, art by Tim Johnson

SCREW #754, art by Tim Johnson, 

dated January 7, 1983

SCREW #401, cover art by ironmountain

SCREW #401, cover art by ironmountain, 

dated November 8, 1976

SCREW #735, art by Burt Koppi

SCREW #735, art by Burt Koppi, dated April 1, 1983

(special thanks to Walter Dickinson) 

Cover Art for SCREW #514, by Mary Wagner

Cover Art for SCREW #514, by Mary Wagner, dated January 8, 1979
(special thanks to Walter Dickinson) 

SCREW #358, art by Bob Dunker

SCREW #358, art by Bob Dunker, dated January 12, 1976

Charles Keating: Dead at 90; Cover art for SCREW #1,129 by Yours Truly

Anti-porn crusader and convicted S&L scamster Charles H. Keating is dead at Age 90.

Here's Keating on the cover of SCREW #1,129, (issue dated October 22, 1990) with like-minded  sleazeballs Jimmy Swaggart, Jim & Tammy Bakker, Jesse Helms, & Father Bruce Ritter. SCREW publisher Al Goldstein was pleased to see the pious "Perversion for Profit" producer thrown in the slammer for fraud, and I'm pretty sure this cover concept came directly from Goldstein.

SCREW promotional coaster, featuring art by WAYNO

Here's something a little different: I spent this past weekend at the PIX show in Pittsburgh, hob-nobbing with talented titans of cartoondom like Mark Zingarelli, Don Simpson, Jim Rugg, and of course, veteran illustrator Wayno! While chatting with me about SCREW, Wayno mentioned a promo coaster he'd drawn for the paper's art director Kevin Hein in 1996. Upon hearing this news, much like the man pictured in Wayno's drawing, my eyes immediately bugged out, and I begged to see a scan of this fascinating bit of ephemera. The always-gracious Wayno was quick to comply, and here it is! 

Apparently, the thinking behind this object was that the coasters would be scattered liberally throughout NYC watering holes, where inebriates would first see the coaster, then feel compelled to subscribe to the World's Greatest Newspaper, and thus seal their own doom. Did the plan work? Were the coasters distributed as planned? Was there a bump in SCREW subscriptions? Does there remain somewhere a secret stash of these coasters, to be made available one day at a fittingly-obscene price? Dear reader, I'm afraid I have no answers for you at this time. 

NATIONAL SCREW Vol.1, No.3, with a four page comics feature by WILL EISNER

 Will Eisner in SCREW?!? Yes, it's true. 

In the late Seventies, Al Goldstein partnered with Lyle Stuart to publish a slick, national version of SCREW magazine titled, (what else?) NATIONAL SCREW. I suspect the mag was Goldstein's attempt to claw back some of the success enjoyed by HUSTLER, (publisher Larry Flynt notoriously rehashed many of SCREW's best gimmicks and served them up to his national readership of meth-crazed truck drivers and toothless hillbillies). 

I don't know how many issues of NATIONAL SCREW were published; my feeling is the mag didn't last long. The contents are a mixed bag; there's some lively '70s hipster content (features on Lou Reed and Television, short fiction by the likes of Wm. S. Burroughs and Harlan Ellison, and smutty parody comics presented in full color). However, the mag's actual porn content, (unappealing photo layouts and hacked-out sex reviews) are unlikely to have given the competition any sleepless nights.

Dropped inexplicably into the middle of this mid-70s countercultural mishmash was one of the founding fathers of comics, Will Eisner.  Since I don't own a complete run of NATIONAL SCREW, I can't say whether this odd comics feature is a one-off, or part of a longer series. I also can't tell if this strip is something Eisner drew specifically for this mag, or if it's merely some unsold inventory pulled from Eisner's flat files to turn a quick buck. 

I can say that while the art resembles what we see in Eisner's groundbreaking 1978 graphic novel "A CONTRACT WITH GOD," the writing isn't nearly as inspired. I'm generally an Eisner fan, but I think this creaky strip is enough to make all but the most fanatical Eisner worshippers cringe. 

SCREW #147 featuring cover art by YOSSARIAN, plus a tasteless Vietnam-era house ad!

Here's SCREW #147, dated December 27, 1971. This is from the era when Steven Heller was art director, and Jim Buckley, (SCREW's co-founder) was still on the masthead). Another interesting tidbit from this issue's masthead: in addition to his position as Executive Editor, Al Goldstein is also listed as "Food Editor."

Cover art is by Alan Shenker, (aka YOSSARIAN). Shenker, (a talented contemporary of underground comix titans like R. Crumb and Spain Rodriguez) was also SCREW's art director for a bit. Remembrances of Shenker, (who died in 2013) can be found here and here. 

I've also included a scan of SCREW #147's back cover, which features a typically tasteless house ad that references heroic Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc, who had famously set himself on fire to protest the Vietnam War in June 1963.  

Five SCREW Covers by Sophie Cossette!

July 8, 1996

December 9, 1996

July 28, 1997

January 26, 1998

August 30, 1999

Toronto-based cartoonist Sophie Cossette was kind enough to send me a care package stuffed with her excellent SCREW covers a few months back, and I'm only just getting around to posting them now. How lame is that? 

These beautifully-drawn covers all date from the mid-to-late 1990s, and if there's a common theme, I'd say it's lovely ladies doing nasty things with shellfish, (ten extra points for the severed head of Ron Jeremy!).

Be sure to pick up Sophie's recent book SINEMANIA here!

Will this be my final Goldstein? Cover art for XPOSE Magazine, 2/7/14

Will this be my final Goldstein? 

Cover art for XPOSE Magazine, 2/7/14, art direction by Kevin Hein.

SCREW #478, cover art by Nicola Cuti

SCREW #478, cover art by Nicola Cuti

SCREW #1,414, cover art by Tim Johnson

If I had to make a list of the ten all-time best SCREW covers, this Ten Commandments riff by Tim Johnson would be on it. Great composition, great colors, great Goldstein caricature, all working in service of a killer concept. Issue date is April 8th, 1996.

FARE THEE WELL, SMUT PEDDLER: Al Goldstein RIP (1936-2013)

Al Goldstein has taken the elevator to the big edit meeting in the sky. 

I'll leave the obit-writing to the professionals.

You'll find those here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/20/nyregion/al-goldstein-pioneering-pornographer-dies-at-77.html?pagewanted=all

And here: http://observer.com/2013/12/al-goldstein-founder-of-screw-magazine-has-died/

All I have to add is this: Some people rear up in horror at the sight of pornography, and there's not much to be done about that. When considering porn, I think it's important to keep this in mind: some of our greatest artists and writers, (along with countless hacks) have turned to porn in the interest of scraping together a living. What they may have been surprised to discover in porn, (along with a modest paycheck) was artistic freedom. And THAT'S what I owe Al Goldstein.

For the last time: AL GOLDSTEIN IS NOT DEAD.

12/16/13: Confusion erupted early this morning when readers of magician Penn Jillette's Twitter feed read the following: "I'm in NYC. Today I visited my hero and friend Al Goldstein as he dies in the hospital, 

and tomorrow night I celebrate Lou Reed's Life. NYC"

Some readers, (including websites The RawStory.com and RealPornWikiLeaks) took this as a death announcement, which prompted Jillette to issue the following correction: "My buddy and hero, Al Goldstein is NOT dead.  He is unresponsive and not doing well, but he is alive. Try to stop the rumors. Thanks."

I now have a picture in my head left over from my old St Vincent's Hospital paper route: a type of patient the hospital personnel call a "gomer." These are bedridden old guys, mouths generally hanging slack, hovering unconscious in the twilight zone between life and death. They never bought any newspapers. Sobering and saddening to imagine one of humanity's most vociferous specimens reduced to this state. Think about it 

while you watch some vintage Midnight Blue clips: http://www.youtube.com/user/MBVids

(art by yours truly for the cover of SCREW #1,804, December 2006, art direction by Kevin Hein)

SCREW #1,349, cover art by Kim Deitch

Collector Thomas Stein recently put in a request to see the one and only SCREW cover drawn by underground comix legend Kim Deitch. It just so happens I have a copy, and here it is! 

I chatted with Kim Deitch about SCREW a few years back. A frequent contributor to '60s hippie papers like the East Village Other, Kim told me that the secret to the success of those publications was that they generally included one or two photos of nude hippie gals. Such photos were guaranteed to pique the prurient interest of curious straights. When Al Goldstein and Jim Buckley launched SCREW in 1968, their strategy was to outdo the hippie papers by cramming the pages of their nascent sex tabloid with oodles of naked hippies in full filthy frolic. SCREW would remain a going concern for nearly four decades, while the East Village Other and its psychedelic brethren evaporated almost as quickly as a DMT trip.

The issue is dated January 9th, 1995. 

Nine SCREW covers by SPAIN RODRIGUEZ, (1940 - 2012)

Spain Rodriguez drew many wonderful covers for SCREW Magazine during his long cartooning career. Here are the nine I have in my collection, but I suspect there are lots more. If anyone has a SCREW cover by Spain that's not posted here, I'd love to see it.

Here are two paragraphs I wrote in remembrance of Spain for Tim Hodler at The Comics Journal:

By 1982, I’d outgrown the superhero comics I’d read steadily through my teen years. To fill the void, I was buying all the undergrounds I could find at various long-lost quirky NYC comic shops like Soho Zat. As is typical, Crumb was the gateway drug. Fritz the Cat led quickly to Zap Comix, and while I loved nearly everything I saw between Zap‘s covers, I was particularly drawn to Spain Rodriguez’s bold pages that looked as if they’d been drawn by Wally Wood on four hits of blotter acid. Spain was sketching a world I desperately wanted to visit: brutally violent, brazenly sexy and relentlessly hip. Spain’s vision is a paranoid sci-fi fever dream where insidious corruption trickles down from the hidden seats of power, while leather-clad culture warriors fight that power in the name of the people’s revolution. Good stuff.

Roughly a decade and a half later, in the midst of a notorious legal jam, I found myself reaching out to many “big name” cartoonists in the hope that I’d score contributions for my benefit book. I was struck by the generosity of Spiegelman, Crumb, Robt. Williams, Kim Deitch, and some of the other underground greats, but again, I was especially touched by the kind spirit of Spain Rodriguez. During a visit to San Francisco, Spain graciously spent most of a morning driving me around town in his vintage auto, sharing stories about the city he loved, his underground comix collaborators, and other anecdotes from the kind of life that would make any sane person green with envy. From the Road Vultures to the ’68 Democratic Convention and the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theater, this was a man who’d been given a front row seat to the spectacle of mid-Twentieth Century America in transformation. Luckily for his readers, Spain had both the intelligence to understand what he was looking at, and the skill to share his insights with us in ways that were both moving and beautiful. In this instance at least, the cliched caveat that one should never meet one’s heroes was entirely wrong.

  SCREW #1,115, dated July 16th, 1990

  SCREW #1,293, dated December 13th, 1993

  SCREW #1,327, dated August 8, 1994

  SCREW #1,346, dated December 19th, 1994

  SCREW #1,358, dated March 13th, 1995

  SCREW #1,469, dated April 28th, 1997

  SCREW #812, dated September 24th, 1984

SCREW #506, November 1978

 SCREW #875, dated December 9th, 1985

SCREW #1,143: Cover art by Sabina Van der Linden

This issue is dated January 28, 1991. I know next to nothing about Sabina Van der Linden, but this cover has always stood out in my memory as one of the strongest 1990s-era SCREW covers I've seen. Any additional info on this artist would be greatly appreciated by your humble archivist! Beaucoup thanks go out to SCREW alum Ken Pastore for sending me this cover, 

(plus a few others that I'll post soon).

The Forgotten SCREW Cover Art of Tony Millionaire

MAAKIES cartoonist Tony Millionaire has been giving me shit over some mildly risque designs I drew recently for BROKEN SKATEBOARDS, (available for purchase here: http://brokenskateboards.nl/products/ ) so I thought I'd dig deep into my archives in order to spend the next few weeks exploring the forgotten SCREW cover art of Tony Millionaire.

Known to today's readers primarily as a children's author, few would suspect that the avuncular creator of wholesome properties like BILLY HAZELNUTS and TONY MILLIONAIRE'S SOCK MONKEY™ was in earlier decades impoverished enough to turn up, hat-in-hand at the door of  at 116 West 14th Street in NYC, address of the World's Greatest Newspaper? Truly those must've been dark times.

Millionaire's SCREW cover drawings, while in no way erotic, are interesting nonetheless for the peek they offer into what is clearly a uniquely disturbed imagination. Let's begin our exploration with SCREW #1,416, dated April 22nd, 1996: the cover drawing shows a creature, (most likely an ape) dressed in human clothing, preparing to reap a harvest of what are apparently human breasts, while a nude woman watches angrily from a perch in a nearby tree.

This unsettling image leaves the viewer with a multitude of questions: what does the simian gardener plan to do with his vegetables post-harvest? Is he engaged in some evil experiment involving genetically-altered crops? Why is the nude woman displeased? Is she the monkey's spouse, and if so, is she jealous of the attention being showered on this garden of human breasts? Why would a woman be married to a monkey, and more importantly, how did this cover drawing, laden with implications of bestiality, slip past SCREW's guidelines banning any depiction of human/animal relationships?

Perhaps its best not to ponder the meaning of this drawing too long. I fear that in this case, the search for understanding will send the viewer down a twisting tunnel that leads to confusion, despair, and ultimately madness. More Millionaire next week!