Crimewave USA magazine, first member of the Dead Magazine Club

I guess the folks at Utne Reader must have appreciated the little magazine that Linette and I used to publish. They just launched a new website called the Dead Magazine Club, where they bemoan the loss of great periodicals, and they chose Crimewave as their very first entry. Apparently they want to know what’s become of us… which is something that I often wonder myself.

deadcrimewaveutne2

A special thanks to my friend Suzanne for bringing this to my attention… and kind of making me feel like a loser schmuck in the process. And, no, I don’t blame her for that. I’m glad that she told me. It’s good to know that our work is missed among those few who still remain dedicated to the alternative press. I just don’t like being reminded of the fact that we’re no longer really producing anything of cultural value. And then there’s the guilt. I hate that there are people out there, counting on us to produce more issues.

With all of that said, however, I should probably mention that Crimewave isn’t actually, technically dead. (I guess you could say, it’s more like Terri Schiavo than, say, the Wicked Witch of the East at this point.) Sure, it’s been a few years since we put an issue out, but Linette and I haven’t pulled the plug yet. Yes, we let the website go. But we’re not calling the magazine quits just yet. We may still have an issue or two left in us.

And, if you want to point fingers, and blame someone for fact that there hasn’t been a new issue in the last few years, blame Desert Moon Distribution, or the fact that people don’t always have the same level of energy that they had in their 20’s.

[Tonight’s post is dedicated to the brilliant, heroic, devastatingly funny Roger Ebert, whom I’ve wanted to interview for years, but have never had the opportunity. (I did get to talk with Russ Meyer about him, though, which was fun.) I’ve wanted to interview Roger since about 1996, when I met an old man at an alternative press gathering in California who showed me a copy of a fanzine from the late 50’s that he claimed was penned by a young Ebert. I believe the name of the zine was “Stymie,” but it could have been “Stump.” I glanced at it briefly, as the fellow told me about how Ebert would send him copies from his parent’s basement in Illinois, when he was a kid. (The zine, as I recall, consisted mostly of sci-fi reviews.) Anyway, I just always wanted to talk with Roger about his time spent in his parents’ basement, reaching out to other like-minded people in the early days of zines. I know it probably pales next to his more recent, adult accomplishments, but I think it’s somehow very important.]

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15 Comments

  1. Posted February 17, 2010 at 1:29 am | Permalink

    I bought about 5 of these at the Shadow Art Fair and read them cover to cover over and over again. It’s a special thing when BOTH writing and subject matter are of the utmost quality.

  2. Fred
    Posted February 17, 2010 at 7:06 am | Permalink

    Maybe if we all stopped reading your blog, you’d go back to it.

  3. Michael Niemi
    Posted February 17, 2010 at 8:13 am | Permalink

    Mark, how can I get my hands on some back issues?

  4. Cleff
    Posted February 17, 2010 at 8:22 am | Permalink

    Mark what do you and Linette do for a living. With the website and Crimewave not currently in motion, and a lack of advertisers on the site, how do you feed your gullet with Ypsi’s tasty food?

    BTW, Beezy is making soup at the library for a deomonstration. Pretty cool! Nom Nom Nom

  5. Edward
    Posted February 17, 2010 at 9:26 am | Permalink

    You know, you could have turned this all around on UTNE, by saying that you’d still be in business if they’d made more of an effort to write about Crimewave over the past 10+ years.

  6. Andy1313
    Posted February 17, 2010 at 9:40 am | Permalink

    to be fair, Terri Schiavo is indeed dead.

  7. adam eichner
    Posted February 17, 2010 at 10:19 am | Permalink

    don’t know if you saw this very touching article about Ebert in this month’s esquire: http://www.esquire.com/features/roger-ebert-0310?click=pp

  8. Paul
    Posted February 17, 2010 at 2:04 pm | Permalink

    Maybe he was thinking of the robotic Terri Schiavo that greets people at the KY Creationism Museum.

  9. Paul
    Posted February 17, 2010 at 2:05 pm | Permalink

    Has anyone approached you about reprinting the back issues of CWusa as a book?

  10. Posted February 17, 2010 at 8:14 pm | Permalink

    What about Rosie’s magazine? Her magazine died a very dramatic death.

    I would also be into buying an old back issue of Crimewave, or two?

  11. Posted February 17, 2010 at 8:48 pm | Permalink

    I never thought I’d see parallels drawn between my magazine and Rosie O’Donnell’s.

  12. Posted February 17, 2010 at 8:49 pm | Permalink

    As for back issues, yes, we have them, but all the local stores that carried them are out of business. I guess, if there’s interest, I could bring them out to the next Shadow Art Fair. Or, since we don’t have the Crimewave site anymore, I guess I could start a gift shop here at MM.com.

  13. Posted February 17, 2010 at 8:51 pm | Permalink

    As for what we do, Linette runs her own design firm here in Ypsi. I have a regular 9:00 to 5:00 office job, which leaves me time in the evening to blog and work on my other projects. Crimewave, even when it was selling, never made us any money. We lost money on every issue we put out.

  14. Posted February 18, 2010 at 7:57 pm | Permalink

    I remember Crimewave USA fondly. Thank you for the stories on S & M, tours of the muffin factory, body bags. My ex-boyfriend gave me my first copy…God I hate that guy.

  15. Dwicki
    Posted October 14, 2013 at 2:34 am | Permalink

    Sometimes the biggest tree in the forrest has to die so that others may grow to maturity.

2 Trackbacks

  1. […] some of you may know, I used to publish a little magazine called Crimewave USA with my wife, Linette. We haven’t put out a new issue […]

  2. […] Well, I have another piece of trivia for you. It was Utne Reader that officially pronounced Crimewave dead… I don’t think I got my first issue of Factsheet Five at Tower either, although I did buy […]

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