Fortune And Men's Eyes

Still rooting around for my Subliminal Tattoos (yes, I have THAT many comic and magazine boxes) but also coming across old zines that I acquired during the 1990's, and having a ball doing so. Like Your Flesh #25 (1992), a Minneapolis-based zine with a great color glossy cover by Spanish flyer artist Frank Kozik, who has made his

home in Austin, Texas and has a long and incredible body of work doing underground music posters for live performances ever since the 1980's. Having spent most of the 90's as a flyer artist myself, I was heavily influenced by his style, and I still have one of his posters for a Sonic Youth/Mudhoney show that was either autographed by a band member or Kozik himself, although it's hard to tell from the scribble, and I got it off some stripper for free some ten years ago so who knows the history behind its legend.

But Your Flesh #25 contains articles about the Beastie Boys, Andrei Cedrescu, Leonard Cohen, Jim O'Rourke, Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet, and writer Adam Parfrey (article above) whose publishing company Feral House is known for releasing books about the strange, subversive, and controversial. Most notably his first book Apocalypse Culture which I had heard about for years before actually getting my hands on a copy, with its essays and interviews concerning necrophilia, lycanthropy, Wilhelm Reich, Elijah Mohammad, schizophrenia, and much more. I also have a copy of his book Cult Rapture, featuring articles on angels, messiahs, obsessed Elvis fans, and Nazis looking for love. I've read that book so many times I've had to glue the pages back into the paperback spine because the book is out of print and pretty hard to find these days.

I've also stumbled upon two issues of The Brutarian, both possibly from 1993. Good ole Brutarian from out of Arlington, VA! Who taught me about Coffin Joe, and the ultraviolent hilarity that is the film Rikki-O! But there was something sort of strange and esoteric about

so much of the information discussed in this zine at the time for me, because it was rare for me to stumble upon any publication at the time that reviewed albums from bands that I had never heard of before. Not to mention everything else contained. Movies were reviewed with numbers of beer cans instead of stars, and there were superbly illustrated comics, my favorite

being the pig-nosed people by Danny Hellman (above) who litter the pages with his exquisite linework, and book reviews for the likes of which were completely new to me. Plus essays and articles on Paul Westerberg, the Reverend Horton Heat, 60's sexploitation films, and gobs and gobs of satire to spare.

Speaking of Coffin Joe, I've been having a conversation about the films of Brazilian horror/exploitation master José Mojica Marins (aka Coffin Joe) with my friend Paul recently, and it had occurred to me that I haven't seen the old 1960's Coffin Joe movies since around the time this article came out in 1993, and was wondering if any of them had ever made it to DVD. Sure enough, that same week, a coffin-shaped box set to the Coffin Joe Trilogy on DVD came in to my store used, complete with accompanying comic book and other niceness. Still debating about getting it, though. I just got the Mike Hodges directed Flash Gordon special edition, and the new Criterion version of Polanski's Repulsion. Talk about settin' me back a spell. But I've held it aside... just in case. ;)