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Price: $95.00
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| All items are shipped by USPS First Class or Priority Mail within two days of purchase. |
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Issue #15 of Punk Magazine came out in the summer of '78, when "punk rock" was barely three years old. The surf was high, and punk (not to mention Punk) was riding that wave into what looked like Next-Big-Thingdom. Heeding the call of the wild surf, Punk produced its magnum opus: Mutant Monster Beach Party. This is a fumetti (photo-comic) of epic proportions (50 pages! Hardly any ads! Ouch!) (and then there's the size: 9" x 12" didn't fit in the newsstand racks so well... live'n'learn), unfolding on the streets and beaches of New York. It tells the tale of Joey Ramone, a simple yet courageous surfer boy, and his dauntless love for beach bunny Deborah Harry. As in the myths of yore, there are outlaw bikers (Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band, John Cale of the Velvet Underground. Marlon Brando, who succeeded in proving John Donne wrong about islands, Lester Bangs, and others), a mad scientist (Andy Warhol), a disgruntled father (Chris Stein), a priest and a maid of honor (David Johansen and Joan Jett, you'll have to buy this rag to figure out which is which), aliens (including Arturo Vega, who brought you many a Ramones T-shirt), beach bums (Ivan Julian of the Void Oids, Annette Funicello of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Club... how's that for padding the search engine fodder, eh?), and of course the Monster (played by himself) who get involved in trying to thwart a love that had to be.
Inspired by the classics (i.e. Roger Corman and Mad Magazine) this grandiose production was overseen by John Holmstrom, based on an original story by Legs McNeil. Others involved in perpetrating it were Bruce Carleton (in the interest of full disclosure, that's me), who drew the titular Monster, Roberta Bayley, Chris Stein, Ken Weiner (the future Ken Avidor), Hal Drellich, Bob Gruen, Tom Hearn, Elin Wilder, Alex Blair, Bobby London, and, believe it or not, others.
As we now know, Next-Big-Thingdom wasn't to be (although Blondie did become a major hitmaker, and Joey Ramone recently got a street named after him around the corner from CBGB). Punk Magazine was destined to stay a well-loved but painfully undersold artifact-to-be of the golden age of punk rock. It went into a coma not long after Mutant Monster that persisted for a couple of decades (although it recently briefly regained consciousness for Punk #0, the 25th anniversary issue).
Which brings me to the condition of this relic: it's perfect... perfect I tell you! There's no wear at all. In fact, the only time this magazine has ever been opened was when I leafed through it just now to make the photos for this listing. It's part of my personal collection, having made its way practically untouched by human hands from the Punk office, through various NYC apartments, to my mom's basement in Kansas. Now I'm resurrecting it in its imminently collectible state for sale here. Baby needs new shoes! Grab 'n' growl!
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