|
of a Recovered Zine-aholic
Like many fans of the Beauty and Beast TV series, once the show went off the air, I thought the dream ended. I wasn’t aware of fan clubs or conventions, and I had no idea that stories were being written about Vincent and Catherine and the rest of the tunnel people. And I had absolutely no clue that fanzines, or zines, were being published. When I got an internet connection in 1999, I don’t know what made me do a search for Beauty and the Beast, but I found the Songs of the Bluebird website. And I found FANFIC! I was in heaven reading the stories posted on this and the other BATB websites that I found. I ready EVERYTHING, even 3S fanfic though I preferred classic fanfic and especially the adult stories. After reading everything I could find, I was hungry for more. My first zine purchases were directly from fanfic writers who were still selling copies of their zines. Then I discovered eBay! BATB fanzines were the reason that I signed up for eBay. Nearly half of my zines were purchased through eBay. Sometimes the spirit of competition got the better of me when bidding for a particular zine and I’m embarrassed to admit how much I ended up paying for some of my zines. (Especially when I saw the same zines for much less at the conventions!) I went to my first BATB convention in 2003 in San Francisco. And there were ZINES. Boxes and boxes of zines! There was a whole room full of zines and other BATB items and I kept going back and looking through the boxes for zines that I didn’t already have. I ended up with 27 new zines from my first convention. JoAnn Baca still laughs at the memory of me dragging my VERY heavy suitcase through the lobby. I actually had to do a bit of repacking at the airline counter since my bag was over the weight limit and I had to put some of the zines in my carry-on. The rest of my zines were purchased from fans selling off their collections, websites selling used zines, or publishers stilling selling copies of their zines. I currently have a library of 564 zines. My zine purchasing spree has slowed down. New zines are not being printed anymore (even the annual conzine has gone digital) and I pretty much have the zines that I’m interested in collecting. Of course there are a few zines on my wish list that I’m keeping an eye out for. But I can now stand back and watch in amusement as the con virgins swarm the boxes of zines at the conventions. As they walk away with an armful of zines, I remember the excitement of adding to my zine collection.
Linda Wong
back to index
back to BatBland
|