.

[Linked Image from m.media-amazon.com]


Here's another Frank Cirocco illustration, the cover for DRAGON'S TEETH magazine. Intended to be an ongoing anthology series, but ended up being only one issue.
It has interior stories by Cirocco, Macklin and Dowling, and also Tony Salmons, Alex Toth , Rick Geary, and a heavily illustrated Jim Steranko interview. Comparable in quality to ECLIPSE magazine, and EPIC ILLUSTRATED. Only one issue, but a least, a very good one.

Funded as an arts project by "Graphic Stories Guild", a k a University of California, Southern California, or UCSC.
And most or all is contributors are (or at least recently were) university students.

A previous university-funded annual comic that preceded it was titled ALL-SLUG COMICS. ............. https://www.comics.org/publisher/9143/
1 1972
2 1973
3 1974
4 1975
5 1976 .................................................................................................................................................. https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=39933491
6 spring 1977

Then the title changed to TESSARAE
7 Spring 1977 ........................................................................................................................................ https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=665001

Then SLUG again
7 Summer 1978
8 Fall 1979

And then this issue, repackaged with nicer design and contents in a magazine size as DRAGON'S TEETH , in Summer 1983.

Among its contributors to multiple issues are Frank Cirocco, Ken Macklin, Brent Anderson, Tony Salmons, Steve Oliff, and Charlie Boatner.
And in TESSERAE, even had a pin-up page by Neal Adams.
Needless to say, many of these artists rose from these humble roots, to fame in comics with their later work.


Another nice offering in comic size is HEROINES SHOWCASE ART PORTFOLIO
( HEROINES SHOWCASE was a San Francisco area-based fanzine about women comics creators and women fantasy characters. And beyond their modest fanzine, they published these special porfolio issues in a much nicer format. )

Issue 2 (published in 1979, $1.50 cover price) is a portfolio of about 30 full-page Lela Dowling pages, at a time when she was just becoming known and selling prints of her work at conventions and by mail order.
The issue 2 reprint (in 1981, $3.00 cover price) looks from the cover to be the exact same book, but actually has 15 of the 1979 pages replaced by new Dowling pages.
Looking at the covers of both editions, the only way to tell these two different editions, with different contents, is the $1.50 and $3.00 cover prices.

My 1979 copy of issue 2 was slightly scraped on a corner of the cover, so I ebay-ordered what I thought was a better copy of the same issue.
But the new copy turned out to be the revised 1981 second printing with a lot of new Dowling pages. So I see that as win-win.


And issue 3 (in 1985) is even nicer in design, with photos of all 11 contributing artists, including Brent Anderson, Gary Winnick, Frank Cirocco, Lela Dowling, Joe Chiodo, Rudi Franke, Al Gordon, Steve Swentson, Lisa Free, Cora Lee Healy and Terry Austin.
Along with a paragraph of text introducing each of them, and one or more full page illustrations by each, with nice offset printing on heavy stock glossy paper. 44 pages of art, most of them nice.



The three HEROINES SHOWCASE ART PORTFOLIO issues evolved as an upgraded collection from a preceding HEROINES SHOWCASE fanzine from the 1976-1980 period.
HEROINES SHOWCASE was published in a smaller 6" X 8" size. Focused on female comics and fantasy fiction characters.

Likewise the fanzine PRINCESSIONS. The first 12 issues were likewise in a 6" X 8" smaller size (though mis-labelled by Mycomicshop at the link as in a larger size in issues 1-12) and mostly only had 200 copies per issue printed, usually around 20 pages per issue.
In the final issues, PRINCESSIONS evolved into a larger 8" X 11" size 36-page magazine on heavier white paper and very nice covers, with more pages and interviews, and increased its circulation to 3,000 copies per issue. Issue 13 is my favorite, with an interview and focus on artist Lela Dowling (with her then-boyfriend artist Ken Macklin also sitting in on the interview, and both talking about working professionally in comics and illusttration, and using conventions to promote themselves, where they often both appeared together).

Issue 14 has an interview of fantasy author Anne McCaffrey.
Like the HEROINES SHOWCASE fanzine, PRINCESSIONS is focused on female characters, writers and artists. PRINCESSIONS started out as a fanzine on Wonder Woman in the days of the Lynda Carter TV series days. But when the series was cancelled, they expanded the fanzine to include other female characters and creators, and I think was much better for it.