Remembering CVG 101 and Classic Gamer Magazine

I no longer remember precisely how I got started writing for Classic Gamer Magazine. I seem to be missing my first e-mails on it and, unfortunately, I'm finding Google Groups completely unhelpful at the moment. But I believe the sequence of events was probably something like this. Chris "Cav" Cavanaugh published the first issue as a fanzine in 1998. It was a success, so he decided to relaunch it as a for-profit venture and put out the call for writers on Usenet. I'd quit my on-the-side job at Suite 101 a year before and was closing on my son's first birthday, so was beginning to feel like I had a handle on my new life with child. Also CGM was planning a bi-monthly schedule, giving me twice as long to write as I'd had on Suite 101's monthly schedule. Therefore, I volunteered.

I was relieved at the warm welcome Cav gave me. Reviewing the earliest e-mail I have from him, it looks like I probably referenced Suite 101 and he was not only familiar with my articles for them, but said he enjoyed them a lot. I quickly proposed a column called CVG 101 (for "classic video games") as a continuation of what I'd done at Suite 101 and he agreed. He introduced me to my fellow writers a few weeks later.

Our second item up for bid is: Lee Seitz.  Lee also knows his stuff.  He runs a great website at http://home.hiwaay.net/~lkseitz/cvg/nexus/ or better known as the "Classic Videogame Nexus" [sic].  His website is a great resource for information and I'm very thankful for having him along for the ride.

In addition to my column, I also worked with Cav on a classic video game newswire. My memories of this are fuzzy at best. I think we probably just agreed to make each other aware of news stories for our respective sites. I know I was running news on the Classic Video Games Nexus.

Looking through my old e-mails, it appears I gave feedback to all of Cav's e-mails about the progress on the latest issue or the magazine in general. I didn't mind giving my opinions, but tried to do it nicely and with the full understanding that I wasn't the one in charge. Which is good, because some of my suggestions were not the way the magazine went.

In addition to my CVG 101 column, I also conducted a couple interviews. They were both things I proposed to Cav and he thought were, indeed, good ideas. The (Buckner and) Garcia interview in #2 was the only time I got an article mentioned on the cover because you want news on the cover, not a recurring feature for newbies. Sadly, I never followed through on my proposed interview with former Atari programmer Dennis Harper. I still kick myself about that.

Things went okay. I say okay not because of any bad experiences -- Cav was incredibly nice and understanding -- but because I had a bad tendency to run up against and sometimes a bit past the deadlines. This was entirely my own fault. But when I did miss a deadline, I was typically given a bit of extra time because my work generally required little editing. I think part of the reason he was so understanding is that Cav had a tendency to blow his own deadlines, which is understandable since creating an entire magazine was, as best I know, an entirely new thing to him.

For #3, I wound up lifting a great deal of text from an article I'd written for Suite 101, with Cav's permission. I took the article I wrote on Sears labels and reworked it as an article on cartridge label variations with special emphasis on Sears labels.

I finally got to meet Cav at Classic Gaming Expo 2000. I also met his significant other (and later, wife) Sarah Thomas. It was a pleasure hanging out with both of them. It was also nice to hear Sarah, who was the one primarily responsible for editing all the submissions, say to me the same thing Cav had about my articles needing little in the way of editing.

Chris Cavanaugh and Sarah Thomas

I should point out that the magazine turned out not to be bi-monthly, but quarterly. After #4 was finished, Cav struck a deal with Tower Records to distribute the magazine on their newsstands! Unfortunately for me, there were no Tower Records stores in Alabama, so I didn't get the thrill of seeing a magazine with something I'd written on the racks. I suspect each store only got a handful of issues, as the one time I did find a Tower Records on a trip to Nashville, CGM was nowhere to be found.

I really blew things on my article for #6. That was when, because I hadn't finished reading a previous issue, I wrote an article very similar to one Leonard Herman had written for #4. Oops! Luckily, Cav gave me time to write another article instead. I've included that never-before-published article here, just for completeness.

I submitted an article for the seventh issue of CGM, but before the issue was published, Cav had to fold the magazine. Despite a major investment at the beginning, the magazine had continued to lose money due to lack of advertisers, so he had no choice. He later tried reviving it as a free, PDF-only publication, but only got two issues out before folding again. My article intended for #7 was included in Volume 2, #1 in 2004. But by then I had two kids and little spare time, so I was unable to contribute any more articles.

Cav has kept the Classic Gamer Magazine name around. He published a single issue of Volume 3, again as a free PDF, in 2010. He also still owns the www.classicgamer.com domain, although as I write this he's been having problems with his host and the site is down. However, he also runs an active Facebook page for it. And you can find a complete PDF archive of CGM at Digital Press. But for my own ego trip, here the articles I wrote for the magazine, which I'm proud to have been a part of.

• CGM #1, Fall 1999: Classic Video Games in a Nutshell
• CGM #2, Winter 1999–2000: Cleaning Your Cartridges
• CGM #2, Winter 1999–2000: Catching Up With Buckner and Garcia
• CGM #3, Spring 2000: When is a Combat Not a Combat?
• CGM #4, Summer 2000: Interview with Jerry Greiner
• CGM #4, Summer 2000: The Comic Book Connection
• CGM #5, Fall 2000: What I Learned Over Summer Vacation
• Unpublished: The Atari 2600-Hasbro Link
• CGM #6, Spring 2001: Please Don't Chew the Gum!
• CGM Volume 2, #1; April 2004: Em-yoo-lay-shun

Revenge on Wikipedia: Aristocratic Xtraterrestrial Time-Traveling Thieves

Back around early 2009, I think, I re-read my collection of Aristocratic Xtraterrestrial Time-Traveling Thieves comics, which inspired me to create a Wikipedia page for the series.  It seemed a far better thing to do than to stick up yet another web page that few would see and I would then proceed to not update.  (Not that I'd expect much in the way of updates.)

Normally I visit my Wikipedia watchlist weekly, but in May 2013 I got behind.  When I finally got around to checking near the end of the month, I discovered all my work on the article had been deleted by an editor who decided the series wasn't noteworthy enough. If there was any notice of impending deletion, I missed it.  So much for "keep[ing] useful information ... available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity" [http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement].

Was the article only of interest to a small group of people? Sure, but it was also the only non-sales link on the first page of Google search results for the topic! In fact, it may have been one of the only web pages to actually give anything beyond bare-bones information on the series. And since it wasn't of wide interest, exactly how much was it costing Wikipedia to leave that article up? I'd guess very, very little. Just because something is not significant does not mean it's not worth preserving.

Don't get me wrong, I like Wikipedia; I use Wikipedia often.  But I think it has some problems.  In this case, the ease of deleting work because one person decided it's wasn't notable enough.

I stick to the fringe of Wikipedia and don't get hung up on its internal politics.  And I'm not going to start now.  I'm just going to re-publish the info and hope people who want to can find it.  I recovered the October 6, 2011 version of the article thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. (How appropriate.) The above text is copyright by me, but the text in this article below this point is attributable to Lee K. Seitz under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, since Wikipedia doesn't want to claim it.

Aristocratic Xtraterrestrial Time-Traveling Thieves

Publication information
Publisher	Comics Interview
Schedule	Bi-monthly
Format	(vol. 1) One-shot (vol. 2) Ongoing
Genre	comic science fiction
Publication date	(vol. 1) August 1986 (vol. 2) February 1987–December 1988
Number of issues	(vol. 2) 12
Creative team
Writer	Henry Vogel
Penciller	Mark Propst
Creators	Mark Propst Henry Vogel David Anthony Kraft
Editor	David Anthony Kraft

Aristocratic Xtraterrestrial Time-Traveling Thieves, abbreviated as X-Thieves, was a comic book created by Mark Propst, Henry Vogel, and David Anthony Kraft and published by Comics Interview. It chronicled the adventures of two thieves, Fred and Bianca, in a futuristic, science fiction setting while often breaking the fourth wall.

Publishing history

Mark Probst and Henry Vogel were waiting to discuss future plans for the ongoing series Southern Knights with David Anthony Kraft in his office. Kraft was tied up on the phone, so Vogel was flipping through Probst's portfolio when he came across a drawing of the two characters who would become the X-Thieves. Vogel asked Probst about their back story, but Probst didn't have one as he'd just drawn them to show off his versatility. Vogel decided the two were high-class art thieves and he and Probst began exchanging ideas. Once Kraft finished his business, he joined in and the three ultimately became co-creators.

The three had been discussing the current trend to name independent comics to parody the name of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so Vogel initially called them the "Old-Age Extraterrestrial Marsupial Thieves." As the concepts around the two characters took shape, they eventually were renamed to their final title. Since the title was so long, X-Thieves was decided on as the abbreviated version, an obvious play on Marvel's X-Men, which was one of the top-selling comic book titles at the time. This abbreviated title was used on the cover of later issues.

The original idea was to have Fred and Bianca guest star in an issue of Southern Knights, but Kraft said they were so good they should have their own series. Vogel and Probst quickly agreed. To test the waters, a one-shot "micro series" was published first, which introduced the two thieves and most of their recurring foils. Retailers ordered 36,000 copies¹, so a bi-monthly, ongoing series was announced within the one-shot. The Southern Knights then became the guest stars in the first issue of the on-going series. This series lasted a total of twelve issues. Issue #13 was to feature the wedding of the two characters, but it was never published.

Protagonists

• Pansafredicopacog, nicknamed Fred, is a male extraterrestrial known as a s'bwat. He resembles a white, humanoid kangaroo but with a tall, white mane and requires special goggles to see in most environments. Little has been revealed of his origins, but his father is a judge.
• Bianca Arden is a human woman and expert lockpicker. Her origins are also largely unknown, although she did attend and graduate from thief school.
• The Fredmobile is their vehicle, a Tardis 40 Space Yacht. Named in homage to the vehicle flown by The Doctor in Doctor Who, it shares the abilities of being larger inside than out and traveling through space and time (via Way-Back Machine, an homage to Peabody's Improbable History from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show). It also has the ability to transform into virtually any vehicle, tool, or weapon. Bianca and most others call it the Fredmobile, but Fred himself hates the name and refuses to use it most of the time. He has not come up with a better name, however, so he simply calls it "the car."

Recurring characters

Most of the recurring characters act as somewhat incompetent foils to the two thieves.

• Officer Quinzal Pinback of Interstellar Police (Interpol) is a humanoid male with four arms. He has a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.
• Clint the Repo Man is a male alien of an unnamed race who continually attempts to repossess the Fredmobile, as the thieves took it without paying for it.
• An unnamed agent of the Interstellar Revenue Service (IRS), who is a male alien of another unnamed race in pursuit of the thieves to collect on unpaid taxes. He is the most competent of Fred and Bianca's enemies, but they continue to escape from or otherwise thwart him.
• The Continuity Inquisition is an organization designed to keep history on track. Under their regulations, any being traveling through time within its own lifetime is to be executed. Because of this, Fred and Bianca usually limit their time travel to their distant past, which includes the late 20th century.

Reprints and collected editions

• Fred and Bianca Valentine's Day Special (reprints vol. 2, #5)
• Fred and Bianca Mother's Day Special (reprints vol. 2, #3)
• X-Thieves Graphic Album #1 (reprints vol. 1, #1 and vol. 2, #1-2)
• X-Thieves Graphic Album #2 (reprints vol. 2, #3-5)
• X-Thieves Graphic Album #3 (reprints vol. 2, #6-8)
• X-Thieves Graphic Album #4 (reprints vol. 2, #9-10)

Notes

1. Vogel, Henry (February 1987), "'X-Thieves' X-tra", Aristocratic Xtraterrestrial Time-Traveling Thieves 2 (1): inside front cover

Categories: American comics titles | One-shot comic titles | Humor comics | Science fiction comics | 1986 comic debuts

My Time as Suite 101's Classic Home Video Games Editor

In mid-1996, I was contacted by Julie Bradshaw to become an "editor" for a new web site called Suite 101. They were seeking people for a variety of topics who would maintain a top 5 list of sites related to the topic and write a weekly article about it. I wasn't sure if I could commit to writing one article a week, so I hemmed and hawed with myself. Months of indecisiveness paid off when they announced the creation of part-time editors. I then quickly put in my application as the "classic home video games" editor. I figured I could handle one article a month. And I did…until my wife got pregnant. I managed to continue my duties for a time, but finally I missed an entire month. I realized I had to resign, perhaps just temporarily, so I did so in February 1998.

In case you haven't guessed, I never went back. It's all rather fuzzy now, but a review of my e-mails helped refresh my memory a bit. I never got much in the way of feedback from Suite 101 users, although the management told me at one point my topic ranked "around 55 out of 205 topics," putting me just out of the top 25%.  I enjoyed the writing and later wrote a regular column for Classic Gamer Magazine, but that's a story for another time. A little extra cash never hurts, either.

As I said above, editors also picked a "top 5" sites related to their topic.  I was running the Classic Video Games Nexus at the time, so the hard part wasn't finding five sites, but figuring out which five to link to.  I no longer have records of that, but I seem to remember including the Nexus as one of the links.  Nobody ever said I had to be completely unbiased.

When I was involved, Suite 101 was owned by i5ive communications inc., a Canadian company. (Yes, they used the name in all lower case.) That's pronounced "I-five" (or "eye five"). I don't know what's happened with it since I left, but Suite 101 still exists today with no mention of that company. (i5ive's old domain now belongs to i5ive Affordable Online Insurance.) While my work for i5ive was work for hire, under the terms of my contract I was free to reproduce the editorials on my own web site, so I'm going to assume that also applies to my blog, a concept that didn't exist back then. Furthermore, Suite 101 removed all the articles I wrote some time after I resigned. That kept stale topics from polluting the ones that were still updated regularly. So given the changes that have happened in the 15 years since I wrote these, I doubt Suite 101 has any record of me working for them any more anyway. Here, then, are my bio and the 16 articles I wrote for Suite 101 on Classic Home Video Games.

• c. late 1996: Autobiography
• November 1996: Classic Home Video Games: An Introduction
• December 2, 1996: How to Start A Classic Video Game Collection Part 1: Picking a System
• December 27, 1996: How to Start a Classic Video Game Collection Part 2: The System Choices - The Atari Trio
• January 17, 1997: The November 1996 editorial was repeated for Suite 101's grand opening.
• February 1, 1997: How to Start a Classic Video Game Collection Part 3: The System Choices - Non-Atari
• February 28, 1997: How to Start a Classic Video Game Collection Part 4: Where to Find Classics
• April 4, 1997: New Games for Classic Systems
• May 2, 1997: Atari 2600 Technical Spotlight
• June 6, 1997: Electronicon is Coming!: Would I Con You?
• July 4, 1997: Is It Live or Is It Emulated? - Part 1: Shareware and Freeware Emulators
• July 18, 1997: Is It Live or Is It Emulated? - Part 2: Commercial and Upcoming Emulators
• August 15, 1997: Thrifting: A Definition
• September 5, 1997: Preview: Atari Gaming HQ
• October 7, 1997: System Spotlight: Magnavox Odyssey
• November 14, 1997: Book Review: Phoenix (2nd Edition)
• December 12, 1997: When is a Combat not a Combat?
• February 13, 1998: Piracy: Collectors' Friend or Foe

Robb Waters Does It Again

Once again, Robb Waters has done Rom art.  This time it's a portrait of the action figure.  It's part of a series of portraits of various superheroes and science fiction characters.  And it's actually from 2011, but I'm just now discovering it.

If you missed it, here are the two previous Robb Waters works featured on the blog.

What Child Is This (Playing with a Rom Action Figure)?

The photo at right, of an elementary school-aged girl posing with a Rom action figure holding his Translator, comes from the November 21, 1979 edition of The (Owosso, Michigan) Argus-Press. It was printed with an article picking some highlights of character dolls in the history of the toy industry, starting with the teddy bear (named for President Theodore Roosevelt with his permission). Titled "Toy industry dates from 1903", the article itself makes no mention of Rom, but does mention electronic games in the final paragraph.

The article was published in several newspapers and has no byline, but in one newspaper is marked "NEA," meaning it was distributed by the Newspaper Enterprise Association, a newspaper syndicate of the day. I found five others in the Google News Archive, but only one of them also included this photo. That was the Merced (California) Sun-Star's November 22, 1979 edition, where it was published as "Children of today the same but toys are changing."

I'd love to know more about this photo and the girl featured in it. In particular because this is one of two photos featuring her and Rom! The other appeared in an article called "Choose Toys, Games that Outlast Holidays." In this photo, however, it's a blond boy who's holding Rom while he plays the Mad Magazine Game with the girl in the first photo. Unfortunately, this article not only lacks a byline, it also doesn't list a syndicate, so there's no indication at all of its origins.

I've found copies of this story in seven papers in the Google News Archive. Again, not all include this photo with the article, but most do. The most interesting thing is the range of dates this article printed. Most were published between November 21 and December 24, 1979, however The Day of New London, Connecticut published it a year later, in November 1980. That was without the photo, but the article still has the part about Rom in it. (According to my somewhat anecdotal research, the Rom action figure was marked down to half-price in 1980 from his 1979 debut.) The prize, however, goes to The Rockmart (Georgia) Journal, which published the article in December 1983, complete with references to TV shows that were canceled by then. Unfortunately, they cut off the article before it got to talking about the Rom action figure.

So, back to the title question: who are these children and where did the photos comes from? Based on the fact that both articles appeared on November 21, 1979, I'm going to guess both were part of a package of articles from NEA. I asked my father, who used to be a newspaper journalist, about it. He told me that, in addition to the comics, editorial cartoons, and opinion columns they syndicated, NEA "also provided packages of feature stories, which may have contained photographs provided by companies whose products were discussed." He also added, "newspapers were not required to identify the material as coming from NEA."

Therefore, my theory is that in November 1979, NEA sent its subscribing newspapers a set of stories on toys for the upcoming Christmas shopping season. I'm betting one of the stories' "sponsors" was Parker Brothers, who also provided several photos of children playing with its products. Besides Rom and the Mad Magazine Game, other Parker Brothers products appearing in either of these stories or the photos included the All the King's Men board game, Merlin electronic game, Stop Thief electronic board game, and Wildfire pinball. (And I'm willing to bet that list of toys has evoked a nostalgic response from most of you guys over 40.)

So if you happen to have a 40-something-year-old friend who did a little modeling for Parker Brothers back in the early '80s, please have them drop me a line. Parker Brothers was headquartered in Salem, Mass., but that may or may not have been where the photos were taken. I'll take any clues I can get right now.

Thanks to my dad for the information he provided about NEA.