TITLE: Mangazine Issue #20
YEAR: February 1993
COMPANY: Antarctic Press
TANYA PART 2 by Juan F. Soto and Chris Howard
Since the mid-’80s, when it came to information of Japanese anime and manga, and also allowed people in the US to to create their own manga-style stories for the publication, Mangazine from Antarctic Press was one of the first.
Because of it’s comic book size, it was a magazine that would often be available on the comic book racks rather than the magazine racks.
Printed in grayscale for the interior, Mangazine would feature anime and manga news and spotlight a popular anime for its time.
While the publication stayed afloat for a few more years, it was kind of difficult to compete against other publications that print on better paper, feature color and were magazine format, let alone had more pages.
But what it came down to is what you wanted from an Anime Magazine and where “Animerica” featured manga from actual Japanese mangaka translated in English, “Mangazine” featured budding manga artists at that time hoping for one to be interested in their work.
Personally, I was not purchasing Mangazine for the comics as some were not that great, but I was there for the information and anime news which wasn’t as prevalent back then unless you were part of Compuserve or an online BBS.
But a few issues later, the publication would improve drastically. Better content, printed on better paper and it made “Mangazine” one of the best publications to buy, if you can find it.
At $2.95, I could remember it was quite a bit of money at that time. Nowadays, that price is more of a bargain.