First in Fright: The Fangoria Compendium is a 300 page journey through horror history
As far as I can tell or remember, my dive into horror fandom began in 1987, at which time I was only a few years old. In the early years of my fandom, Fangoria magazine was an invaluable source of information. Not only did it tell what horror movies were coming soon and go behind the scenes of the latest releases, but the retrospectives let me know about the genre classics I needed to catch up on. The magazine has had ups and downs since those glory days, but it’s still out there, still going strong – and now, the folks behind Fangoria have launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the 300 page hardcover book First in Fright: The Fangoria Compendium. The campaign just launched today and has already left its $25,000 goal in the dust, so there’s clearly a serious hunger for this book – and the digital archive of Fangoria history that goes with it – in the horror community.
Here’s the information: For more than four decades, Fangoria continues to deliver the first word on all things horror to millions of fans. Now comes an all-new hardcover book and complete digital archive of the magazine’s original print run that celebrate the history of horror through the pages of Fangoria. We’re living in a time when human storytelling and the printed word are depreciated on nearly all fronts. This project is about preserving the history of Fangoria, and we need your help to do it. First in Fright: The Fangoria Compendium takes readers through the biggest events that helped shape today’s horror landscape. This monumental collectible book is packed with over 300 pages of blood-soaked genre history, recounting iconic films and franchises, offering interviews with directors, stars, and special effects wizards, and going deep with features that track the evolution of horror filmmaking and explore the ways it has intersected with Fangoria’s own history. And this exclusive nostalgia trip includes interviews with current and former editors of the magazine who share stories they’ve never published before about what exactly has gone into the making of Fangoria over the years, as well as insights from modern horror luminaries and scholars.
The campaign notes, this project doesn’t end with the book! An important part of First in Fright: The Fangoria Compendium is a new initiative to develop the pinnacle in horror preservation: the complete Digital Archive of Fangoria Volume 1, chronicling the entire print run of classic Fangoria magazine issues (all 344 of them)! With every single page, picture and gory cover, we’re building the definitive academic resource for all serious fans of the genre. This won’t be a simple collection of PDFs – the Fangoria Digital Archive will be a fully indexed and searchable database of every name, detail and iota of information found in the magazine’s original pages! The full contents of each issue can be searched (by keyword, issue number, and month/year) and read in their original form, allowing you to easily access the stories that are important to you, in one simple-to-use interface that is broken down by issue, topics, titles, cast and crew.
John Carpenter is writing the foreword to First in Fright: The Fangoria Compendium, and the book will also feature contributions from Meredith Borders, Jason Kauzlarich, Phil Nobile Jr., Tony Timpone, Michael Gingold, Chris Alexander, Clive Barker, Bill Moseley, Jeffrey Reddick, Doug Bradley, Tom Savini, Sean S. Cunningham, Devon Sawa, Joe Bob Briggs, David Dastmalchian, Barbara Crampton, Bryan Fuller, Mike Flanagan, John Harrison, Christopher Landon, Sandy King, Don Mancini, Ryan Turek, Harry Manfredini, Neil Marshall, Patton Oswalt, Leigh Whannell, Ernest Dickerson, and Sam Zimmerman, among others.
Will you be contributing to the Kickstarter campaign, securing a copy of First in Fright: The Fangoria Compendium and/or gaining access to the digital archive? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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