Vulcanalia (multimedia zine)

You may be looking for Vulcanalia, a Star Trek: TOS newsletter published in 1967, which has the sister zine called Vulcanian Enterprises Journal

Zine
Title:	Vulcanalia (often mistakenly referred to as "Vulcania")
Publisher:
Editor(s):	Cara Sherman
Date(s):	1972
Series?:
Medium:	print
Genre:	gen
Fandom:	multimedia and Star Trek: TOS
Language:	English
External Links:
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Vulcanalia is a multimedia 61-page anthology of fiction, non-fiction, poems, and art.

front cover, artist is Cara Sherman

back cover, Cara Sherman

It is undated but was published sometime after February 1972.

There was only one issue, and then it was re-titled, Romulan Wine.

Contents include a Peter Sunn story, sketches, a page of Star Trek trivia, editorials/reviews & random SFF tidbits, a 7-page comic strip, and a bit of poetry. There are no canon TOS characters in the fan fiction, but a bit of the editorial content focuses on Star Trek and Vulcans.

From the first page: "Gratefully acknowledging our existence to Gene Roddenberry who started it all.... A first fanzine which is, among other things, our attempt to see if it can be done in mimeo."

Contents

• art portfolio by Cara Sherman (3)
• Quack (13)
• Peter Sunn: The Fiendish Offendie Affair part one, or Pardon Me, but Isn't That Your Camel in My Chicken Soup?, fiction by Cara Sherman (Peter Sunn is a klutzy, humorous Vulcan original character.) (unlike part two, this one has no illustration) (15)
• Star Trek Trivia Quiz with Answers (29)
• More Quack (30)
• 4 in 1, first installment of a novel called Tarn by Cara Sherman, included here in comic book form, by Cara Sherman (31)
• Glossary (41)
• poetry by lascelles, Cara Sherman, and Debbie Tonyan (42)
• Following the Comix (45)
• High Council, guest essay by Paula O'Keefe (48)
• Still More Quack (49)
• short story: And Everywhere that Mary Went by Mike Main (51)
• satirical featurette: The Gloom Patrol: Yuthinus Yucks It Up, to Have a Really Difficult Time Attending a Lecture on Milton with an Audience Full of Unseemly Thugs, Roughewn Ruffians and Rowdy Roughtnecks to Say Nothing of Bertrand Russell, Not that He's Anywhere Around by Katharine Nickell (55)
• drawing by Brian Wenz (6)
• previews for next ish, swan song and a drawing by Cliff Kurowski (61)

Sample Interior

• 

  first page of the Peter Sunn story, The Fiendish Offendie Affair

• 

  artist is Cara Sherman

• 

  artist is Cara Sherman, "The Kreng face on page 3 did not come out too well, I'm afraid. How recently was this done? It seemed cruder than your work of late..."

• 

  artist is Cara Sherman, "I enjoyed the caricature page 4, firstly because of the light, cartoony style and secondly because of the funny lines. Who SAYS women don't have a sense of humor. And howcum you don't letter this well on your other things?"

• 

  artist is Cara Sherman, "The horseman drawing on page 6 was an interesting mood piece, serene in its simplicity, yet by its nature anticipatory of some sudden action due soon. The horse could have used some work, though,. The exaggeration of Tirak's legs did not jar my eyes as did Sakenn's... In fact, in the simplicity of the design the exaggeration seemed very appropriate."

• 

  artist is Cara Sherman, "The Tarn and Ermine composition on page 7 rates as one of my favorite pieces of fan art—ever! I'm fast becoming an ardent fan of yours, Cara, if you continue to produce beautiful studies like this one. Even the streakiness of the shading didn't bother me. The proportion, the shadowing, the perspective, this is a beautiful piece of art. Fortunately the bleed through from, page 8 wasn't too severe so we could enjoy page 7 all the more. What else can I say? I LOVE it!!"

• 

  artist is Cara Sherman, "Page 8! You've broken another unwritten rule; demure young fannes are not supposed to think like that, Male fans, yes, but not the females.... I enjoyed it, though,- as I do most studies of raunchy nudes...."

• 

  not credited, "All I can say about page 11 is that if all cult high priestesses looked like that, I'd go and find me a cult and join it. What was most striking outside of the bare chest, again, was the clothing of the figure. Having worked in costume design I can appreciate the problems in clothing a seated figure. Page 11 impressed me more for the clothing of the figure than the baring of it. Quite good...."

• 

  artist is Cara Sherman

• 

  artist is Cara Sherman

• 

  artist is Cara Sherman, "Arv Jones' Batman was well done. Well, I say, even though I didn't see the original, but knowing Arv's work I think it's a good illo. And it was very appropriate for a column dealing with the comics."

• 

  "The drawing on page 60 is by Brian Wenz from Seattle. He may not be Mr. Right, being an insane nerd, but he'll do 'til someone better comes along (THAT'S for drawing that Vulcan girl so FAT, Bri.) I shouldn't be so mean -- after all, he stenciled his work himself, which God knows is rare enough these days."

• 

  not credited

Reactions and Reviews

See reactions and reviews for The Fiendish Offendie Affair.

[zine]: Cover was quite nice. An interesting mixture of pen, wash, and charcoal. The screens of the plate and the print of Spock unfortunately meshed to form a screened morass, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been, considering what I've seen happen with screens before. This was metal plated, I take it? The only real drawback of the cover was the lettering. If you can't get press-type then I'd suggest a little mere care in lettering. The lettering was the only thing that looked slipshod on the cover.

Bacover was an interesting mood piece. The silent man, watching out into the distant desert, waiting for something (and waiting with great assurance, too). A very nice piece, except for the streakiness of the sky and the bleed through from the interior page. Yes, I know you've asked me how to smooth out a screen in mimeo, but again I really can't help you since I've never really worked in mimeo. All I can suggest is using a soft #7 or 2 pencil and going over the area smoothly a number of times until every space is covered with the pattern.

[...]

I liked just about all the incidental spot illos to the text features. I especially enjoyed "Cowflop" on page 2 and "Chickaboom" on page 13. Nothing like short little cartoons with a punchline to fill a space enjoyably. I think cartoons make the best filler items.

Arv Jones' Batman was well done. Well, I say, even though I didn't see the original, but knowing Arv's work I think it's a good illo. And it was very appropriate for a column dealing with the comics.

Afraid that the Mort III illo on page 30 was quite poor. [...] I'm not looking forward to more of his art.

[...]

The Main Chadwick and Johnson illos didn't hurt anything. They looked better than blank space or solid type, but they really didn't serve any purpose, either.... Just nice pictures. The Wenz and Kurowski illos were crude.

I think the features that really, intensely needed spot illos didn't get them. And by that I mean your text features, especially Peter Sunn and Gloom Patrol. They could both have used some half or three—quarter page splash panels to introduce the series. Such splashes would show the readers the characters, a scene from the story, or the mood of the piece, and would certainly differentiate it from the rest of the type. Except for that near blank intro page on PETER SUNN, you didn't even know you were about to read a separate but equal feature.

[...]

Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I like your attitude. It's light, yet serious in the right places. You're open to suggestions yet have the courage of your own convictions. Where nine out of ten zineds narrate contents and features like a cypher, your presentation in VCN makes this zine a very personal one. Coming away from reading it, I find I think I know a little more about you than I did before I read the zine. This is good, because it encourages me and other readers to open up as well, and we can really start to communicate with one another.

[MUCH snipped about a comments in other zines, about comics, politics...]

Suppose we get away from the turgid text for a while, ok? One of the pleasantest features of the zine is the abundant Cara Sherman art which, in spite of a couple of ineffective drawings, was still a shining achievement.

As I said before, one of the common American myths (like "It Pays to Advertise" and "Hard Work Never Hurt Anyone" *UGH*) is that "You can't draw in mimeo." I guess ignorance of the law IS an excuse here, because you've produced some of the best art I've seen, in or out of mimeo. Some really fantastic pieces of art. Let's take the portfolio first.

I like the idea of a portfolio, by the way. If handled like this first one, it could be a showplace for items that don't fit in to the common fanzine categories...

The Kreng face on page 3 did not come out too well, I'm afraid. How recently was this done? It seemed cruder than your work of late...

I enjoyed the caricature page 4, firstly because of the light, cartoony style and secondly because of the funny lines. Who SAYS women don't have a sense of humor. And howcum you don't letter this well on your other things?

The drawing of Sakenn on page 5 needed work. It was much too squat and muscle-bound, Perhaps that was what you intended in the first place, but as a study in anatomy, it suffers.

This stockiness is also evident on page 10's Sakenn, with the legs of the characters much too bulky and bumpy...

The horseman drawing on page 6 was an interesting mood piece, serene in its simplicity, yet by its nature anticipatory of some sudden action due soon. The horse could have used some work, though,. The exaggeration of Tirak's legs did not jar my eyes as did Sakenn's... In fact, in the simplicity of the design the exaggeration seemed very appropriate.

The Tarn and Ermine composition on page 7 rates as one of my favorite pieces of fan art—ever! I'm fast becoming an ardent fan of yours, Cara, if you continue to produce beautiful studies like this one. Even the streakiness of the shading didn't bother me. The proportion, the shadowing, the perspective, this is a beautiful piece of art. Fortunately the bleed through from, page 8 wasn't too severe so we could enjoy page 7 all the more. What else can I say? I LOVE it!!

Page 8! You've broken another unwritten rule; demure young fannes are not supposed to think like that, Male fans, yes, but not the females.... I enjoyed it, though,- as I do most studies of raunchy nudes....

Page 9 was not very distinctive. The panels seemed jerky; there was no real continuity between the awake Vulcan, seeing the girl, forcing answers from the girl. Also the figures seemed a little stiff and stick-like. I liked the shot of the girl in panel 2, though. You carried a nice expression on her, and that low-cut tunic didn't hurt any, either...

All I can say about page 11 is that if all cult high priestesses looked like that, I'd go and find me a cult and join it. What was most striking outside of the bare chest, again, was the clothing of the figure. Having worked in costume design I can appreciate the problems in clothing a seated figure. Page 11 impressed me more for the clothing of the figure than the baring of it. Quite good....

Having seen the charcoal print of page 12, I agree with you that the result is far from an improvement. Although the face came through quite well, the head it self seemed to have been pressed together, almost to a point. UGH. It was not the shading that was streaky so much as the pen line shading you used that seemed random and streaky. This seemed the sloppiest of the group, I'm afraid.

But I like the idea of a portfolio. I'd like to see more such portfolios, with an emphasis on life drawings and compositions like pages 11 and 7, than panelised drawings like page 9...

TARN was very well drawn, though you emphasized the foreground and top figures too much.

[...]

But the art in no way detracts from the story, and in several places the figures (principally closeups of Ermine) are very good. It's just that I have seen you do better, in VULCANALIA and for me.

Storywise, there's not much I can say, because there isn't much here to comment on. All you've done in the first episode is introduce the characters and set up the situation. I'll have to reserve definite comments on TARN until I see more.

I nominate the term QUADRANGLE for the 4-in-1 series title, because it seems to me that each series is complementing the other, and in a quadrangle you must have all four points or in effect...

[...]

Colored paper on texts is a different matter, though. Unless you intend to have certain features identified by color, I think the best results on text is to intermingle colors, like do the first two pages of QUACK in pink, then the last two in green. After awhile, one constant color paper is just as bad as constant white. A variety of colored papers could add excitement to your zine.

Concerning QUACK... you give the impression that it is open to guest editorials, yet give no information on how people can prepare such guest editorials. Have you ever considered the possibility of an unconscious desire to work against yourself?

It's present in most people with a fixation for death and failure (though not particularly in that order of importance).

I really don't see a great resemblance between VULCANALIA and MINO, And it's not that VULCANALIA is mimeo and MINO is ditto, because we both do tricks with our respective processes people never thought possible.

[...]

The poems were nice, especially when spoken aloud. Poetry is meant to be spoken, and if you can find some nice little hideaway where people won't pop in and think you are some kind of nut, you should recite some poetry aloud.

[...]

Now as to the text stories...Paula (T'Pala) O'Keefe's little piece was a nice, slight jab at an admitted blot on sfilmdom: cruddy monster flicks, but I also happen to feel that many of her comments were unjustified. Or at least they should have been more specific. This attitude of blanket condemnation of most monster flicks fx is also evidenced in YOUR comments about Harryhausen (whom I consider the unsung inventive genius of the 20th century).

[...]

Michael Main's "And Everywhere That Mary Went..." wass nice, but it ended be fore the readers had a chance to really understand what the friggin' story was all about.... Mike's problem was that he didn't take the story far enough. Had he gotten into it more, detailed a battle and quest for the hero, then we would be less disappointed with the rather mundane resolution of the story. As it is, the reader's been had.

[...]

"The Gloom Patrol" could really have used a splash illo to show the caricaturised stars. But outside of that... the story was a nice, often funny, rarely hilarious satire.

As with 99% of most satires (and it's a fault shared by my own satires) there seemed to be no POINT to the piece, outside of a few chuckles poking holes through the characters being satirised. This is where the Lampoon falls miles behind MAD. For all its middle-class banality, MAD hits home when it delivers a punchline.

[...]

I'm not knocking Katherine's piece, however. It was a funny little story, with several good lines, and it did a good Job of satirising the "typical" DP story, where General Immortus (or some goon) immobilizes the super—freaks, has Niles Caulder in his clutches, then fails because of a foolish oversight, luck, or the Chief's genius. The humor started to wear towards the middle of the story, thouh. Some of the comments between Suzette, and Roddy, and David were not funny. Just mean.

But by all means keep the comics satires in the future.

And now that I've decimated just about every other contrib in the zine... we come to Peter Sunn, Our Man Vulcan. I liked it. It wasn't without flaws, of course, but I think it's the "star" of the issue.

One thing that really bothered me was the characters talking cut of the story replying that so-and-so did such and such so many pages back. That may be funny but it's a dangerous item to load a story with. When you try to get involved with the characters and the story it's jarring to be reminded that really just some schmucky story. I would try to avoid such references in the future.

Another thing was that I'm still unclear as to just what Peter's explosive problem is.

[Cara Sherman]: A nuclear accident with an old-fashioned reactor fouled up his endocrine system — or whatever he has — so that if he is sexually approached there is an overload in the corresponding nerve centers in Peter. As a safeguard — what self-respecting Vulcan could live with those kinda memories? — he "blacks out" consciously and instinct, fouled and amplified with his whacked—out glandular secretions takes over.

Perhaps I'm just dense, but there wasn't enough reference between what happened to Peter in the university, and what happened when he tried to make it with one of the non-Vulcan students for me to really understand what his problem is. And this problem is used at a couple of critical times in the story.

[...]

A definite plus in your favor was the use of distinctive dialogue for the characters: with the two stars, two spies, and god-nose who else running along, ii was difficult to keep them apart in the reader's mind. But by borrowing one of Caniff's old techniques, you made the characters easily discernible.

[...]

I'm still not sure about the plot situations, besides it being a satire of 1 of 10 spy shows (the remaining one was the British show SECRET AGENT), but I'm willing to wait around and see what happens.

[...]

And thanks for the Jewish glossary. Being a WASP, the translation was necessary.

ST Trivia quiz was interesting. I won't embarrass myself by confessing how low I scored!

[...]

Let me say once again that I find the attitude you've expressed in VULCANALIA a refreshing change from the vast number of cyphers in fandom. If you can keep that flighty touch of humor, always ready to pounce on an important subject, yet always knowing when to bare claws or crack jokes, if you can keep your head while all those around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, you'll be a man, my son. EH? How did HE get in here?