Ink Stains 198: Siege 1

unknown/MItch Sonoda

Siege 1: 1975
Editor/publisher: John Stedronsky

Though it is not often I come upon a fanzine I had never heard of, Siege​ 1 (there may not have been any other issues) is one of those fanzines. There is no real editorial content, other than the "this zine..." inside the front cover, it is dedicated to stories by amateur artists and writers, with a few pin ups. None of the artists are familiar to me, other than the super polished Mitch Sonoda). The cover above has no signature but the Logo itself definitely looks to be Mitch Sonoda. On to the content!

Jim Frejofsky

Above you see a few pages from Jim Frejofsky's adaptation of Beowulf done in a coarse but effective pen and ink style.  Next up is Sonoda with Error. Mitch had a style that seemed to be inspired heavily by Neal Adams, and has appeared in several other zines I have covered and he loves his zipatone (especially the gradated from light to dark one)! Mitch also had a good hand at lettering. Check out a few pages from his story below.

Sonoda

Sonoda

Publisher Stedronsky contributes a pin up below.

John Stedronsky

Stedronsky also contributes a funny little story about the assembly of the fanzine itself, with the visual style slightly reminiscent of Vaughn Bode, below.

Stedronsky

There are a couple more pin ups by Sonoda and Stedronsky, seen below.

Sonoda

Stedronsky

Wayne Pieplow gives us Poe's The Raven...well, sort of. See a snippet below.

Wayne Pieplow

Pieplow

Pieplow

Judging by the rest of the art, I suspect that protagonist yelling Nevermore was swiped from something....maybe Steranko? There is another, quite nice, pinup from Stedronsky, seen below.

Stedronsky

A funny little two pager is up next from Sonoda, check it out in the pdf! You can see the rest of the zine there as well. I am sorry I don't have much backstory on this little gem. I also did a search for a few of the names, turning up nothing...feel free to clue me in!

Below is this installment's TBG (10) cover, another beauty by Don Newton. Check out the pdf of that right here. Have a great one, zineheads!

Ken Meyer Jr.
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