A semi-brief history of Jozine.
One must first have to add me to the sugar-filled head count of a generation who wasted Saturday mornings of the 70's glued to the TV watching the usual suspects. You name 'em and I watched 'em, and over time, outgrew 'em, too. However, Josie was the only animated show that stayed in the basement of my memory and, looking back on it, I'm not surprised. Josie was one of many early TV subjects ("TV Sweethearts" one writer called them) I began to worship, which began with Marlo Thomas from 'That Girl', then to Josie and, when the redhead finally off the air, Mary Tyler Moore. Needless to say, this whole media process of mine went downhill since The MTM Show left the air, but that's a whole other pointless chapter.
From there, I lost interest and/or touch with Josie and went on with what's left of my life.
It wasn't until the late 80's that I began to get familiar in depth with comics, thanks to the discovery of more "underground" titles like Love & Rockets, American Splendor, Howard The Duck (way before the movie killed him off) Neat Stuff, the works of R. Crumb and so on. Eventually, this lead to my re-vamped interest in Josie and found other fans in the along the way and began to collect the back issues.
In the early 90's, I came upon "zines", the small-self-publishing wonder that began to spread out the country thanks to review publications like Factsheet Five and soon began to make some of my own like Bros. From Bakersfield, NegativFANBOYland (Negativland fanzine) and so on. From this juncture, I was soon making the connection between my comics and zine pursuits and came up with only one conclusion: 'JosieAPA'.
As I was a member of an APA at the time, so I figured I could come up with an APA of my own, with Josie/Archie/DeCarlo as a central theme. However, reality sat in and I ended up reformatting the project as a one shot zine and guessed up a new name: The Return To The Valley Of The Pussycats! (a subtle Russ Meyer reference there)
The reality I just spoke of was both from the serious lack of response and a cease and desist notice from Archie Comics. Yup, after years of hearing about Archie lawyer's itchy fingers protecting their "property" from the likes of Benn (Ninja High School) Dunn, Larry (Cherry Poptarts) Waltz and MAD Magazine, similar to jury duty notification, I finally got fingered.
As you can imagine, I "kinda" got scared. However, thanks to the advise of a couple of legal-minded friends (one of whom was a lawyer), I wrote them back diplomatically stating that the project was billed as "unauthorized" and it was a fun and respective tribute to their characters and no adult material was not going to be used...and that was the last time I heard from them...directly, that is.
Using a 1990 'Josie' article from Goldmine Magazine by the mysterious D. C. Hampton (who later sent me a cassette copy of the full original Josie LP) and the book 'Dan DeCarlo' by the even more mysterious Mary Smith, I began to do the rough and tumble history research of what little information out there. I didn't even know anybody who had connections to DeCarlo.
Fortunately, some of my friends and the sudden reliable network of fans (mind you, this was before the internet) chipped in with material, artwork and advise (another mysterious human form formally known as Mathew Lungsford provided the brilliant Meyer-inspired cover. see right). Sooner than expected, I had the 60 page digest-sized tomb ready and sent it off to some friends and one to the late and great Factsheet Five for review. Soon after FF5 gave it a great right up, copies flew out the door in an insane pace and heartbreaks for many who can in late for the party!
One of the first Valley contributors, Ed Garcia, had long time been pursuing Archie Comics for freelance work for years. During the San Diego Comic Con, Ed walked up to the Archie table and began to have a nice talk to one of the editors. During the course of their conversation, Ed brought up the title of my Josie zine. Suddenly, the editor asked Ed if he knew "Don Fields". When Ed said yes, the editor excused himself and conferred with the other editors and management. He came back and notified Ed that he can no longer communicate with him and the company because of his association with me, and described my little zine as a "rag".
Sometime later, I was told by another Valley contributor/Archie artist wanna-be that my name was well-known and forbidden within the halls of Archie Comics offices. At this point, you couldn't knock the 16-ton ego off my shoulder with an atomic bomb!