Ben Is Dead
Encyclopedia
Ben Is Dead was a Los Angeles-based zine
published from 1988 through 1999. Its creator, Deborah "Darby" Romeo, got its name from a dream she had about her husband Ben, a Frenchman she divorced not long into the magazine's run. Romeo would later write that during the magazine's early days Ben found the title amusing, and would introduce himself to people as "Ben, from Ben is Dead."
, Nirvana
and Hole
) alongside the confessional and often shocking writing of Romeo, editors Mikki Halpin and Kerin Morataya, and her many contributors (which included such colorful personalities as Vaginal Davis
, Ron Athey
and Lisa Crystal Carver
.) Starting with issue 10 ("Mother"), each issue had an overall theme ("Revenge," "Obsessions and Bad Habits," "Sex," etc.) which the zine's writers would explore in exhaustive detail, freely recounting their own suicide
attempts, kink
y sexual adventures, addictions or family horror stories. The zine gradually became much more slick-looking and featured interviews with such mainstream acts as Tom Jones
, "Weird Al" Yankovic
and Duran Duran
alongside underground notables like William S. Burroughs
, Johnny Rotten and Anton LaVey
. Eventually Ben Is Dead had a circulation in the tens of thousands and was being sold in Borders
and Tower Records
across the USA.
. Romeo's 90210 obsession eventually resulted in her and Morataya creating The I Hate Brenda Newsletter, a one-shot publication which was widely covered by the mainstream press. They also co-wrote the 1993 Pinnacle publication, The 'I Hate Brenda' Book and even formed their own band, Rump, which released a novelty compact disc entitled Hating Brenda.
In the mid to late 1990s, Romeo was often interviewed by the mainstream media, serving as a rather ambivalent spokesperson for the zine movement; she once joked that unless she found a way to make her zine pay off, she was soon going to be doing CNN
interviews from a cardboard box. Romeo was constantly embroiled in feuds with other zinesters, and her last known publishing project was Socially Fucking Retarded, a 2000 one-shot zine chronicling the KillZine tour she went on with various other zinesters and the controversies along the way.
Romeo regularly interviewed her cantankerous father in Ben Is Dead, and in one interview she told him she couldn't imagine publishing a zine after she turned 30. And indeed, not long into her 30s, Romeo announced she was ceasing publication. The last issue of Ben is Dead featured the theme of "Celebrity." Actor/artist/noted eccentric Crispin Glover
appeared on the cover and was the subject of a lengthy and very peculiar interview.
producer Brannon Braga
, who sent in a fan letter. Many alternative cartoonists of the era (such as Adrian Tomine
and Ellen Forney
) were also fans, and contributed to the zine's penultimate, comics-themed issue.
Today Ben Is Dead is perhaps best known for the three-part series of "Retro" issues, in which dozens of writers looked back at the trends and fads of their childhoods with a mix of nostalgia and horror. These issues were compiled into the sprawling book, Retro Hell: Life in the '70s and '80s, From Afros to Zotz. Early in the millennium, an anthology of Ben Is Dead articles was announced at Incommunicado Press, although the project eventually fell through. In 1996, Romeo established the University of California, Los Angeles' "Darby Romeo Collection of Zines," a permanent archive currently housed in UCLA's Arts Library Special Collections.
Many of Ben is Deads writers have continued their writing careers (Vaginal Davis writes for LA Weekly, Lisa Crystal Carver and Mikki Halpin have each written several books, etc.) including Romeo, who has penned articles for LA Weekly
, Alternative Press, Vanity Fair
, The Chicago Tribune and The Village Voice
among others. She currently maintains the blog Coconut Girl Wireless.
Zine
A zine is most commonly a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images. More broadly, the term encompasses any self-published work of minority interest usually reproduced via photocopier....
published from 1988 through 1999. Its creator, Deborah "Darby" Romeo, got its name from a dream she had about her husband Ben, a Frenchman she divorced not long into the magazine's run. Romeo would later write that during the magazine's early days Ben found the title amusing, and would introduce himself to people as "Ben, from Ben is Dead."
Beginnings
The magazine began as a photocopied publication featuring interviews with punk and "alternative" rock bands of the era (including such then up-and-comers as Ethyl MeatplowEthyl Meatplow
Ethyl Meatplow was an American alternative/industrial music band best known for their sole album, Happy Days, Sweetheart, released in 1993 by Dali Records, a division of Chameleon Music Group and distributed by Elektra Entertainment...
, Nirvana
Nirvana (band)
Nirvana was an American rock band that was formed by singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1987...
and Hole
Hole (band)
Hole is an American alternative rock band that originally formed in Los Angeles in 1989. The band is fronted by vocalist/songwriter and rhythm guitarist Courtney Love, who co-founded Hole with former songwriter/lead guitarist Eric Erlandson...
) alongside the confessional and often shocking writing of Romeo, editors Mikki Halpin and Kerin Morataya, and her many contributors (which included such colorful personalities as Vaginal Davis
Vaginal Davis
Vaginal Davis is an American genderqueer performing artist, painter, independent curator, composer, and writer. Davis's name is a homage to activist Angela Davis.-Life and career:Davis is often associated with the formation of the Queer-Core Zine Movement...
, Ron Athey
Ron Athey
Ron Athey is an American performance artist associated with body art and with extreme performance art. He has performed in the U.S. and internationally . Athey's work explores challenging subjects like the relationships between desire, sexuality, and traumatic experience...
and Lisa Crystal Carver
Lisa Crystal Carver
Lisa Crystal Carver , also known as Lisa Suckdog, is an American writer known for her writing in Rollerderby. Through her interviews, she introduced the work of Vaginal Davis, Dame Darcy, Cindy Dall, Boyd Rice, Costes , Nick Zedd, GG Allin, Kate Landau, Queen Itchie & Liz Armstrong to many...
.) Starting with issue 10 ("Mother"), each issue had an overall theme ("Revenge," "Obsessions and Bad Habits," "Sex," etc.) which the zine's writers would explore in exhaustive detail, freely recounting their own suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
attempts, kink
Kink (sexual)
In human sexuality, kinkiness and kinky are terms used to refer to a playful usage of sexual concepts in an accentuated, and unambiguously expressive form....
y sexual adventures, addictions or family horror stories. The zine gradually became much more slick-looking and featured interviews with such mainstream acts as Tom Jones
Tom Jones (singer)
Sir Thomas John Woodward, OBE , known by his stage name Tom Jones, is a Welsh singer.Since the mid 1960s, Jones has sung many styles of popular music – pop, rock, R&B, show tunes, country, dance, techno, soul and gospel – and sold over 100 million records...
, "Weird Al" Yankovic
"Weird Al" Yankovic
Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic is an American singer-songwriter, music producer, accordionist, actor, comedian, writer, satirist, and parodist. Yankovic is known for his humorous songs that make light of popular culture and that often parody specific songs by contemporary musical acts...
and Duran Duran
Duran Duran
Duran Duran are an English band, formed in Birmingham in 1978. They were one of the most successful bands of the 1980s and a leading band in the MTV-driven "Second British Invasion" of the United States...
alongside underground notables like William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
, Johnny Rotten and Anton LaVey
Anton LaVey
Anton Szandor LaVey , born Howard Stanton Levey, was the founder of the Church of Satan as well as a writer, occultist, and musician...
. Eventually Ben Is Dead had a circulation in the tens of thousands and was being sold in Borders
Borders Group
Borders Group, Inc. was an international book and music retailer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The company employed approximately 19,500 throughout the U.S., primarily in its Borders and Waldenbooks stores....
and Tower Records
Tower Records
Tower Records was a retail music chain that was based in Sacramento, California. It currently exists as an international franchise and an online music store....
across the USA.
Evolution
As the zine continued, its tone became increasingly erratic as Romeo mixed the dark, confessional material with more light-hearted pop culture commentary, including articles about her fascination with Beverly Hills, 90210Beverly Hills, 90210
Beverly Hills, 90210 is an American drama series that originally aired from October 4, 1990 to May 17, 2000 on Fox and was produced by Spelling Television in the United States, and subsequently on various networks around the world. It is the first series in the Beverly Hills, 90210 franchise...
. Romeo's 90210 obsession eventually resulted in her and Morataya creating The I Hate Brenda Newsletter, a one-shot publication which was widely covered by the mainstream press. They also co-wrote the 1993 Pinnacle publication, The 'I Hate Brenda' Book and even formed their own band, Rump, which released a novelty compact disc entitled Hating Brenda.
In the mid to late 1990s, Romeo was often interviewed by the mainstream media, serving as a rather ambivalent spokesperson for the zine movement; she once joked that unless she found a way to make her zine pay off, she was soon going to be doing CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
interviews from a cardboard box. Romeo was constantly embroiled in feuds with other zinesters, and her last known publishing project was Socially Fucking Retarded, a 2000 one-shot zine chronicling the KillZine tour she went on with various other zinesters and the controversies along the way.
Romeo regularly interviewed her cantankerous father in Ben Is Dead, and in one interview she told him she couldn't imagine publishing a zine after she turned 30. And indeed, not long into her 30s, Romeo announced she was ceasing publication. The last issue of Ben is Dead featured the theme of "Celebrity." Actor/artist/noted eccentric Crispin Glover
Crispin Glover
Crispin Hellion Glover is an American film actor, director and screenwriter, recording artist, publisher, and author. Glover is known for portraying eccentric people on screen such as George McFly in Back to the Future, Layne in River's Edge, unfriendly recluse Rubin Farr in Rubin and Ed, the...
appeared on the cover and was the subject of a lengthy and very peculiar interview.
Today
While the zine evolved quite a bit over the years, some things about it never changed - notably each issue being organized around a theme, the very small typeface used throughout (over the years the magazine printed many letters from readers complaining the font was so tiny it was hard to read) and the tiny quotations and commentary that ran along the bottom of almost every page. The zine attracted some notable fans, including Star TrekStar Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
producer Brannon Braga
Brannon Braga
Brannon Braga is an American television producer and screenwriter, currently working as showrunner and executive producer on Terra Nova...
, who sent in a fan letter. Many alternative cartoonists of the era (such as Adrian Tomine
Adrian Tomine
Adrian Tomine , a popular contemporary cartoonist, is best known for his ongoing comic book series Optic Nerve and his periodical illustrations in The New Yorker.- Biography :...
and Ellen Forney
Ellen Forney
Ellen Forney is a cartoonist and teacher based in Seattle, Washington, whose work has been published by Fantagraphics Books and The Stranger , among other publications. Her most recent collection is called Lust...
) were also fans, and contributed to the zine's penultimate, comics-themed issue.
Today Ben Is Dead is perhaps best known for the three-part series of "Retro" issues, in which dozens of writers looked back at the trends and fads of their childhoods with a mix of nostalgia and horror. These issues were compiled into the sprawling book, Retro Hell: Life in the '70s and '80s, From Afros to Zotz. Early in the millennium, an anthology of Ben Is Dead articles was announced at Incommunicado Press, although the project eventually fell through. In 1996, Romeo established the University of California, Los Angeles' "Darby Romeo Collection of Zines," a permanent archive currently housed in UCLA's Arts Library Special Collections.
Many of Ben is Deads writers have continued their writing careers (Vaginal Davis writes for LA Weekly, Lisa Crystal Carver and Mikki Halpin have each written several books, etc.) including Romeo, who has penned articles for LA Weekly
LA Weekly
LA Weekly is a free weekly tabloid-sized "alternative weekly" in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Editor/Publisher Jay Levin and a board of directors that included actor-producer Michael Douglas...
, Alternative Press, Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
, The Chicago Tribune and The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
among others. She currently maintains the blog Coconut Girl Wireless.