PIZZAZZ, September 1978 issue

Taking a look inside an issue of MARVEL's contemporary kids' magazine.

From Wikipedia, “Pizzazz was a magazine published by Marvel Comics from 1977 to 1979, for a total run of 16 issues. Aimed at youth culture, Pizzazz mostly contained articles about popular movies, rock stars, et cetera, as well as comic strips and puzzles.” I am surprised to learn that this magazine has such a short run of only 16 issues. From what I’ve seen in this late-run issue, the first I’ve seen that is, the magazine is graphically appealing with a good layout design. Content-wise, I would have found this magazine entertaining back in the day as a ten yeat old.

Take a look at this issue’s index page. There’s a nice variety of articles and pieces. I’ve pulled a few highlights from the magazine but if you want to flip through a PDF of the entire magazine it can be found at the end of this post.

Read PIZZAZZ — for the articles!

A post-”Star Wars” 1978 ensured that they’d be some Sci-Fi articles in PIZZAZZ and this issue delivers two.

Read PIZZAZZ — the Pop Culture barometer letting you know what’s hip or not!

PIZZAZZ’ “The Last Word” pages were the “Rotten Tomatoes” of its time.

SPACE DUST candy is hip with 91% PIZZAZZ!

The Rolling Stones’ “Some Girls” album is unhip with only 52% PIZZAZZ?

Read PIZZAZZ — for Cindy Adams’ POOP!

Read PIZZAZZ — for the inappropriate humor!

Read PIZZAZZ — for the advertising!

Read PIZZAZZ — for the MARVEL STAR WARS comic!

Another surprising fact from Wikipedia, “The 1977 installments of the serialized Star Wars comic featured in Pizzazz are the first original Star Wars stories not directly adapted from the films to appear in print form, preceding both the original stories in Marvel's Star Wars comic series and the 1978 novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye.^”

Back in ‘77/’78, if I had known of this, I would have subscribed to PIZZAZZ just to have access to these exclusive STAR WARS comics. Knowing this now, I plan on collecting all 16 issues of PIZZAZZ.

Read PIZZAZZ — subscribe to PIZZAZZ!

You may not be able to subscribe to PIZZAZZ any longer but you can subscribe to the RetroArtBlog here and access a PDF of this entire issue.

Subscribe and access the PDF link below!