Price shares rare zine on FanScene site

David Hathaway Price has shared a rare zine on his website

“I’m trying hard not to over egg the pudding, and resort to hyperbole here, but this is, by far, the rarest fanzine I’ve ever been able to add to the archive.

ORPHEUS #2

By Steve Moore, Steve Parkhouse, Spring, 1973

Cover by Ian Gibson (An assumption on my part, as it isn’t credited)

The first issue of this zine under this title came about as a continuation of ASPECT, whose first two issues, had been published by Steve Moore.

Steve Parkhouse, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Bob Rickard had been thinking about producing a zine called ORPHEUS, and they joined forces with Steve Moore to publish #1 (a well printed and presented zine, notable amongst other things, for featuring Paradox Man/Tales of Hyperborea, by BWS).

In the 2nd part of his wonderful interview with Pádraig Ó Méalóid, Steve Moore talked about the almost mythical issue 2, which was printed in Spring 1973. However, because Steve Parkhouse and Barry weren’t happy with it, it was never released. The Printing and paper aren’t as high quality as with the first issue, so perhaps that was the reason?

Anyway… here it is.

In a short chat I had a few years ago with Ian Gibson, he told me that he hadn’t seen the artwork since he had sent it off, and I don’t think a copy of the zine, or the artwork itself, is held in the Steve Moore archive (curated by Alan Moore). Ian didn’t have a copy of the zine himself, and I’ve never seen a copy other than this in over 12 years of archiving. I doubt that this strip work of Ian has been seen by more than a handful of people, in over 50 years.

Also features METAMORPHOSIS, by Steve Moore and Phil Bevan, and THONG, by Steve’s Moore and Parkhouse.

You can read the zine in full (plus ASPECT 1, 2 and ORPHEUS 1) at the archive, which can be found here: http://www.comicsfanzines.co.uk