Maggerzines

[ObsoleteFormat92]

Anybody a subscriber to any magazines? Anything worth recommending? I like the idea of magazines as a Thing but they always seem to disappoint. Bought that Dark Side horror magazine thinking it would be about horror in general (books, games, films, deeper philosophical discussions etc.) but it just seemed to be full of ads for random blu-rays with the occasional feature. It is quite cool to own as an objet d'art though, interesting covers.

Hit me with yer 'pinions

[madhair60]

i would still get Classic Pop magazine if i had any money coming in

[BJBMK2]

There was a magical time in history, when video game magazines were just about the best thing in the world. They might still be great, not actually bought a new one (with the exception of the odd Retro Gamer special), in probably over a decade.

[bgmnts]

I have recently started a trial for History Today magazine, but I'll probably cancel it and just buy it as and when if I fancy it. Have pondered over a National Geographic subscription also. When I was a kid, XBM or OXM was a staple for me, and I must have had dozens of issues. They were worth it alone just for the demo discs.

It is incredible just how many magazines there are out there. There's a magazine dedicated to Hornby train sets!

[timahall]

I buy a Nintendo Switch magazine from the states called Pure Nintendo. I also used to get a British mag (that only seemed to be available to order online) called Switch Player, which was very good. I seeked those out because I could never find Switch mags in actual shops.

[badaids]

I wish they would bring back Discovery, the history magazine where each issue youd have like a cardboard thing to build like an Egyptian sarcophagus or whatever.

[extraordinary walnuts]

Feels like print mags shouldn't exist any more, but I do have a sub to Wax Poetics and Gravies of the Ancients.

[Steve Faeces]

I subscribe to Tribune (worthy but quite dull really socialist mag) and When Saturday Comes, the football magazine. Both the quality and size of the magazine have decreased in recent years. The letters page gives a sense of a lot of people bewildered and upset with modern football which I think probably quite well represents the remaining readership. Having said that I do still enjoy the magazine, it's just well past its prime.

It seems like there's no limit to London Review of Books trials you can have so I'm almost always on some six to twelve issues for a quid or something of LRB. They pile up on a box because I can't face reading the lengthy articles that makeup pretty much all of the LRB and then when I get fed up with the size of the pile I read them all in one day to be able to get rid of them.

[FeederFan500]

I am subscribed to When Saturday Comes and regularly buy cricket magazines but that depends on how much of an issue is made up of features I find interesting, or whether it has a 12 page review of £300 bats.*

WSC is the one thing I buy with a bit of sentimentality because it's the sort of magazine that should exist, but sometimes it will have an article about how good Fulham's season has been or something and it is the biggest waste of space.

I have bought Private Eye in the past but while it does good stuff I always fall behind and a lot of the regular contributors repeat themselves on energy/farming/trains.

I used to buy France Football too which was really good but this no longer exists other than as a monthly insert in L'Equipe and I don't know anywhere that sells this now, presume the cost to distribute to the UK isn't worth it now.


Although they are generally dying (WSC even says it doesn't cover it's costs front the printed mag any more) there is a place for magazines I think, I prefer coverage of sport that takes a slightly wider look at stuff rather than immediate hot takes. I don't really like politics news too much for this reason.

*This sounds like an exaggeration but is literally in the latest Wisden Cricket Monthly

[Pranet]

Subscribed to a magazine called The Fence because it is only 4 issues a year and I wanted a magazine to subscribe to. It is ok I suppose but I am thinking of unsubscribing.

I'd like to read some more magazines but they are expensive and I know  from experience they sit around unread until I eventually chuck them out.

[BlodwynPig]

I destroy whole forests to satiate my desire for dad rock features in Q Magazine

[FeederFan500]

The letters page gives a sense of a lot of people bewildered and upset with modern football which I think probably quite well represents the remaining readership. Having said that I do still enjoy the magazine, it's just well past its prime.

I generally skip the letters page because it's filled with the most banal content imaginable. "In 1980 I was at Goodison Park and Clive Allen passed to Alan Ball. Do any readers know of instances where a player passed to another whose forename was their surname?"

[madhair60]

I buy a Nintendo Switch magazine from the states called Pure Nintendo. I also used to get a British mag (that only seemed to be available to order online) called Switch Player, which was very good. I seeked those out because I could never find Switch mags in actual shops.

i was in Switch Player a couple of times, alright cheers

[madhair60]

i got Inside the Ropes for a while, only stopped because money. I liked that mag.

i buy Viz sometimes but that probably doesn't count

[BJBMK2]

Still got a load of DVD's that came with Official Nintendo Magazine, with all the Gamecube/DS gameplay footage, plus random, pre-youtube clips of Mega 64.

[13 schoolyards]

I subscribe to Viz because it works out slightly cheaper than trying to find a newsagent in this godforsaken country that hasn't closed down or turned into a lotto shop that also sells greeting cards.

There was a brief period a decade o so ago where subscribing to US mags from Australia was really, really cheap - I think it was something like $4 per issue of the New Yorker, you'd be a fool not to sign up, then a few years later the unsubscribe option was almost impossible to find and the back shed was full of unread copies of the thing

[Good One of Wally]

Still get the Fortean Times. Even after 30+ years there's always something in there to amuse, inform, remind me why being alive is better than being dead.

[AllisonSays]

I get the LRB and the Oral History Journal delivered, and sometimes I buy the NYRB as well. Liberal politics aside, I like them all.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Subscribed to The Wire for many years. Shit's aight.

[badaids]

I want to subscribe to the Dutch football magazine Hard Gras even though I won't be able to read it.

[All Surrogate]

Subscribed to a magazine called The Fence because it is only 4 issues a year and I wanted a magazine to subscribe to. It is ok I suppose but I am thinking of unsubscribing.

Sounds like you're on the fence! (about The Fence)

[ObsoleteFormat92]

Still get the Fortean Times. Even after 30+ years there's always something in there to amuse, inform, remind me why being alive is better than being dead.

I bought a copy based on this comment and I'm only a few pages in but it hasn't disappointed, thanks for the tip! I'm thinking I might subscribe. Also started looking into Charles Fort and might go diving down this rabbit hole

[ASFTSN]

Still get the Fortean Times. Even after 30+ years there's always something in there to amuse, inform, remind me why being alive is better than being dead.

I used to love this when I was a student. Just looked up how much the subscription is and I'm surprised by how reasonable it is, pretty tempted to be honest.

[holyzombiejesus]

One good thing about a Fortean Times subscription is not having to spend 30 minutes searching for it in WH Smiths. Each branch seems to have a different place for it: near the comics, with the film magazines, next to things like The Economist. Even found it tucked behind the Womens Weeklys in one shop.

I get Sight and Sound, Little White Lies and Viz. Also get Mojo and Uncut and - desolation alert - save them up for one night each month when I go to the pub on my own and read them. I like to peel off the covermounted CDs and stick them to the underside of the pub table to see if they're still there a month later.

Used to really like going to Borders in Leeds and seeing all the import magazines they had there. Guess the internet has killed off a lot of the more interesting niche stuff like Cheap Date. I used to get Found Magazine and even ended up doing the UK distro for them about 20 years ago.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I stopped reading magazines when I found a number of various film / cult tv websites that I really rated, but now most of them have either closed down (The Dissolve, a few other film review sites) or bare very little resemblance to what I originally liked about them (yeah, that's me moaning once more about how abjectly shit The AV Club is these days). I know there's still some great online journalism out there but it's often behind a paywall or you need to subscribe to someone's substack, and so I rarely bother these days and mainly just read CaB and a few Letterboxd accounts who cover interesting fare.

[Oh, Nobody]

The other day I considered buying a guitar magazine with a cool Olivia Jean cover, TWENTY FIVE QUID BLOODY ELL

[another Mr. Lizard]

Viz subscriber here (just finished the new issue), also subscribe to Mojo, and to Radio Times (mainly because their cryptic crossword is just about at my level, and as it's a handy way of checking the Talking Pictures TV schedule).

The original post mentioned The Dark Side - I'm a friend of the editor and many of the writers (was even asked to contribute a feature myself about 18 months ago), and I edit a similar rival publication, though far less successful in terms of sales and profile.

[Funcrusher]

I buy Sight and Sound semi regularly, although haven't bothered with the last couple. New editor is some beany hat wearing twit who used to edit the latter day NME and seems to have no real credentials to be editing a magazine about auteur cinema. Buy LRB once or twice a year. Haven't generally bothered with Private Eye since Corbyn.

The price of magazines is pretty crazy these days. I toyed with the idea of buying a magazine to read on the bus home from a day trip yesterday, but ended up picking up a 600 page book of Chomsky interviews in a remainder/overstock bookstore for a fiver rather than spending 6-7 quid on a 100 odd page magazine. I used to buy the dance mag Jockey Slut in the 90s and recently found a new title that's a sort of JS relaunch called Disco Pogo. Was interested until I saw the cover price - fifteen fucking quid. 

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Jesus Christ it's fifteen quid? Glad I only glanced it at now

[13 schoolyards]

I buy Sight and Sound semi regularly, although haven't bothered with the last couple. New editor is some beany hat wearing twit who used to edit the latter day NME and seems to have no real credentials to be editing a magazine about auteur cinema.

I used to pick up S&S pretty regularly, it was the kind of mag where even if you weren't interested in an article it'd turn out to be interesting and informative in its own right. The new editor seems to have dumbed it down to a massive extent - the articles now are so basic even I know what I'm going to get going in, and if there's one on something I don't know about I usually come away none the wiser.

It's a real shame, as previously it did a great job of providing intelligent commentary on mainstream film alongside in-depth looks at arthouse cinema, and now it's just a waste of time