Cartoonist extraordinaire Matt Feazell once suggested we construct a family tree of comix. I don't know if he ever followed up on the idea, but if he had you would probably see the Newave line trace back through undergrounds, Mad, Help, Tijuana Bibles, etc.
But there was another larger and older network of self-publishers in comic artland-- the fans. They emulated the commercial comics. In fact, in the 1960s, you could say my own superhero and funny animal selfmade comics were fan products, and I'm not the only Newaver who had some history in this area as a developing cartoonist. But unlike the readers of Fan Scene, I had never really networked outside of my family and friends prior to reading undergrounds.
In the mid-1980s the Fans began to discover the Newave movement. Although our content was very different, we all shared a love of comic art and the challenges of being small press publishers before the Age of Internet.
This publication, Fan Scene # 1 (July/August 1984), profiles Morty the Dog. Although I'm not a big fan of the term "fan," I felt this article was an example of the two networks recognizing each other.
As you can see, the subtitle of this publication uses the ancestor of the word "zine"-- fanzine!
