{"id":228,"date":"2007-12-11T07:00:44","date_gmt":"2007-12-10T18:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/?p=228"},"modified":"2008-01-19T17:52:12","modified_gmt":"2008-01-19T04:52:12","slug":"10-x-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/?p=228","title":{"rendered":"10 x 10"},"content":{"rendered":"

October 2007 marked the tenth anniversary of Christchurch fanzine Reverse the Polarity!<\/a><\/em>\u00a0 -not bad for\u00a0what used to call itself the \u00a0‘alternative’ zine in this country. While it has also just hit issue 25, ten years’ survival is more than noteworthy – after all, its nearest counterpart in longevity was the same age when RTP!<\/em> began.<\/p>\n

In honour of this, and of its diamond year, here are ten factworthy notes about RTP!<\/em> associated around the number 10…<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0Ten<\/strong> years old.\u00a0Hard to believe that the venerable TSV<\/em> itself was only ten years old in 1997. RTP!<\/em> started life trailing its older sibling by fifty issues and, unbelievably, has maintained that distance to this day. Decade<\/em> – TSV’s tenth<\/strong> anniversary issue was reviewed in RTP! issue 1, as was the final issue of Telos <\/em>(which reached a final score of 15 issues)…<\/p>\n

2. …which means that beyond initial editors Matt Kamstra’s and Wade Campbell’s desire to beat Telos<\/em>‘ run, RTP!<\/em> has – as of issue 25\u00a0in fact done so by ten.<\/strong><\/p>\n

3. Issue 2 saw the debut of Brendan Gibbons’ wonderful Cyberguy<\/em>, which ran for a glorious ten<\/strong> installments before disappearing forever. Ahh, shame.<\/p>\n

4. Issue ten<\/strong> saw the debut of Alex Ballingall’s first solo cartoon series, Aquaman<\/em><\/p>\n

5. And we are now\u00a0ten<\/strong> issues since the debut of stablemate\u00a0Bob the Suicidal Dalek<\/em>.<\/p>\n

6. Ten<\/strong> cartoons. Not comic strips, no sir – so besides the ‘serious’ fare of Pulp Who<\/em>, Cydonia<\/em>, Myrhh<\/em> and others the roll call follows: Birdy<\/em>, Saucer<\/em>, Cyberguy<\/em>, Spliff and Nutmeg<\/em>, Ergon<\/em>, Aquaman<\/em>, Bob the Suicidal Dalek<\/em>, Teletubbies in the Death Zone<\/em>, Unconvincing the Animatronic Cat<\/em> and – just about to make his feature debut, Cyberman the Kroton<\/em>.<\/p>\n

7. And speaking of hiatuses, ten<\/strong> issues ran in slick timing before RTP<\/em>‘s own period of silence, with the departure of Alex Ballingall to Japan, and the disappearance of Matt Kamstra, who would not return to the editor’s chair after issue 11.\u00a0<\/p>\n

8. But back to Cydonia<\/em> for one more time. 2007 marks the tenth<\/strong> anniversary of Cydonia<\/em> last appearing\u00a0in Telos.<\/em> At (ahem) twelve years old, Cydonia is<\/em> surely NZ’s longest-running Who<\/em> comic strip. And it’s about to finish at last. In the pages of RTP!<\/em><\/p>\n

9. Issue 25 is ten<\/strong> issues past the conclusion of Pulp Who<\/em> (from issue 2) the longest serialised comic strip to date.<\/p>\n

10. Finally, ten<\/strong> years since TARDIS Tales<\/em> ended, and its star Saucer Smith launched RTP!<\/em> as its first cover star. A full retrospective has just finished on the strip series in issue 25, with a new collection out soon through RTP!<\/em><\/p>\n

PA<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October 2007 marked the tenth anniversary of Christchurch fanzine Reverse the Polarity!\u00a0 -not bad for\u00a0what used to call itself the \u00a0‘alternative’ zine in this country. While it has also just hit issue 25, ten years’ survival is more than noteworthy … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-circus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}