( Q ) – CONTENTS:

QUOTE-CARDS / QUOTE-COVER

QUOTE-CARDS

— Were invented by British fan Vincent Clarke in 1954 and for a while were a huge fad among fans, dying out in the early 1960s. They were small squares of paper or thin cardboard with a suitably startling fannish quote, handed over or mailed to other fans who were supposed to autograph the card and pass it on to someone else, the last person with room enough to sign then mailing it back to the original sender with its fine collection of fannish autographs. Except, naturally, some fans couldn’t resist keeping or collecting them without sending it on. Creators rarely received their quote-cards back. This didn’t stop fans from being prolific. One is known to have created more than 2,000! No wonder it was common — for a few years at least — for any fan to get at least two quote-cards in every piece of correspondence received. (HWJ)

QUOTE-COVER

— A zine cover making use of one or more interlineations (isolated sentences) which can either be genuine quotes (usually of fannish comments overheard at conventions or taken from fannish writings), or madeup quotes too good not to be used. A pure quote-cover has interlineations in lieu of artwork, but a common hybrid form of cover contains art depicting fans at a convention or club meeting, with interlineations appearing in thought and/or conversation bubbles above their heads. At least two issues of BCSFAzine have featured such covers.

Quote-covers are said to have derived from a listing of fans and fanzines on the cover of US Fan Art Joquel’s FANFILE #1 of 1941, with the first true quote-cover being that of WILD HAIR #7 published by the Insurgents in June of 1951. BNF fan Bill Rotsler was the most active in popularizing the concept. The tradition as such may not be well known among new faneds today, but the concept is reinvented every once and awhile. It can be a lot of fun, if the quotes are well chosen.

Note that other names for the concept included: ‘coverlines’, ‘coverquotes’, ‘quotelines’ and ‘quovers’, with ‘quote-cover’ being the ultimate winner in terms of acceptance. A ‘comment-cover’ is a specialized form of quote-cover. (DE)

[ See COMMENT COVER, INSURGENTS, INTERLINEATIONS ]