Alex Ross, from Chemical Imbalance Magazine, Spring 1988
Alex is now a very well known painter. I had some of my comix in one issue of Chemical Imbalance in the late eighties also, with his psychedelic green man face on the cover. Chemical Imbalance was a mix of music reviews, the newest wave of grafix and comix following Raw, and literary book and fine art reviews added in, if in an art historical vein or tone of interest to the publisher Mike McGonigal.
Chemical Imbalance was published for something like four or five years I believe in the late eighties and early nineties. What was really remarkable was reading young artists writing about literature and fine art in a combination of New York art school library research and fanzine vernacular - like Bob Nickas' writing only very naive and outsider and mainly about surrealists or historical figures or Anna Mendieta. (I am enjoying reading Nickas' Theft is Vision and remembering the early issues of Index Magazine as I write this as he crather singularly combines inside the contemporary art world knowledge and fanzine fervor quite well - even if not all of his sensibility overlaps with mine in visual arts an amazing amount does in music and his enthusiasm and writing skills are quite a serious pleasure.)
Chemical Imbalance is the only fanzine I know of that took an interest in high and low and was equally enthused about both, and had such a successful run. I wasn't living in New York and was so pleased to have been published in there at all back in the day, even though I had long since started painting and the comic was from 1981 0r 1982 by then.
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