Bizarre (magazine)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Bizarre is a British alternative magazine published from 1997 to the present. It is published by Dennis Publishing, and is a sister publication to the Fortean Times.
Content
Bizarre covers alternative culture through interviews with counterculture personages, and articles about LGBT culture and drug, fetish, and other subcultures. It also reviews the work of avant-garde directors, musicians, authors, and visual artists—and of those who have a cult following.
The magazine's news coverage includes unusual news events from around the world; development and impact of legislation concerning censorship, civil liberties, sex offences, and occasionally, incidents of human rights abuses. Articles in Bizarre have examined the Manchester police's Operation Spanner of 1987, Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, British legislation banning "extreme pornography", and the Terrorism Act 2000. After the murder of Sophie Lancaster in 2007, Bizarre campaigned for awareness of bigotry against people who exhibit some form of cultural deviance.
Like lad mags, issues of Bizarre commonly feature a semi-nude female model on the front cover, and reviews of weird gadgets, films, music, and websites.
Pornography
Earlier issues of Bizarre included a sealed section featuring censored pornography, in which images of anuses, genitalia, semen, and sex acts were obscured. The censorship was self-imposed to avoid alienating mainstream newsagent's shops and booksellers.
History
Bizarre was launched as a bimonthly title by John Brown Publishing in February 1997 and was edited by Fiona Jerome. It was an immediate success and changed to monthly issuance a year after its launch. Circulation peaked at more than 120,000 in 2000, but later the same year declined to less than 30,000 when I Feel Good (IFG) bought the magazine for £5 million. IFG was a company founded by former James Brown, the former editor of Loaded magazine. When IFG collapsed, Dennis Publishing acquired Bizarre. The current editor of Bizarre is David McComb.
