HEAVY ROTATION

POWER. CORRUPTION. COLLEGE RADIO!

In the mid ‘80s, a group of reckless teenagers converged on an upstate New York college town to study the fine art of Communications. These shy social misfits & miscreants became DJs at the perfect moment in college radio history: when album-oriented Top 40 rock was kicked to the curb.  Armed with neon rubber bracelets, exploding tubes of black eyeliner, and big hair, this cadre of culture vultures ushered in “New Music,” a combination of punk, new wave, new romantic, goth, synth, techno, and indie/alternative. They played the hell out of Adam and the Ants, Violent Femmes, The Clash, The Smiths, New Order, and The Cure. Their lives -- and the upstate NY college town of Ithaca -- were forever changed.  

 

30+ years later these college DJs (still music-obsessed but, strangely, not much older) have reconvened to celebrate '80s college radio in HEAVY ROTATION, a 64-page comic book magazine chock-full of short comics, prose & single illustrations, essays and interviews with an impressive lineup of comic book artists.

 

This love letter to '80s college radio is spearheaded by veteran DC/Vertigo and Black Crown comic book editor and former college DJ Shelly Bond, HEAVY ROTATION is brought to you by former WICB DJs/current professional writers including Ian Rankin, DJs, tech ops directors, teachers, home schoolers, and an all-star lineup of artists including Philip Bond (Kill Your Boyfriend, Eve Stranger), Michael Allred (Bowie: Stardust, Rayguns & Moonage Daydreams, Silver Surfer), Kitty Curran (Taylor Swift: Girl Detective), A.D. Puchalski (Insider Art),  Mark Stafford (Lip Hook), and Rachael Smith (Quarantine Comix), who are connected by one thing: a mutual admiration for cool music and the power, corruption and glory of being an FCC-license toting college DJ.

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"I've spent my life caught in a tumultuous war between my love for comics and music," said editor Shelly Bond, "Which is why my indie work often combines the two. Jump into this 4-color portal back to the mid ‘80s, when the only music that mattered was the music we played on our radio shifts."