From the Archives: My Rich Mackin Article

In what spare time I'm able to grab, I've been scanning articles to share on my main website. If anything else, it proves to others that yes, I did have a pseudo-writing career prior to the rise of the internet. Also, I've been dying to share my work in Lollipop since some of the the website's links to my work have stopped functioning.

As can be see on my blog, Rich Mackin was a source of inspiration when I started out in indie journalism, as well as when I progressed to paying gigs.  I first heard about him by interviewing Death Weasel cartoonist Ben Jones (no relation to this one). Rich helped published Ben's comics, and Ben said I should interview Rich when I had the chance. Our workplaces at the time were close to each other, so we had lots of chances.

Through Rich's Book of Letters zines, I got to know about his hilarious clashes with corporations. A good portion of our afternoon talk in Bukowski's Tavern was about his back and forth with the makers of Lever 2000, which he thought might culminate in a documentary film tentatively called The White Whale. Sadly, that film never happened.

I think I scheduled my interview with Rich before I even secured a place for it in Scott Heflon's Lollipop. It eventually made it into the Spring 1999 issue. I was also published alongside Ryk McIntyre, who was doing comic reviews for the magazine, and Rich himself. My article was to help kick off what was to be a series of columns by Rich for Lollipop, but I never saw anything past what was in this issue.

Rich Mackin's illustration for his first (and as far as I know, only) Lollipop column.

I should also mention that my work may have been the one time Scott published interviews that were written in a more traditional format. Lollipop primarily published reviews and Q&A style interviews (the one Scott did with John Hughes was really good) with the occasional fiction and first person column-style pieces (such as Rich's). My work was a departure from Scott's normal routine, but he told me he really liked the artilces and published them as is. I believe he used the phrase, "Fucking good articles," which I appreciate to this day.

Thanks to Scott for the opportunity and of course to Rich for making it happen. Now you can read "Reverend Richard J. Mackin: The Captain Ahab of Spoken Word?" by clicking here.