(C)1993 John Tynes
TUO2 appeared in the late spring/early summer of 1991, after weeks of delays. The path of TUO1 from photocopied-for-fun to a nationally (and internationally) distributed publication was quick and confusing. By TUO2, we’d found a business printer in Memphis who could print and collate the magazine at a good price. We were on our third printing of TUO1, and were very excited.
TUO2 saw the debut of one of our most successful projects, the modern-day scenario “Grace Under Pressure.” I had wanted to include some sort of gimmicky thing in each issue — a cut-out, a poster, whatever. This dates back to a childhood of magazines like Jack & Jill and World, which had all kinds of little remove-and-cut-apart craft projects, posters, and, to use a phrase learned from TUO writer Kevin Ross, “goo-gaws.” Artist Jeff Barber had approached me when we were still working on TUO1 with the desire to do an adventure that included removable floor plans and cardstock miniatures in 25mm scale. He had some ideas about an adventure that took place on the sea floor, but didn’t know the Mythos or CoC very well. We collaborated on the project, an “Grace Under Pressure” was born, complete with removable maps, cardstock miniatures, and the like. It was the first of several such unusual inserts we did in the first couple years of the magazine’s life – when the print runs were small enough to still do weird stuff like that and hand-collate it together.
TUO2’s printing quality was better than TUO1, thanks to the place where we had it printed. But all was not rosy – our new printer shorted us by more than 200 copies from our print run of 1,000, and we couldn’t prove it had happened. This was very demoralizing and hurt us economically as well. Worse, we had to keep on using the same printer. No one else could come close to their rates (they were desperate for business) and as long as we counted every single copy before we left the store, all was well.
TUO2 also found us looking to the summer where GenCon loomed on the horizon. I ended up working at the Chaosium booth with a little section of my own to sell Pagan Publishing stuff, and I was accompanied at the con by Jeff and C. Raymond Lewis, whose fiction appears in this issue. In preparation for the con we had t-shirts made with the cover art from the first issue on them, and also produced the first in an annual tradition: our GenCon limited-edition release. 1991’s was STARK RAVING MAD!, a 56-page book commemorating the 10th anniversary of Call of Cthulhu. More on that in The Annotated TUO3.
As TUO2 was coming together, I had the privilege to spend a weekend in Iowa at the home of Chaosium and TUO writer Kevin A. Ross, along with Chaosium and TUO writer Scott David Aniolowski. The three of us dubbed the event the Great Midwestern Cthulhu Conference, and the weekend was interrupted several times by friendly calls from other Chaosium writers – no doubt they appreciated the economy of talking to all three of us with a single call! It was the beginning, in some ways, of what Keith Herber dubbed “the new Lovecraft circle,” an amorphous group of CoC creators who became colleagues and friends over the next couple of years, drawn together by a common interest in HPL, CoC, and the creative process.
TUO2 was the first appearance of a regular column by one of these creators. “The Case Of Mark Edward Morrison” debuted in this issue, and Mark has provided a regular dose of insight and humor ever since.
This file contains the complete contents of TUO2, lacking artwork and two articles. The first, “Automatic Weapons in Call of Cthulhu” by John H. Crowe, III, has been superceded by John’s massive reference work The Weapons Compendium, available through Pagan Publishing’s mail order catalog. The second, “Grace Under Pressure,” is a scenario by Jeff Barber and myself (John Tynes) that re-appeared in revised form inThe Resurrected * Volume I in mid-1993. Also missing for obvious reasons is the initial 8-page installment in Blair Reynold’ graphic novel “Remnant.”
All annotations by me are enclosed in brackets, and are (C)1994 John Tynes.
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