I have been making collages and mixed media art since I was really young. I have several large collage pieces up around the house. I also use collage work as witchy work making vision boards/ spell boards. One of my old favorite papers to use for batsh#t crazy headlines and photos was Weekly World News.
Do you remember this ridiculous publication? They gave us Bat Boy (which there is a musical about), so many aliens, every Elvis sighting, and so much more bizarre esoterica. Weekly World News was a print paper that ran from 1979 to 2007(!?) and was the trashiest and most fun of the “tabloids”. And in researching this I also learned they still have an online presence. In it’s peak WWW had a total circulation of 1.2 million readers. As a child and teen I would often pick one up to use in art projects since they cost…well $.70 in 1989 so not very much.
I was sitting here doing some collage stuff not too long ago and I found myself reminiscing about the Weekly World News as collage fodder. Of course it has not been in print since 2007, but suddenly I had the thought to check on ebay for old issues that I could pull apart for collage work. Much to my delight there were several bundles to choose from so I received 3 issues from June-August of 1989. They are obviously products of their time; several articles are homophobic, fatphobic, xenophobic, etc. which is a little disappointing but not at all shocking. Some of the ridiculous stories though are so off the wall and farfetched that it feels worth it to rip them apart for their bits and pieces. Below are some of the ridiculous headlines, photos and articles.
Now I just need a big lot of teen magazines from the 80s and 90s. Any leads?
“Weekly World News.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Dec. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekly_World_News.
Betsy Snow White Bibliophile 