5 - Rogue

March 2006

PRINT EDITION: Sold out

Original blurb:

Hunt down Rogue for Cliff Hammett's rogue elephants, an extract from Bel Greenwood's forthcoming Little Book of Letters, Final Fantasy fetishism, a wax-sealed envelope containing your mission instructions, and several gunpowder plots' worth of skullduggerous mischiefery from the world's premier outlaw verseketeers.

Oh boy. First sign of Fuselit’s since-then-perennial technical gremlins came with Rogue. A whole 50 copies back from the print shop with blackouts over a bundle of the pages. Cue one bummed-out morning unpicking staples and tentatively experimenting with Tippex in the Union, until the kindly print shop ran off 50 more with the correct text. First twitches of bonus features came in the form of poetic micro-mission statements attached by thread to each copy in miniature brown envelopes, sealed with wax and a rubber stamp our friend Cliff actually carved out of an eraser. The cover was drawn by Jon's brother, Mike, who has since supplied awesome artwork to both Fuselit and Sidekick Books projects.

I liked Cliff Hammett's rogue elephants (a sequence of three ink sketches), as well as the extract from Bel Greenwood's Little Book of Letters we published in this. I half-abandoned the stock image illustrations, using silhouettes instead (gone completely by the next issue) and began a trend, which continues to this day, of adjusting Kirsty's 'editor' portrait to fit the theme. In Rogue, she had an eyepatch. The cover looked great in full colour but didn't translate very well to black and white, and the technical glitches Kirsty mentions were an absolute pain. I really enjoyed making those miniature mission documents though.