Best of Punk Magazine: A New Book (PHOTOS)

In 1970s New York, there were many scenes: the S&M scene, the opera scene, the SoHo art scene. But, as Gary Storm writes a new book, The Best of Punk Magazine, the punk scene was, in some ways, its most fascinating. It “centered around probably no more than a few hundred people who lived near and played music in a broken-down little club called CBGB.” And Punk magazine—an irreverent, counter-cultural comic book magazine—was its Holy Grail. For the kids of the Lower East Side, Punk magazine became “more timely than Time, more alive than Life, more human than People.”

Now comes this new work edited by John Holmstrom, the magazine’s cofounder, and Bridget Hurd with high-quality reproductions of Punk’s original pages. But unlike other coffee-table books, this one isn’t glossy at all: it captures the grimy, mischievous, and sexually charged vibe of the magazine and of late-’70s New York. The book is filled with glorious pages of the original comics, along with photos of the original cast of characters. There’s Debbie Harry in her denim vest, Iggy Pop in his skintight shirt. The book is for original fans of the magazine—and is a fitting introduction for the uninitiated. It opens with an illustrated map of the five boroughs—the “Punk Building” replacing the “Puck building,” every college represented by a coed in a tight tank top, even the Statue of Liberty wearing safety pins through her dress. Forrest Hills is, simply, “Home of the Ramones.”

As James Wolcott, then a rock writer for The Village Voice, wrote at the time, Punk captured the “the ululations of the new zeitgeist.” To which Holmstrom responded: “Once we looked up the words in the dictionary, we knew we were on to something.”

—Isabel Wilkinson