Fanzine Vault: Pernicious Anaemia #2

In my previous post I celebrated the first issue of Pernicious Anaemia, a vampire fanzine published circa 1990. It’s not especially groundbreaking, as fanzines go, but it’s a nice slice of nostalgia and I find it hard not to feel a bit warm and fuzzy when I think about it.

So, I thought I may as well cover the second instalment as well, for the benefit of anybody who feels curiosity about this Tividale-based goth publication…

 

Vanity, who illustrated the back cover of the first issue, here decorates the inside front cover with a vaguely Cushing-like figure on horseback…

 

…But it looks as though main artist “Jezebelle” illustrated the front page. Hmm, a bit of Sandman influence showing…?

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“Joachim”, having already given us a potted biography of Bram Stoker, now gives the history of Dracula on stage and screen. Above is a sample page.

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Here we have a new member of the crew: fiction author Emily, who contributed a short story called “The Uninvited Visitor”.

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“Saul”, who wrote the Vlad the Impaler article in issue 1, contributes issue 2’s piece on Elizabeth Bathory, excerpted above.

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Fiction author “Gehenna” is back again, this time with a story called “Mothers Kiss”.

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“Ianoe”, the resident folklore buff, outlines beliefs regarding vampires.

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Once again, the False Prophets provide reviews. This time they cover Vampire in Venice (“I’m sure it was trying to say something but what I don’t know”); The Vampire Tapestry (“In this novel the humans are the prey… yet it shows us to ourselves, the way we truly are”) and Near Dark. The four-person viewing team had mixed feelings about this last movie: “Two said it was the best vampire film they had ever seen, one said it was a rip-off from Anne Rice and the fourth had fallen asleep.”

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The issue closes with poetry from “Gehenna” and an advert for Zelda Zonk (Gothic! Hippy! Rock! Glam!).

We also get a preview of the third instalment, which “will contain articles on Christopher Lee and psychic vampirism”. I do not own this issue, but “dem bones” from the Vault of Evil forum has uploaded both the cover and synopses of two stories printed in the issue:

Ruis – Wings: A Tale Of Shadows: Vampire dwelling overlong on his prey is destroyed with an axe through the skull. The killer makes the fatal mistake of wiping his bloodied hand across his mouth. Wings sprout from his back!

Joachim – Lament: A Short Story For Gehenna: “The first time I saw you, dressed all in black you were sticking pins in your fingertips and sucking the blood that ran down your hands and you wept. I called you and you came to me. We kissed and you tasted of blood. I wept too and you thrust the pins through my lips ….. The couple go in for the inevitable violent sex games but Gehenna won’t allow him to drink her blood and he’s distraught. When she leaves he shoots six silver bullets into her belly with the gun she bought him “when I talked of suicide”. She dies with a smile on her face. Now an undead vampire as opposed to a living one, she comes to his bed every night.

And according to “dem bones”- apparently the only person besides myself to mention this fanzine online – issue three was the last instalment of Pernicious Anaemia.