All words and images here ©2024 by Bruce Carleton.
PIM came into being in December, 1979 in lower Manhattan. It was billed as “the world’s smallest magazine,” and at 7 cm x 11 cm it might be true. PIM and I were introduced to each other by my friend Alex in 1981 [for more on this connection see “Love Is a Losing Game” elsewhere in this portfolio], which is when I began contributing. PIM is still being being cranked out by Prof. Dr. Dr. Zagreus Bowery, who has since moved to Italy. As of “later 2023” there have been 67 issues. A note regarding my bylines: artists and writers in PIM use only aliases. At first I was Bruno, then il Brutto, and lastly il bruto. This reflects both lack of consistency on my part and the evolution of my nickname. Not long after I started working at Punk Magazine full-time in late 1977, John Holmstrom started calling me Bruno, Brutus or Bluto, in no particular order. The one that stuck in my mind, though, was Bruto, which is what I always thought was Bluto’s name when I was a kid. I guess when Zagreus asked me to come up with a pseudonym in ’81, I probably said “Bruno” off the top of my head. Later, I might have thought about it and told him to make it “Bruto,” and him having familiarity with Italian, rendered it correctly as “il Brutto.” Later, when I was overseas and started using my nom de guerre more, I remembered it as “il Bruto,” and thus it became solidified. In Italian both spellings are correct, but with some variation in meaning. Either way works, as far as I’m concerned. The complete PIM collection is viewable here: http://www.mondorondo.com/pim/. My contributions are shown in six parts below.
Part 1 of 6: PIM #16 “Pain & Sorrow” (in scarlet) — July ’81 (alias Bruno)
p. 9 … “a mistake” / p. 12 … Oh my God / p. 17 … Busted Bust
My first foray. I guess I supplied them with the little spot illos that they stuck in here and there (pages 12 & 17). It appears that I repurposed some notebook bits for “a mistake,” which takes up the top half of page 9.
Part 2 of 6: PIM #25 “Flora & Fauna” (in silver) — May ’83 (alias il Brutto)
pp. 12 & 13 … Le Charmeur / p. 22 … Clue?
Why was there a two year gap in my contributions? I have no idea, despite the dog’s attempt at a clue. For the main piece I guess Dr. Bowery must have told me it would go in the centerfold so I sized it to fit, taking the drawing (from my notebook at the time, so done on the fly) and adding a stylish background, and setting it all up to bleed. Language note: For some odd reason I attempted some clumsy French with “le charmer.” I just noticed that either Dr. Bowery or one of his trusty staff, perhaps Idiot Child or Miss Davenport?, corrected it in the Table of Contents to read “Le Charmeur.” I appreciate their attention to detail. However, this assumes the snake charmer is the man in the scene, which assumption is also supported by the masculine article “le.” That might well be true, but I always figured it to be the woman (or at least the one that looks like a woman), in which case, thanks to the more lately invented internet, I know that the feminine form of the noun would be “charmeuse.” I like the sound of that, so I guess if I were ever to retitle this piece in the future, I’d call it “La Charmeuse de Snakes,” or maybe even more properly, “La Charmeuse des Snakes.”
Part 3 of 6: PIM #26 “Heredity” (in ultramarine) / July ’83 (alias il Brutto)
p. 21 … Eternal Question
In this second of three consecutive issues that I got something into, I attempted to go deep.
Part 4 of 6: PIM #27 “Instruments” (in green) / September ’83 (alias il Brutto)
p. 7 … Lick / p. 21 … This to this / p. 23 … No Sex
By September of ’83 I had one foot out New York’s door already. I think this might be another case of me just throwing some spot illos at them and them putting them in where they fit.
Part 5 of 6: PIM #50 “Bullshit” (in black’n’tan) / Late 2006 (alias il bruto)
pp. 12 & 13 … Bullshit Walks
Note the long hiatus. In ‘’83 I left NYC and shortly thereafter the US for an extended sojourn in Southeast Asia, thus losing touch with Dr. Bowery. A couple of decades later, after I’d moved back to the States, he found me and solicited this thing, sized to fit the centerfold. In this era of PIM, they had started opting for a more expensive two-color print job when needed — in this case indigo and dysentery brown. It’s clear, of course, that the brown stains were needed for artistic as well as well as morphological reasons.
Part 6 of 6: PIM #67 “Mystery” (in deep blue on lemon chiffon yellow) / Later 2023 (alias il bruto)
pp. 12 & 13 … Thrilling Mystery Magazine
Damn! Another gap, this one of 17 years. Somehow Dr. Bowery tracked me down to my corner of the Mojave, leading to a renewal of dispatches. I sized this one for a single page, but he wisely (given the plethora of detail) bumped it up to the centerfold. Hopefully I won’t miss the next issue.