Arthur (magazine)

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Arthur magazine, a bi-monthly 40,000-copy newsprint periodical, was founded in October, 2002 by publisher Laris Kreslins and editor Jay Babcock. It has received favorable attention from other periodicals such as L.A. Weekly, Print, Punk Planet and Rolling Stone. Arthur features photography and artwork from Spike Jonze, Art Spiegelman, Susannah Breslin, Gary Panter and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Arthur's regular columnists include Byron Coley, Thurston Moore, Daniel Pinchbeck, Paul Cullum, Douglas Rushkoff, and T-Model Ford.

Arthur magazine is particularly drawn to noise music, stoner metal, folk and other types of psychedelia. The first issue of Arthur featured an interview with journalist and author Daniel Pinchbeck (author of Breaking Open the Head); artwork by Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen); a 16,000-word essay on the 1967 Yippie exorcism of The Pentagon; and an interview with Arthur C. Clarke.

Previous to creating the publication, Laris Kreslins created the popular music journals Sound Collector and Audio Review. Jay Babcock is a contributor to Mojo magazine and the L.A. Weekly.

Some of the magazine's influences include Joan Didion, Thomas Paine, William Blake, Lester Bangs, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and Greil Marcus.

Arthur magazine also releases CDs and DVDs under the imprint of their label Bastet. On Labor Day weekend in 2005, they curated Arthurfest in Barnsdall Park, and in October 2006 Arthur Nights at The Palace Theater, both in Los Angeles.

On February 25th, 2007, it was announced on the magazine's web site that it would be ceasing publication indefinitely. The hiatus was due to a breakdown in negotiations between Lime Publishing (Arthur's original publisher) and another unnamed publisher. In April 2007, it was announced that the magazine would return as Arthur Vol. II in the near future. The following month it was definitively announced that the magazine would return in August 2007 after the short hiatus. ^[1]