Altair
Issue 1 February 1950
Cover art by Henry Chabot
Altair was a science fiction fanzine by Ed Cox.
Altair was published in Lubec, Maine, U.S.A. It was a mimeographed fanzine limited to 100 copies per issue, and was distributed by the Fantasy Amateur Press Association.
The first issue appeared in February 1950. The cover art for this issue was by Henry Chabot (Asmodeus, Saprophyte), a member of The Fantasy Artisans Club, along with Ed Cox. The first issue also included the article "Lovecraft Revisited" by Dave Thomas. Other contributors included Art Rapp (Spacewarp) and Harry Warner, Jr. (Horizons).
It may have been in his FAPAzine that the origin of the fannish tradition of "Ed Cox Doodle Here" began. As written by Dave Locke in the September 2008 Time and Again #5, which may or may not be fanfiction, Ed Cox reportedly told Dave Locke over the phone, "...in my FAPAzine, I did't have any illustration to put in. So I just left blank spaces here and there, and told everyone they could fill them in as they pleased....As a result of that Roy Tackett started leaving blank spaces in his own zine but he would put the words "Ed Cox Doodle More" inside the blank space. For some reason or other, other fans started doing it."
However, the editors of Crazy From The Heat tell a different tale; " Back in the day, the harried editors of mimeographed fanzines sometimes found themselves with awkward little spaces at the ends of articles. They were unsightly. Since drawings were practically impossible to re-size, the spaces often remain blank. Until, that is, Lee Jacobs began dedicating then to the doodling propensity of his buddy, Maine's gift to fanzine fandom, Ed Cox".
In 2010, one of the fanzine editors of APA-L named their fanzine "Ed Cox Doodle Here".
Ed Cox also co-edited the fanzine Triton with Russell Harold Woodman, and on his own released the titles Esdacyos, and Maine-iac.
