Black Cover

Black Cover is a 150-page adult het Beauty and the Beast (TV) anthology. 
The fiction is by M. Louis, and it was published by Rock Dog. 
There is no title on this black-covered zine and no inside art.
==Descriptions==
From the flyer: 
==Contents==
* A Darkness on the Edge (a young Vincent engages in a rough menage a trois with two prostitutes)
* Beauty and the Beast Revised (lawyer Catherine moonlights as a call girl, and one of her clients is Vincent)
* Wednesday Night Moves (Vincent visits Diana to watch a movie but they ignore the movie and have sex.)
==Author's Own Meta==
The author included some meta on the stories in this zine in another zine she published at about the same time. "Black Cover" likely came first, then Of things that are not, but should be... (1990 Beauty and the Beast zine), and the story, A Life that Can Never Be.
In satirical story, "A Life that Can Never Be," Vincent and Catherine have a heart-to-heart talk after some bickering: 
==The Rebuttal: White Cover==
The negative response to "Black Cover" was so strong that some fans put together a "response" zine called White Cover. Although it was also a het zine, the stories were all rated G to PG-13 and focused on the more traditional romantic interpretation of Vincent and Catherine's relationship.
==Reactions and Reviews==
The zine was not well received by the Beauty and the Beast fandom. It is difficult to know how much of the outrage was organic or if it was a case of dogpiling and/or the nature of the Beauty and the Beast fandom culture of the time, as well as fans' embroilment in The Beauty and the Beast Wars.
One of the fans who created Black Cover wrote an open letter to fans called An Exercise in Futility (Or Lessons in How to Beat a Dead Horse): Black Cover.
Beth Blighton wrote an essay in April 1991 called It seems that the trend in fandom is to believe the first shocking thing we hear from the first "politically correct" mouth we hear it from..
===The Original Tunneltalk Review (1990)===
"Black Cover" was reviewed in Tunneltalk v.1 n.6 (August 1990) and was described as "shocking" and "obscene." The reviewer complained that even though the zine was labeled adult, the warning was insufficient to cover "the violent slash (lesbian) and sado-masochistic stories." The reviewer strongly objected to the characterizations using phrases like "a sick depiction" and "awful and sad". And last, the zine was criticized for containing "an astonishing number of errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation" - while somehow managing to spell all the obscenities correctly. While the zine had an anonymous author, this reviewer "outed" her: 
===Specific Comments By Fans About the Review (1990-1991)===
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===Comments by the Creators of "Black Cover" (1991)===
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===A 1991 Plea by a Fan (Leslie H) ===
Leslie H, a fan, wrote two letterzines with a letter asking fandom at large to censor it.
The editors of both these letterzines' (Tunneltalk and Once Upon a Time... Is Now) editors included comments of their own. 
[March 1991]: 
=====Response by the Editors of "Once Upon a Time... Is Now" (Jan/Feb 1991)=====
 
=====Response by the Editors of "Tunneltalk" (March 1991)=====
====Response by Leslie H (July 1991)====
Leslie H was the fan who'd written Tunneltalk and Once Upon a Time... Is Now with the original request to fandom to censor the zine. Leslie replied to the discussion in fandom five months later:
===Comments by Fans (1991)===
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[May 1991]: from Once Upon a Time...Is Now #32 (May 1991) }}
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===Comments by Fans (2000)===
===Comments by Fans (2012)===
===Comments by Fans (2014)===
 
==References==
Category:Beauty and the Beast Anthology Zines Category:Beauty and the Beast Het Zines
Category:1990 Zines