King Mob Echo

kingmobcov.png

Partial online archive of journals by English situationist group King Mob. 5 issues were published between 1968 and 1970.

Author
Submitted by Fozzie on March 28, 2023

NB: issue 4 was not published, so the final issue was number 6.

Contributors/editors included David & Stuart Wise, later joined by Christopher Gray, Donald Nicholson-Smith and TJ Clark.

Libcom also hosts an anthology of King Mob journals and related material compiled by Tom Vague: King Mob Echo: English Section of the Situationist International.

PDFs below include original typesetting, layout and images.

Comments

King Mob Echo #1

kingmob1cov.jpg

Debut issue of the King Mob journal, published April 1968.

Submitted by Fozzie on March 28, 2023

This first issue includes a front cover image of a menacing masked man (from Louis Feuillade’s film “Fantomas”) above a Karl Marx quotation (from “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon”).

Contents include: “The Return of the Repressed” by radical psychoanalysis scholar Norman O. Brown; “Desolation Row”, an excerpt “free translated from Raoul Vaneigem’s Traite de Savoir Vitre a l’Usages des Jeunes Generations” (1967); “Urban Gorilla Comes East”, the magazine’s only original King Mob statement, co-written by Phil Cohen (also known for his involvement with the London Street Commune and the 144 Piccadilly squat) and Donald Nicholson Smith.

Files

Comments

King Mob #2 Letters on Student Power

kimgmob2cov.jpg

The second journal of English situationist group King Mob, published November 1968.

Submitted by Fozzie on March 29, 2023

This second issue, entitled “King Mob: Two Letters on Student Power”, contains the group’s response to and critique of the student revolts and the anti-university movement, with the central text by Christopher Gray (formerly of the Situationist International). Also included is a brief article by Richard Huelsenbeck on the same topic, which mentions Trocchi.

Comments

Splits and Fusions

12 months ago

Submitted by Splits and Fusions on March 29, 2023

Is this actually issue two or, as it says at the very end, a supplement to KME (no2) Nov 1968?
Is it King Mob 2: Letters on Student Power or King Mob: Two Letters on Student Power.
I MUST KNOW!!!

Fozzie

12 months ago

Submitted by Fozzie on March 29, 2023

Also the Tom Vague anthology doesn't have a different issue 2. https://libcom.org/article/king-mob-echo-english-section-situationist-international

It's a good question. I guess the options are:
1. This is a supplement to King Mob Echo (i.e. #1 published several months earlier)
2. This is issue 2 (and the supplement reference is a red herring)
3. This is part of issue 2 (a supplement to it) but there is no trace of the rest of it.
4. This is just an unnumbered King Mob publication called "Two Letters on Student Power".

Splits and Fusions

12 months ago

Submitted by Splits and Fusions on March 29, 2023

That Blog is useful- with a contemporary checklist of KM publications. So, it is issue 2- whether originally so or retconned later...

Fozzie

11 months 4 weeks ago

Submitted by Fozzie on April 3, 2023

Also probably worth noting that this is King Mob 2 and half, I think it is just this image though - presumably a poster or one-sided flyer?

King Mob #3

cover of King Mob 3

Third King Mob journal, published May 1969.

Submitted by Fozzie on March 30, 2023

This third issue features a striking front cover with a picture of a werewolf. It reprints content from Ben Morea’s Black Mask journal and advertizes Black Mask / Up Against the Wall Motherfucker’s actions in the United States (“The first year Black Mask seized every possible opportunity of fucking up culture”). It includes the famous action to close the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Files

King Mob No3.pdf (4.33 MB)

Comments