Weekly World News on Google Books

Over at Orange Crate Art, Michael Leddy spotted old print issues of that bastion of great journalism, The Weekly World News, archived on Google Books! I want to believe! Weekly World News on Google Books

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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pyster

This magazine was the source of some ‘great’ family arguments in the 90s. My grandfather was convinced that because it said ‘news’ that it was legitimate news. It would make my head explode that someone with such a great technical mind couldnt see this stuff for the BS it was.
Xydexx

What can I say, I love Google Books. Not so much for things like this, but the fact that I can look at old guides of the route from New York to Albany along post roads back when horseback was the main method of transportation.

Information is cool.
glamaFez

I spy a very young Genesis P-Orridge.
TEKNA2007

DOCTOR CURES GULLIBILITY With Pyramid Power Alone!
cmuwriter

This magazine will always have a special place in my heart, as I was an avid reader of this rag when I was 13-years-old. I would spend the summers with my grandmother in rural Michigan and would buy the thing every week and read it cover to cover. This wasn’t appreciated by my grandmother who told me not to buy it because it would almost always scare the living shit out of me on a weekly basis. I’m looking at the archive at the “NASA takes photos of ghosts in space” story that was in the Aug. 8, 1995 issue, and almost remember walking into the Harvey Morris’ party store in Glennie, Michigan and buying the damn thing â€“ as well as a Charlston Chew â€“ while my grandmother bought cigarettes. Then taking the thing home and reading it around the kitchen table while my grandmother knitted and my grandfather read the Detroit Free Press. This played out every week, and I would lay in bed and think of the disturbing shit I would read in that paper, and comfort myself with the Page 5 girl.
Anonymous

Doing a google search for Page Five Girls I learned that I can buy one at Target!
Anonymous

hahaha omg! i have the one on the right! its about 10 feet away from me on a shelf right now
Anonymous

BatBoy lives!
IronEdithKidd

My favorite series of stories were the aliens visiting particular political figures. First it was Bill Clinton, then it was Rush Limbaugh. Ah, good times.
devophill

The WWN got pretty interesting when it became a straight humor mag, home to lots of great cartoonists & writers. Sergio Aragones! Ernie Colon! Great stuff.
Mr Pseudonym

“Tue, Dec.29 |
Doing a google search for Page Five Girls I learned that I can buy one at Target!”

Oh, man, I’m there!

P
efergus3

“We have studied your historical documents.” Boy, are we in trouble.
skeletoncityrepeater

As I recall, Satan escaped from Hell approximately once a year, with similar photographic evidence, and of course his frightful visage was present in the billowing smoke of the 9/11 tragedy. Has he just been escaping this whole time, cause he’s really big?
Hawley

headless man found in a topless bar

heh
kc0bbq

They had the best random headline generator. “Statue of Elvis Found on Mars!” followed a bit later with “Statue of Elvis Found on the Moon!”. I loved it. It’s like a surreal version of The Onion.
khaidean

This is what it feels like to look at the “old skoll stuff”.
tinapple

BatBoy and Weekly World News still live at http://weeklyworldnews.com/
Flashman

Half shark!
Anonymous

It was my teenage dream to be a page designer at the WWN. Sadly, I hurt myself pretty bad applying drop shadow to Futura Extra Black in college and never fully recovered.

I had to settle for USA Today.
The Lizardman

I once had a photo used by them – it was mistakenly ditributed by a photo service, they handled the fall out honorably. Looking back at it now, I am pretty happy to have gotten in before they folded.
johnocomedy

a personal favorite cover story from the late ’80′s was “Aliens Are Stealing America’s Pennies”

Apparently, aliens have become so advanced that they have forgotten how to mine the zinc they need for sunscreen to protect their pale flesh. So they have come to America and work in convenience stores, stealing all of our pennies and using the zinc to make zinc oxide.

Sounds like ABC’s “V” owes WWN some “created by” credit
Tony Moore

as long as there’s a still Page 5 girl, i’m there!

somewhere at my grandmother’s, i have a giant stack of these. i bought it every week for a few years in high school and college.
Halloween Jack

That redneck vampire looks suspiciously like Willie Nelson. Just sayin’.
Ugly Canuck

These neat-o archives of past strange stuff seem to be popping up all over; to wit, Government Comic Books:

http://contentdm.unl.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/comics&CISOSTART=1,1

Thanx to DVD Savant & Joe Dante for the heads-up on that!