To understand the origins of "fanboy," you don't need to go back to 1919...but you do need to start earlier than 1985. Try 1973-when a handful of copies of a fanzine were distributed at a Chicago comics convention. The zine was credited to two fans who took Marvel Comics, the work of Frank Frazetta, and other matters a wee bit too seriously, Alfred Judson and Bill Beasley. And its name was Fanboy.Fanboy!) (Thanks, Harry!)
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11:51 am Mon
May 17, 2010
Lost etymology of "fanboy"
Harry sez, "I encounter people--especially tech enthusiasts--dismissing each other as fanboys every day. But I wasn't satisfied with the dictionary's etymology of "fanboy." So I traced it to its 1973 origins in a little-known fanzine by Jay Lynch, the influential underground cartoonist and co-creator of Wacky Packages and Garbage Pail Kids. May Jay get full credit for the pervasive word he coined."
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For due diligence in your pursuit of original etymology, you win Your Own Personal Harlan Ellison!
“Bite Me, Fanboy”
Heh! That’s always the first thing I think of when someone says “fanboy.”
Jay Lynch is a phenomenal human being. We should all be so lucky as to spend a day with him listening to stories of Hefner, his African American mailman fetish mag collection, and the rest of his archives. He probably still writes the bazooka Joe gum comics.
Seek him out.
I hate to nit pick, but as the quoted text here reveals, Jay Lynch didn’t write the fanzine. Alfred Judson and Bill Beasley did, and on the suggestion of Lynch called it Fanboy, an altered version of the term ‘funboy’. So yes, Lynch coined it, but it wasn’t in his ‘zine (and in fact I’m pretty sure it was ’72 when Lynch first suggested the title as a gag).