EDITOR'S COMMENT — November 1999
What are people thinking? I mean, how hard is it to find a good tattoo artist? If you wanted to go out to buy a car, wouldn't you check out the top automotive magazines, talk to trusted friends about their experiences and visit a couple of reliable dealerships? Why don't people do that when they are shopping for a tattoo? How hard is it to check the magazines, talk to people with first-class tattoos and visit a few, well-established shops? So how come there are so many poor souls walking around with major garbage on their bodies? Were they drunk? How many photos do I get each day that are labeled "cover-ups"? Cover-ups of what? Cover-ups of lousy work, that's what.
In the last few months, I have seen absolutely beautiful young bodies distorted by misplaced murals that turn sexy, curvaceous backs into an ill-designed billboards defaced with amateurish, off-kilter doodles. Artwork that barely deserves a C-minus in any self-respecting high school art class. All because some wanna-be tattoo artist hasn't the foggiest idea of balance and design. They think that working on a body is like working on a piece of Bristol board. Wrong. Remember, a passable illustrator does not a great tattoo artist make. One image still haunts me: An absolutely beautiful young woman with a half-inch "ribbon" of black tattooed around her lovely, young neck. I must admit (to the credit of the so-called artist) that the ring of black actually connected up on either side, but the color slopped over the edges. It looked as if the ink had seeped out from under masking tape. Like when an eight-year-old paints a car body. Or tribal rip-offs in the wrong places, on the wrong sex. Or legs and arms and bodies cut in half by ridiculous garters of bad art. Or a portrait of mom that looks more like Jerry Garcia. Or distorted calendar girls with twisted limbs. Or superheroes with muscles where muscles don't go. Or some half-assed version of a Japanese dragon with crosshatches instead of scales. How about one of those super-elaborate black-and-gray fine-line backpieces fading into nothingness after a few months? Or some scratcher who doesn't know Paul Rogers from Roy Rogers gouging badly executed, amateurish artwork seemingly transferred directly from the pages of their high school binder into someone's sweet, uneducated flesh. Can't these posers take some classes in basic anatomy? Can't they just stand back and look at what they're doing? Just because a half-baked illustration is etched permanently into someone's skin does not legitimize it or make it art. Can't these pretenders simply acknowledge the fact that they can't draw?
That's why there are conventions. They bring legitimate tattoo artists from all over the world to your front porch. Open your squinty eyes, take the extra time and carefully select a proven professional to help you proclaim your individuality through tattoos. Do your part to stamp out the glut of second-rate tattoo amateurs. Amateurs that gladly take your money, by the way. Hey, let's face it; if I'm going to drag somebody's artwork around for the rest of my life, it better be pretty damned good.
—Bob Baxter, Editor in Chief