Dennis Publishing

How you write and design, rather than add up, is the currency of Dennis. As the publishing industry consolidates around the world into bland corporations, Dennis's edge is its independence, risk-taking, and innovation. It's a philosophy that has served us well. The company has consistently identified, launched, and developed new titles, creating fresh markets and opportunities for advertisers. We've also found the more we practice and the harder we sweat, then the luckier we get. Felix Dennis, formerly an editor for Oz magazine, launches his own publishing group, initially producing underground comics. Dennis Publishing incorporates and launches Kung Fu Monthly, its first mainstream success. Dennis Publishing successfully launches Maxim in the United States; Stuff begins publication. The company begins publication of The Week, a news review; Blender, a music magazine; and Maxim Fashion. Dennis Publishing acquires I Feel Good and its titles, including Jack, Viz, Bizarre, and Fortean Times. Felix Dennis, a high-school dropout, part-time gravedigger, and occasional drummer, burst onto the UK publishing scene in the late 1960s as part of the editorial team behind the notorious Oz magazine. Originally produced in Australia, Oz had been brought to the United Kingdom in the mid-1960s and grew into one of the country's most-read counterculture-oriented "underground" magazines. With a circulation of some 50,000, the socially satirical, politically irreverent magazine ran afoul of the country's obscenity laws in the early 1970s. After publishing a children's version of Oz, using children as part of the editorial staff--and featuring lewd cartoons of popular children's characters--Dennis, along with the magazine's publishers, were placed on trial, and ultimately jailed (although the decision was reversed several months later on appeal). During sentencing, Dennis himself received a more lenient sentence than his partners because, as the sentencing judge famously stated, Dennis was "very much less intelligent than his fellow defendants." Oz remained in publication for another two years following the trial, while Dennis joined the others in launching a new mainstream title, Ink. However, by 1973, both ventures, like the hippie culture that had given them birth, had gone bankrupt. Subsequently, Dennis turned around and launched his own company, Dennis Publishing, built around £50 and some used printing equipment, including a floor-standing process camera. Dennis's new venture initially began publishing underground comics and by the end of its first year had run out of funds. Yet Dennis had already spotted a new opportunity in the form of the Kung Fu films featuring Bruce Lee that had become a huge success at the beginning of the decade. After noticing the lines forming for Lee's and other Kung Fu films, Dennis recognized that fans would be willing to pay for a magazine devoted to the martial art. In 1974, Dennis Publishing launched Kung Fu Monthly. The new title not only gave Dennis its first success, it also brought the company into the industry mainstream. Dennis continued to prove the sentencing judge wrong when, by the end of the decade, he had parlayed Kung Fu Monthly into a world-wide title, with licensed editions in 14 countries, including a Cantonese edition for the Hong Kong market. Lee's sudden death brought Felix Dennis a new personal triumph when he published his successful biography of the actor. Dennis followed that book up the next year when he co-authored a biography of Muhammad Ali. More lasting success came with the group's acquisition of Personal, the first magazine in Europe devoted to the nascent personal computing market. The title proved the first of a series of trade titles, including Auto Express and MacUser, that enabled the company to build a solid, if less than flamboyant position in the UK magazine market. A crucial turning point for the company came when Dennis reorganized along more traditional corpor