Super Square

The last thing any self-respecting magazine wants to be considered these days is square. But one new publication boasts of the fact; it even calls itself Square. "It hasn't been easy to be a square for the past several years," the first issue of the glossy quarterly complains. "To see citizens crowding around the swill of sex and cynicism, garnering applause. To hear others venerate corrupt intelligence and receive congratulations for it. But then one day, when someone snorted scornfully, 'Whadda you, some kinda square?' . . . 'Yes,' said we proudly."

Square is the right's latest answer to the left. Its chief financial backer is Patrick Frawley Jr., 44, who is board chairman of Eversharp, and a veteran right-wing crusader. Last fall he brought out his first publication, Twin Circle, a conservative Catholic weekly. His more recent venture is edited by Ed Butler, 34, a Schick public relations man who once debated Lee Harvey Oswald on the subject of Cuba--an encounter that was preserved on tape and has been made into a recording.

Square is square (11 in. by 11 in.) It is published in the enemy camp, as it were--Westwood Village, which is also the address of the University of California in Los Angeles. The magazine tries to fight for the right with the New Left's own tactics; despite its name, its appearance is hip, its art psychedelic. Only the message is different: against free love and drugs, for the draft and the war in Viet Nam. One article draws a parallel between the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 and the current alliance of New Leftists and black militants; another charges that the rash of violence on U.S. campuses is Communist-inspired and part of "Mickey Mao's trap." A comic-strip hero called Super Square participates in such right-wing victories as the resignation of Defense Secretary McNamara and the downfall of Che Guevara. His identity, however, is a mystery. Square asks: "Is he Al Capp? Bill Buckley? Joey Bishop?"

Butler distributed most of the initial press run of 37,000 copies free on college campuses. He offers a year's subscription for $2; along with it comes a set of Square posters, one of which, extolling the return of peace through victory, appears as the centerfold in the first issue. Unlike most such offerings, it is not calculated to titillate. All that the poster shows nude is a hand, and all that the hand is doing is pointing, thumb up, to the slogan "Victory."

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