Description
Collector's Note – Why This Issue Matters
The April 13, 1978 issue of Circus magazine featuring Peter Criss on the cover arrives at a genuinely pivotal moment in the Kiss story. By the spring of 1978, Kiss had achieved a level of commercial and cultural saturation that was almost unprecedented for a rock band: the Alive II album had been released in October 1977 and was still riding high, the band's merchandise empire was generating extraordinary revenue, and the solo album project — in which all four members would simultaneously release individual albums — was being planned for release later that year in September 1978. Peter Criss, the band's drummer and the member most associated with the Cat persona, occupied a particularly interesting position in the Kiss universe in early 1978: his solo album would prove to be the commercially strongest of the four, driven largely by "Beth," which had already become one of the band's signature ballads. A Circus cover featuring Criss in April 1978 — months before the solo albums dropped — captures him at the peak of his commercial visibility within the band's ecosystem, before the internal tensions that would eventually lead to his departure in 1980 became public. Collectors building a comprehensive record of Kiss in print will find this issue a natural companion to the broader body of coverage gathered in the Kiss magazine collection, which tracks the band's extraordinary media presence across the full arc of their career.
The inclusion of Rufus and Angel Band alongside the Peter Criss cover reflects Circus's editorial positioning in 1978 as a broad-tent rock magazine that covered the full spectrum of popular music rather than serving as a narrowly specialized hard rock publication. Rufus — the funk-rock group fronted by Chaka Khan — was at the height of its commercial success in 1977–78, and Angel was a hard rock band on Casablanca Records, the same label as Kiss, which gave them strong promotional placement in rock media of the period. The combination of a Kiss member, a funk-rock crossover act, and a Casablanca hard rock band in a single April 1978 issue documents the particular musical landscape of that specific moment — a period when genre boundaries in popular music were more porous than they would later become. The full-page Peter Criss poster documented in the listing is a meaningful collector's detail: Circus posters from the late 1970s are collected independently of the magazines that contained them, and an intact issue with its poster still present is more desirable than one from which the poster has been removed. The full range of 1978 publications provides essential context for the musical and cultural moment this issue documented — the year Kiss stood at the absolute peak of their commercial reach.
About the Publication
Circus magazine, founded in 1966, was one of the primary American rock music publications of the 1970s, competing with Creem and Rolling Stone for the attention of the decade's rock audience. Its editorial approach emphasized coverage of album-oriented rock, hard rock, and heavy metal, with extensive use of band photography, concert coverage, and the full-page and centerfold posters that were a defining feature of the magazine's format and a significant driver of its newsstand appeal. By the late 1970s Circus was closely associated with the glam rock and hard rock scenes that Kiss, Angel, and their Casablanca Records labelmates represented, making it a primary venue for coverage of that specific corner of the American rock market.
Key Highlights Inside
- Peter Criss cover feature — The Kiss drummer and Cat persona, profiled in the spring of 1978 at the height of the band's commercial saturation and months before the simultaneous solo album releases of September 1978.
- Full-page Peter Criss poster — Confirmed as included with this issue and intact — a significant collector's detail given that Circus posters from this era are frequently removed from their original issues and collected separately.
- Rufus coverage — Featuring the funk-rock group fronted by Chaka Khan during their peak commercial period in the late 1970s.
- Angel Band coverage — The Casablanca Records hard rock act and Kiss label-mates, whose inclusion reflects the editorial and commercial connections between the two bands' media coverage in this period.
- Newsstand edition without address label — preserving full cover integrity with the Peter Criss image unobscured, the preferred condition for display-grade collectors of this issue.
Condition & Rarity
The April 13, 1978 issue of Circus with Peter Criss cover and intact poster is a more desirable survival than the press run alone might suggest. Circus magazines from the late 1970s were enthusiastically read, shared, and — most significantly for condition — mined for their posters, which were frequently removed and displayed on bedroom walls, leaving the remaining magazine incomplete. An example that retains its Peter Criss poster alongside the main issue represents a more complete artifact than most surviving copies. The newsstand origin and absence of a subscription address label preserves the full cover image without obstruction, which matters for a cover as visually specific as a Peter Criss portrait. Minor wear consistent with age is expected and accepted at a good-condition grade for a magazine now approaching fifty years old. The plastic protective sleeve limits ongoing paper oxidation and physical wear. When evaluating any surviving copy of this issue, the completeness of the poster — whether it remains attached or has been cleanly removed — is the primary condition factor beyond standard cover and page integrity assessment.
Looking for More Issues Like This?
Late-1970s Circus issues featuring Kiss members are among the most actively collected entries in the magazine's archive, and copies with intact posters are genuinely harder to find than those without. The Kiss magazine collection at OriginalMagazines.com is the most focused starting point for collectors tracking the band's full print media presence across their career. The Circus magazine archive offers the broader context of the publication's late-1970s rock coverage, and collectors building around the extraordinary year of 1978 will also want to explore the 1978 magazine collection, which documents one of rock history's most commercially and culturally saturated years.