The Eyeshield was a quarterly printed Knightmare fanzine initially launched in December 1995 by Paul McIntosh and later taken over by 'caretaker' Jake Collins.
The magazine was produced by life-long Knightmare fan - Paul McIntosh. He was disappointed to see Knightmare fade away, and so set up 'The Eye Shield', originally intended to be an independent 'fanzine', separate from Broadsword Television (who were keen on the idea).
Paul kept in contact with Broadsword Television, and eventually the fanzine became ' The Official Knightmare Magazine', and they did their part by passing on all Knightmare mail onto him, and helping out wherever possible.
"But I never heard about 'The Eye Shield!'"
It is likely that you did not hear about the magazine. It was going to be mentioned in the last edition of 'The Quest', but there was a slight hiccup, and it was missed out. All remaining copies of 'The Quest' were therefore sent out to as many people as possible with a leaflet advertising the new fanzine. So well done if you were one of the lucky ones!
TES was packed full with news, competitions, reader letters, games, puzzles and artwork. Not forgetting exclusive interviews with David Learner (Pickle), Hugo Myatt (Treguard), Tim Child (Creator/Producer) and Jason Karl (Winner, Series 2). TES was also mentioned on the Sci-Fi channel after an repeat episode of Knightmare in February 1996. A 15-second address card brought in lots of new readers!
Bring Back Knightmare
Part of The Eye Shield's role was to start a 'Bring Back Knightmare' campaign. Indeed many readers wrote in to CITV and other channels demanding Knightmare's return, but they were not interested.
The magazine's last issue was in December 1997, two years after its launch. Unfortunately, there were fewer and fewer readers each issue so Paul decided it was time for a break from producing the magazine, in order to devote his spare time and resources to get a bigger fan base for the magazine, and in particular - the BBK campaign. It would then be re-launched.
1999 Relaunch
After Nicholas Lam set up his site in January 1999, he managed to contact Paul and it was agreed that this was the perfect opportunity to re-launch the magazine and the Bring Back Knightmare Campaign. Paul sent Nich all the issues, except Issue 9 which was sent by Jake Collins. You can now find all the issues on this site.
And thanks to Jake, TES was re-launched in July 2001 and new issues are now available on the site.
