Radar, the new magazine born from the brain of Maer Roshan, is, for all intents and purposes, a zine. It’s a really nice one–beautiful, actually, with a great graphic sensibility and gorgeous coloring. It’s printed on glossy paper, with lots of Roshan’s talented and smart friends helping out. But it’s still a zine, an offering of whatever it is that Roshan is interested in at the moment. He admits as much in his editor’s letter. Writing (at 3 a.m. on March 26) about the state of magazines, Roshan tells us, “Vision and risk-taking were replaced by focus groups and stale editorial formulas. Being an editor no longer felt like much fun. …The magazine we wanted to work for was the kind we wanted to read–one that was smart but not pretentious, stylish but not superficial, irreverent but not cynical, and comfortable with both high culture and low.”

Roshan is a talented, irrepressible editor. He cut his teeth at New York magazine, specializing in hatching buzzy and knowing features. Tina Brown brought him on board during the last months of Talk, and he spiced up that title, giving it some coherence and flair. When Talk folded in early 2002, Roshan set out to create his own magazine. That was a tough challenge–the magazine industry’s been in a slump for the past couple of years, and the conventional wisdom is that it’s almost impossible to launch a new general-interest title these days, especially without the backing of a major media company.

But Roshan decided to go it alone, with, he says, $1.7 million in seed money from a motley group of investors. (Or the decision was made for him–talks with any number of media companies, including America Media, the publisher of virtually every supermarket tabloid in America, fell through. Let that be a lesson in the difficulties of monetizing buzz.) Tomorrow, Radar will land on the shelves of Barnes & Noble bookstores around the country; next week it should be on newsstands. The debut issue is one of three scheduled to appear between now and September, at which point the title is supposed to go monthly. Early next year, the plan is to publish as a bi-weekly. Radar has been touted as a hybrid of the old Kurt Andersen-Graydon Carter era Spy, Vanity Fair, and The National Enquirer–smart, bitchy, irreverent, unexpected. Kind of like a glossy version of The New York Observer, but aimed at a national audience.

The first issue more or less delivers. It’s gawky and occasionally confused, but it is full of careful digs and inside dope, much of it centering on the New York’s media world. The issue’s cover chart-icle is an eight-page piece/graphic on famous monsters, people who exhibit “abuse, excessive, outrageous behavior.” Bonnie Fuller, the editor of Us Weekly, and Jann Wenner, the magazine’s owner, are listed as one of four “Monster Couples.” Dave Eggers, who at one point was featured prominently on the cover of Radar mock-ups as one of the title’s featured writers, must have said no thanks: he’s listed as a “Cryptomonster.” (But then again, in a winking bit of meta-copy, so is Roshan.) The piece’s introduction explains why uber-monster Harvey Weinstein didn’t make the cut: “Weinstein has apparently been transformed.” I took that to mean that Weinstein has decided to invest; plus, Miramax is one of the issue’s advertisers. Elsewhere, in a masterful bit of prophylactic placement, Radar features a roundtable of acid-tongued gossip columnists. (If you find all of this confusing, that’s only because you need to go back to your remedial media class. Or else start scheduling more of your lunches at Michael’s.)

Paging through the issue, you can also get a decent sense of what Roshan’s been up to, and interested in, for the past year. There’s a lengthy feature on Kinko’s culture, a piece that feels about a decade overdue. But Radar’s business plan was created at Kinko’s! There’s an oral history of Area, a once-fabulous club in New York that’s been closed since 1987. There’s a workable, if uninspiring, profile of Howard Dean, the Vermont governor who is making a run for president. Some of the pieces are better than others; a feature on the weird life of ex-reality TV stars is unexpected and fresh, just the type of thing I want to read in a magazine, while the requisite “newsy” pieces, like the ones on Jeb Bush’s druggie daughter Noelle and the human shields in Baghdad, already feel stale. Overall, Radar’s a fun title. Maer’s a fun guy, and he has good taste–and lots and lots of friends, all of whom want him to succeed.

At least for the time being. Roshan has begun to slowly frustrate some of the many people he knows. An early Radar release sent out by the magazine’s publicist bragged how the title is refusing to pay writers more than a dollar a word, contrasting its lean launch with the profligate titles of yesteryear. It’s a good story, except it’s not true. “I have a hard enough time fighting with editors about how much I get paid,” one writer who wrote a piece for Radar said. “I don’t need bad information out there that I’m writing for a buck a word.” (Roshan insists that the majority of the magazine’s writers only get $1 per word.) Walking back from Radar’s offices on Monday, I ran into another writer who had been assigned a piece by the magazine. She wrote it, sent it in, and then never heard another word, even after several follow-up emails. The masthead contains names of people who haven’t signed up for the project. (But, naturally, not Dave Eggers.)

Those problems, I imagine, will work themselves out. And after all, Roshan isn’t writing for the media elite. (At least I think he’s not. This issue’s media-centric world-view has as much to do, I imagine, with the need to generate free publicity in the magazine world’s solipsistic ranks as it does with an effort to appeal to some of the 700,000 readers Radar eventually hopes to pick up.) Roshan is too smart an editor for Radar not to start uncovering stories that will generate real buzz. I’m rooting for it to be the most successful zine ever.