Spy is well known as Patient Zero of the modern chart epidemic. Soon after its debut in the fall of 1986, the virus began spreading like some rampant strain of Studio 54-cultivated herpes through the New York publishing industry daisy chain. Now, it's almost impossible to find a magazine without a chart in it; even The New Yorker managed to slip a suspiciously tabular illustration into its Talk of the Town section a few months back.---Suck, 14 August 1998