365 Zines a Year

Alas Fair Sailor All is Lost

2012-02-02T09:49:00.000-08:00

By Lee McClure

This is, oh gosh, this is an incredibly depressing comic. It’s well drawn for sure, but I really cannot recommend you read it as it just seems to be existential despair.

The story follows a sailor, and his pet monkey, as they sail through a seemingly unending sea. Though, I guess if you’re in a small boat the sea is going to seem unending because it’ll take you ages and ages to get across it. Storywise not much really happens (unless I spoil the ending), but it’s all about setting a mood. A mood of terrible depression.

Artistically this comic is much more inspiring. Each “panel” is actually a circle without any distinct border. McClure has filled the panels with cross hatching and lines so as to create the idea of a circle without actually drawing one. The art is really detailed (it must have taken ages!), though isn’t in a photorealistic style or anything like that. It also manages to accomplish a lot with a very limited setting. Plus there are some really good drawings of monkeys.

Um, so yeah, if you really like the art below, or enjoy being depressed by the futility of existence, then check out this comic. If not, well, I don’t really blame you.

Peach Melba #25 and #26

2012-02-01T15:55:00.000-08:00

By Pearl
PO Box 74
Brighton
BN1 4ZQ
UK

Pearl somehow manages to make a zine every month. At this point I’m lucky if I get one out every six months. Sigh. Sure Pearl’s lists zines aren’t that long or complex, but they’re still there every month, which is admirable in and of itself.

Through these lists we discover what’s been on Pearl’s mind, what she’s been doing, and what she plans to do in the future. It’s an interesting view into someone’s life, and tells you more than you might expect.

My favourite lists in these two issues are “Places That I have slept” (this sounds familiar to another zine…), “uses for spoons” (“picking locks”, “hitting irritating people”), and “Things that you should “never trust”” (“the kickstand on my bike”).

Issues 26 also introduced me to the idea of a Zocalo. I don’t know if this is a thing local to Brighton, or if it’s more international, but it sounds pretty neat

The word comes from the name of the plaza/square in the centre of Mexico city. City squares are really rad things that don’t really seem to exist in North American cities, unfortunately. They act as meeting and event spaces, allowing people to gather for art, music, political events, other activities, and just casual socializing.

The one mentioned in this zine is a sort of street party that is all about meeting your neighbours, which is a pretty awesome thing to do. I really wish neighbourhoods had more interactions between the people that lived in them, instead of most people just hiding in their houses all the time. Of course I’m not really helping very much, I don’t know any of my neighbours (in my defence, it is cold and snowy outside).

Chiaroscuro Part One

2012-01-31T09:54:00.000-08:00

By Dan Dunlap
actsofdan.com

Straight up science fiction comics are something that you don’t see that often. I’m not really sure why to be honest, but there seems to be a lack of them in the industry.

Chiaroscuro is a science fiction comic, and while at first it seems to be filled with science fiction and fantasy clichés, I felt that Dunlap actually dealt with them quite well. When the spooky monks come and tell the main character's parents that he is the chosen one and has to be taken away to be trained, they say that they’ve already arranged for them to come and live nearby so they don’t have to abandon him. When he encounters some “monsters” he immediately attacks and kills them.

This is something that bothers me more and more in video games. Why am I attacking these monsters? They’re wearing clothes and using tools, that means they have intelligence, societies, and culture. I should be studying them, not killing them! (Clearly I should be playing Ultimate Anthropologist instead of Final Fantasy).

However, Dunlap manages to throw a curveball at this trope, and it turns out that the “monsters” that Tog (the main character) attacked were actually just cattle of some form, and the people who owned them are kind of pissed off about it. This even leads to the question of whether Tog is the “chosen one” at all, or if he’s just wandering around thinking that he is. (Okay, maybe I'm reading too much into the story.)

While the overall style of the art is one that I enjoy, I found that certain panels and storytelling were a bit weak. I thought the designs of the aliens was generally fairly good, and although I’m not such a big fan of bipedal humanoids I acknowledge that creating non-humanoid looking species and their culture is a difficult task.

I do wonder how the creatures could evolve on a world which is static in space and thus half light and half dark all the time. Shouldn’t there be a huge difference in temperature between the two halves? Could a creature that evolved to survive on one half of the planet live on the other side for any length of time? (I over think everything.)

I also really like the cover logo. I think it looks really cool, and even works as a representative of the two different groups in the story inside.

Overall I liked this, and my only disappointment is that it’s only part of a story, and even as a first chapter it seems disappointingly short.

Halifax Comix Jam

2012-01-30T16:00:00.000-08:00

I have to admit that I have an ulterior motive to reviewing these minicomics on this day. And that motive is that the next Halifax Comic Jam is happening tomorrow (January 31st), at 7pm, at the Roberts Street Social Centre (there’s more info on the facebook event page). You should come by and draw some comics! No talent is required.

Jam comics are comics that are made when each artist draws a panel, continuing the story (or not). They're kind of like exquisite corpses, except you can see what’s come before. The stories generally involved bizarre humour, often don’t make a lot of sense, and frequently just stop without any type of ending. They can still be funny though.

It’s strange reading several of these in a row, because I see that the same characters show up again and again as artists draw their own creations into the comics. I’m not sure who invented Hitler-Cat, Maraca-Squid (see above), or that weird little robot, but when they show up they tend to take over the comics.

One thing to remember about these things is that they are 18+, and I’m pretty glad that nobody saw me reading them at work.

Bristol Radical Zine Fest

2012-01-29T06:40:00.000-08:00

I've been asked to promote this zine event. There will be some rad zinesters attending!

The Bristol Radical Zine Fest

Sunday, the 12th of February, from noon til 6pm at Kebele Community Co-Op (14 Robertson Road, Bristol BS5 6JY) followed by yummy Kebele dinner at 6:30pm.

The range of stalls at the BRZF is set to be very exciting, with people coming from all over the country. Ranging from Other Asias, focusing on alternative underground Asian DIY culture, to Bearpit Zine, showcasing the work of Bristol artists. From the Swansea Feminist Network, to zines on cooking and self-defence, there will be a vast range of zines on offer to inspire, inform, entertain, empower and rabble-rouse! See the Stalls page for full details.

There are still a few places left for stalls – see the page How to apply for stalls/workshops and get in touch as soon as you can.

More info on their website.

Awaiting an Epiphany

2012-01-26T09:51:00.000-08:00

By Rachel
www.awaitinganepiphany.co.uk

The Manic Street Preachers don’t seem that popular in North America, and I don’t think I could even identify one of their songs if you played them (album covers I could maybe recognize). I understand there is something of a mystique around the band because of the disappearance/suicide of one of their members in the ‘90s, but I still can’t see what creates such love amongst their fans.

I’ve talked to several people who have friends that live in the UK who are obsessed with the Manic Street Preachers. It’s kind of bizarre to look at this fandom that makes zines about the band, gives them presents, and goes to multiple shows on every tour (and then waits for ages outside to see them afterward).

(Hell, living in Canada the idea of going to multiple shows on any tour seems absurd, but that’s mostly because in the UK you’re probably within two hours of multiple cities, while two hours from where I live wouldn’t even get me out of the province.)

Rachel clearly understands the appeal of the band, even if I don’t, and they continue to be one of the things in her life that make her really happy. Which is great! I’m not going to pretend I understand her motivations for some of the actions she does in relation to the band, but I’m sure I do lots of stuff she can’t understand either.

At the very least her stories about going to shows and meeting members of the band make me think that the Manics are very appreciative of their fans, and generally seem like nice people.

I addition to all the stuff about the Manics Rachel also discusses her chronic fatigue syndrome, which isn’t really something I know much about but which sounds pretty awful, and a not very good article that was published after she was interviewed. She felt she had been misrepresented in the article, and it makes me kind of sad that journalists will write about people in such a way.

There’s also a well written piece on extinct animals, and the ways humans are driving more and more spices to extinction. This piece also touches on global warming, and reminded me how, like obsessive Manic Street Preacher fans, I cannot understand what is going on in the minds of climate change deniers, or, worse, those that acknowledge that it exists, but are continuing full steam (or oil burning) ahead with destroying the world.

So overall this is maybe not the most uplifting of zines (though this isn't to say it's depressing either), but it’s well written, and if you’re a fan of the Manic Street Preachers you should definitely check it out.

Culture Slut 24

2012-01-25T11:19:00.000-08:00

By Amber Forrester
fight-boredom.com

Recently I met Amber, the creator of this zine. I’d traded zines with her in the past, but we hadn’t really stayed in touch or anything. Just before Christmas she was visiting Halifax with a friend of mine and several of us got together and played Pirate Fluxx (as recommended by Alex Wrekk, super zinester gaming). We also went thrifting at a Salvation Army shop and found a book about feminist zines. We talked about reviewing zines (oh the hilarity!), which isn’t really a topic either of us get to talk about very much, and traded the newest issues of our zines.

Amber’s zine is a perzine, which, for those that don’t know, means it’s about her life. Sometimes when reading perzines I am impressed by the brutal honesty of the writer. They talk about incredibly personal things in their lives: their failures, their successes, their relationships, their problems. It’s kind of intimidating if you’re thinking about writing a perzine yourself, because you wonder what it is that you should be revealing in them.

In the last issue of Amber’s zine that I read she had just broken up with her boyfriend and moved to Montreal. This time (several years later), she’s just broken up with her Montreal boyfriend and is having a hard time. She’s dealing with her alcoholism (a pretty scary thing that definitely isn’t discussed amongst young people), her feelings of self confidence and self worth, and her times feeling suicidal.

It’s all pretty intense stuff. But the entire zine isn’t just about those things.

Amber also discusses her “job”, which is being a guinea pig for various medical experiments at McGill. These range from the banal (smelling things), to the downright bizarre (a test on genital pain, twice, during which she fell asleep), to the scary (all the pharmaceutical tests). She says that she’s not taking things that aren’t already on the market, but it’s still a bit scary nonetheless.

One of the things I learned while talking to Amber is that she writes and edits her text before she gets them ready for this zine. This may surprise some people who have read her zine, as the entire thing is either handwritten or done using a typewriter, but I think the extra effort really shows and makes Amber’s prose more readable.

If you're into perzines, or living in Montreal, Amber's zines are worth reading, even if there is a distinct lack of monsters and ray guns.

Plan B

2012-01-24T10:01:00.000-08:00

By Laura Bifano
www.laurabifano.com

Unlike the zine I reviewed yesterday, this comic does have monsters! Or one monster at least. Clearly I am biased towards unspeakable monstrosities.

This is a wordless comic about a little girl (based on the author) dreaming about becoming a mermaid. She loves mermaids (like a certain person I know), and thinks that being a mermaid will be the best thing ever!

Of course when she actually encounters a “mermaid” she finds it is less awesome than she would hope, and her dream is irreparably shattered.

The art is fantastic, the wordless storytelling is excellent, and the story is both funny, and a little sad (the disappointment of the mermaid! The disappointment of the little girl). The price on this thing is (in my opinion) kind of outrageous, but Bifano is a really good artist (check out this amazing painting of a unicorn), and I feel like her work would be much better presented as part of an anthology like Flight, where it would be presented at a better size and a better price, and where far more people would be exposed to her work. Hopefully that'll happen in the future.

The Filth Issue 2

2012-01-23T09:27:00.000-08:00

thefilthsubmissions@gmail.com
www.wix.com/the_filth/zine

I feel kind of bad saying this, but the thing I liked most about this anthology is the sewn binding (you can see it on the edge of the cover, it seems to have been done by a sewing machine). It’s kind of a weird thing to like, but I appreciate it when people have gone to the extra effort to do things like that.

The actual contents, however, don’t really appeal to me. There’s your average mix of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and some other stuff, and like any anthology or magazine you’re not going to like all of it, but in this case I didn’t like any of it.

This isn’t to say that the content here is necessarily bad, just that it wasn’t really my thing. I mean, I do read a fair bit (I generally finish at least two books a month, but I tend to prefer genre fiction (I’m reading Mogworld right now and really enjoying it!). At the same time, I do have a degree in Russian Literature, and read a pretty varied range of stuff, but I tend not to read stories about drug addicts, junkies, and people who like endin’ a lot of their sentences with apostrophes. (That is the weirdest complaint ever, but it’s true.) Why have I gone on about this so much? Because the two longest pieces in the book are about minor criminals and drug use. Not really my thing (I didn’t even like The Wire though, so what do I know).

I’m also not really interested in people telling me about how they became a single parent with four children. I just cannot understand their mindset in any way, and the piece doesn’t really delve into why the person actually had their children.

In fact, the most interesting thing in this zine, to me, was one of the characters talking about a prescription medication I’ve been on. And that was more of a “oh, I recognize that pharmaceutical name and very few of the others mentioned” than anything else.

Actually, that's not true. There was an interview with a musician that interested me enough (ie. it talks about how awesome robots and comics are) to look him up online, but, alas, I can find no mention of Music to Defend Reality from Marauding Hordes of Inter-dimensional Hostiles Volume 1. (Edit: Oh wait, apparently it was sent to me, I just found it in my "box of zines to review". It's actually pretty good. )

Again, I will say that none of the work here is necessarily bad (well, some of it is), just that the content matter really doesn’t appeal to me as it (mostly) lacks spaceships, monsters, humour (at least a type I enjoy), and characters I can relate to. But maybe you’ll like it.

Entropy no. 4: Good Neighbours

2012-01-19T11:28:00.000-08:00

By Aaron Costain
www.aaroncostain.com

This short comic is an adaptation of one of Aesop’s fables and after reading it I realized that I know nothing about Aesop whatsoever. Well, that’s not true, I’ll list the things I do know.

1. Liked telling stories about animals.
2. Is dead.
3. From ancient Greece (?).
4. Male (?).

So I looked this person up on Wikipedia and discovered that “his existence remains uncertain”. Aha! That explains why I don’t know anything about him. Hell, people apparently can’t even decide what continent he was from (he’s been depicted as a black Ethiopian). The page also discusses how many of the fables attributed to Aesop were from other sources, and if Aesop did exist he certainly didn’t create all the stories credited to him. So in truth there are only two things we know about Aesop.

1. May have existed.
2. May have created stories.

But, we know that this specific comic does exist! It tells the story of the eagle, the cat, and the sow (pig). It’s a kind of weird story, and I can’t figure out a moral for the story other than “cats are lying jackasses, only out for themselves, and not to be trusted” or maybe “lie to other people, and play them against each other to provide for yourself and your family”. Either way, I don’t think I’m learning the correct moral from this story.

The comic is pretty cute though, tells the story pretty well, and overall is successful. Plus: drawings of cats doing cat stuff! Everyone loves that.

Meet Me In the Middle

2012-01-18T10:02:00.000-08:00

By Gordon B. Isnor & Christopher C. Yorke

While reading this small zine of poetry two thoughts entered my head.

First: Poetry is weird, and usually it doesn’t really appeal to me very much (at least in written form, I have more time for it as spoken word).

Second: The repetition and word choice throughout these poems made me think that a computer wrote them.

To my surprise, I discovered on the last page of this zine that a computer did write these poems!

You can check out the website here It’s a pretty simple thing that takes in words and phrases and spits them out again in a random order. I think if someone spent time inputting a lot of different phrases they could probably create some neat stuff, but I didn’t do that.

Instead I quickly plugged in most of the words of this review in small chunks, and managed to make some poems of my own, which I think are better (or at least less obscene) than the ones in this zine.

on the last page
that a computer did
I discovered
entered my head
The repetition

To my surprise
and word choice
and usually
of poetry
I discovered

First:
time for it as spoken word
throughout these poems
in the middle
and usually

And finally, the especially poignant:

write these poems
While reading this
Second
First:
it doesn’t really appeal

Poetry!

Monster Mash

2012-01-17T11:27:00.000-08:00

By Dan Dunlap
actsofdan.com
dragon-dan.livejournal.com

It doesn’t really matter how much I write about politics or cooking on this blog, all it takes is one small comic and I realize that what I really love are monsters. Because they are awesome. Monsters for everyone!

This (far too) short comic is pretty simple. It just features pictures of monsters fighting each other. But all your favourite monsters are included! I would love to read a longer comic version of this, as long it was done in the same style and humour. I do not need to know the gritty origin of the ninja Frankensteins or the werewolf mummies.

I was recently talking to a zinester friend about zines we liked, and I wondered why I love monsters so much. I really have no answer for this, I cannot quantify my love. They are just fantastic! Which isn’t an argument that will convince someone that doesn’t already enjoy monsters, but if you do like monsters you should check out this comic. It made me really happy.

Feeding the Masses: A Guide to Mass Vegan Catering

2012-01-16T11:20:00.000-08:00

By The Anarchist Teapot Mobile Kitchen
www.eco-action.org/teapot

The Anarchist Mobile Teapot are a pretty rad group of people that cook loads of food at protests throughout the UK. If you've ever read Morgenmuffel you're probably at least somewhat familiar with them as Isy is a member.

This zine is a guide on how to start a group that cooks food for lots of people. Not like twenty or thirty lots, but hundreds and hundreds lots. At the protests the Teapot attended they'd feed several hundred people multiple times a day, often while cooking in a field!

The zine breaks down large scale cooking into several sections, covering laws concerning cooking for others in the UK, transport, equipment needed, bulk food ordering, hygiene, and other things. While some of this may seem obvious at first, most of the information given is useful, in-depth, and probably not available in other cooking books.

The style the whole thing is written in is quite casual, and filled with UK slang which can be amusing/confusing at times ("leccy" means electricity). The information is generally well presented and easy to understand, though occasionally there are bits that are like "we didn't do this, but maybe it will work!", which are less useful.

Throughout the zine are anecdotes, stories, and examples about large scale cooking that the Teapot have done. Also included is a several page long account of a protest they cooked at in Scotland. It seemed pretty intense, but these stories are useful in that they show that yes, it is possible to cook for this many people, but you will have to plan for it.

There's also a large section on recipes, which admittedly I didn't look too hard at, as I don't think I'll be planning meals for several hundred any time soon. But if you are, then this is an incredibly useful guide, and you should probably get it.

Samizdat Enthusiast

2012-01-13T21:10:00.000-08:00

Did I mention that last year I was linked from a Russian blog that called me a Samizdat Enthusiast (энтузиаста самиздательства)?

As this combines my love of both zines and Russian stuff, it is clearly the high point of my blogging career.

Ai Ferri Corti - At Daggers Drawn

2012-01-12T11:24:00.000-08:00

Political zines are an interesting beast.

There are a lot of them, just go to your local anarchist bookfair and you’ll see loads, but if you go to a zine fair there are considerably fewer (maybe none at all!). I’m not saying that zinesters that go to zine fairs don’t have politics, or that their zines do not involve and discuss politics, just that, in my experience, there are considerably fewer overtly political zines at these events.

Why is this? Do the people producing and distributing these zines think that they will not find an audience at these events? Perhaps; There is frequently a dismissive opinion used in regards to people with radical politics. But I would think that going to these events and talking about your politics with different types of people would be more beneficial to your movement than going to political events and preaching to the converted.

But I digress.

I think one of the reasons political zines are less commonly seen at zine events is that they are hard reads. You might pick up a zine just because it has a cool cover, but you’re unlikely to delve into page after page of small type written in a fairly dry (if well translated) style.

If you’re reading this zine you probably already have many sympathies with the creators. This is not to paint all political zines with the same brush (I mean, people have to learn about politics somewhere), but that this particular zine is written in an academic manner and uses many terms and references that would be lost on someone unfamiliar with the ideas of anarchism. Or rather, if you’re able to understand a zine like this you probably agree with most of what it says (or are busy writing a term paper on the fallacies of anarchic political thought).

This isn’t to say that there aren’t any good ideas in here (I especially liked “The most useful thing one can do with arms is to rend them useless as quickly as possible.”), and some of what was discussed made me think (how can you convince someone of alternatives to capitalism when they have no reference point for a world without money), just that it seems to use a utopian style of overthrowing the current society and doesn’t really have any real, concrete ideas (which admittedly is noted in the translator’s introduction).

Of course, if this had a perfect guide to convincing the general population of your ideals and overthrowing the current social structure then, well, it'd have already happened and we'd be living in a radically different world.

If you’re heavily involved and interested in reading about different forms and theories of anarchism, I’d say this is worth reading. But if you’re new to the idea in general I’d advise you find something more introductory to read first.

Olyollyoxenfree! A DIY Game Zine #1 and #2

2012-01-11T11:21:00.000-08:00

Edited by Cheyenne Neckmonster and someone else

The zine world is small. A few months back I met a guy at Food Not Bombs. It turned out he'd lived on the West coast for a while and during this time (I think) he found a copy of Sugar and Snails/Slugs and Spice, an FNB cookbook I'd made while I lived in Vancouver. He'd liked some of the recipes so much he'd copied them down. Awesome!

(We'll get to the actual zine review soon, but first...)

A few years ago I picked up a zine called Best Zine Ever while at the Sticky Institute in Australia. I read all the reviews (of course!) and ended up ordering two different zines.

One of them was Sugar Needle, one of the creators of which ended up sitting at the table next to mine when I went to the Portland Zine Symposium in 2009.

The other was this one, and while I didn't stay in touch with either of its creators initially I later met, and became friends with, Cheyenne when she came to Halifax to do a residency at the Roberts Street Social Centre. Of course we didn't even realize this until she sent me copies in the mail after she left, and she realized that I was that boy from Canada who'd ordered a copy.

These two zines are filled with the rules to various games. Very few of them require any actual pieces of equipment, which is rad! However, at the same time most of them aren't really things that I'm that into. I guess I'd rather sit around a table and role dice instead of running around and hugging people. I'm not saying I'll never play any of these games, but apart from the Mafia/Werewolf/Batman one (invented in the Soviet Union!) I doubt I'd ever try to initiate any of them.

I do think they're neat and worth checking out, because even if you don't like any of the games included, maybe they'll inspire you to create your own.

I also seem to recall some sort of moose antler in the subway game, which doesn't seem to be included in either of these. Maybe it's from another issue?

(If you're in Halifax, check out my gaming group!)

The Breveteur: Cycling in and Around Halifax, Nova Scotia (Second Edition)

2012-01-10T11:22:00.000-08:00

By Sarah Evans

This is a zine about possible bicycle trips you can take in the Halifax area. There are directions (that make no sense to me, as I haven’t lived here that long), blurry photocopied photos, hard to read hand writing and….

Wait, all of that makes it seem as though this zine is terrible! But it’s actually pretty neat. There are awesome fold out maps showing the routes you can take, brief snippets about historical sites of interest, anecdotes and stories about bicycle trips along these routes, and recommendations on various restaurants to go to.

Admittedly it doesn’t cover the sort of bicycle trips I’d be interested in, as most of these are all about just going for a ride in all that lovely nature (bleh) and most of the goals for people to cycle to are things like beaches (double bleh) and places to go swimming (blurgh).

As much as I love cycling, I love using it as a mode of transportation. I want to go from point A to point B, and whether Point B is five minutes away or hundreds of kilometres doesn’t really matter to me, but the idea of cycling a 100 km loop just to look at trees or whatever is entirely unappealing to me. (I’m not that big on “going for walks” either, although I enjoy walking and walk pretty much every I go.) I’d much rather have a guide to urban bicycle trips that could be planned. I know Halifax isn’t that big, but there must be some neat hidden things in the city that I haven’t seen!

So yeah, if you live in (or are planning to visit) Halifax, and want to go on some bicycle rides through the surrounding area you should check this out. I think I'm missing the second edition addition though. I'm not sure what's in that, or if it's just updates so owners of the first edition don't have to buy the whole thing again.

When You Can't Stand Yourself Walk Outside: Ten Foot Rule Journal Comix Spring 2007

2012-01-09T05:45:00.000-08:00

By Shawn Granton
PO Box 14185
Portland, Oregon
97293-0185
USA

I’m pretty sure I’ve read this issue of Ten Foot Rule before, but if I did I didn’t review it for this site (or at least I can’t find it). So here we go!

Granton’s diary comics are about cycling, travelling, travelling to cycle, writing about cycling, and going to lots of zine and small press events. He seems to do a lot of things, and makes me feel kind of lame for spending too much time playing Mario Kart (that is part of why I haven’t been writing reviews of late…).

I really miss cycling. I haven’t owned a bicycle since I left Vancouver a few years ago, and the last time I remember spending any significant time (ie. more than an hour) on a bicycle was getting lost while trying to find an art gallery outside Copenhagen in 2010. Reading Granton’s comics make me miss cycling even more. Okay, so maybe I don’t want to be cycling at exactly this minute (it’s cold! And it is raining or snowing frequently), but the general idea of cycling appeals to me. Hopefully in the spring time.

I like how enthusiastic Granton is about cycling, and how he makes it a major part of his life. I also liked the comics about tabling at comic and zine events. That’s something I generally don’t like doing, but it’s interesting to read another person’s thoughts on the process.

One neat thing Granton does while traveling is write postcards to himself. These are included here and are nice little snapshots of what he was doing on the day he sent them. Plus it’s interesting to see what postcards he chooses to send. (Gosh, can you tell I’m a mail nerd?)

Daily diary comics are interesting in that you are able to see what is going on with someone’s life over a long period of time. However, there are lots of limitations with the format. The short nature (most that I’ve read are only three panels) mean that they give a skewed view of what’s going on in the person’s life. They can focus on the macro (“I went to work.”) or the micro (“I ate an orange.”) and it’s only by reading lots of them that you start getting into the head of the person creating them. When a major life event can take up the same amount of space as a day when you stayed in bed and played video games you start to see the limitations of the form. Yet, I still enjoy reading them and getting a peek into other people’s lives, no matter how limited it may be.

Salford Zine Library

2012-01-06T19:04:00.000-08:00

salfordzinelibrary.blogspot.com

I was recently contacted by someone from the Salford Zine Library in the UK. They're looking for zine donations, and I figured I'd post their appeal here.

We are looking for new contributions all the time and If you would like your self-published work be to be part of the project then please post your contributions to:

Salford Zine Library
48 Landos Court
Gunson St
Manchester
M40 7WT
U.K

Of you can check out their blog. It looks like they've made a film about zinesters!

Mostly Paintings

2012-01-05T11:00:00.000-08:00

By Sarah Scope

This tiny zine is filled with full colour photos of various pieces of art that Sarah has (presumably) created. The paintings are generally graffiti inspired and a bit hippie-ish, with swirling designs.

The standout pieces are the ones created on bits of food. Genius! Crackers that are art and not just what you eat at the opening. I wish I went to more gallery openings, free wine is awesome.

How I Fell in Breakdancing

2012-01-04T10:52:00.000-08:00

By Aimee

This super tiny zine is the smallest I've ever reviewed on this site! It's a short comic about how Aimee started breakdancing and fell in love with it.

The art's pretty basic (at least partially due to the very small size she had to deal with), but the story is told in an amusing manner so it doesn't matter that much.

It's cute (though really too short for an actual review), and I hope it encouraged someone to start breakdancing (or doing something fun at any rate).

Suspended Like a Star

2012-01-03T05:37:00.000-08:00

I was attracted to this zine by the plastic cover, and the way the words were printed on it.

Inside I found a poem. Or a series of poems. About a boy. And the author's relationship with him. And how it seemed to have been terrible, but at the time they might not have known this. And how they wanted to get out, but that was harder than they thought.

The text is typewritten, and placed on top of black and white images and photographs.

Apparently some combination of all these things meant that the poetry actually registered in my mind (perhaps it was those references to the postal service), and that I enjoyed this zine. Hurray!

The G20 Saga or How I Learned to Love the Club

2012-01-02T11:21:00.000-08:00

By JS

The G20 protests in Toronto in 2010 were pretty horrible. The police abused their power (surprise, surprise) to assault, arrest, inconvenience, and infringe upon the rights of protesters and random people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It led to the largest mass arrests in Canadian history.

This zine doesn't really go into much detail about the events, the protests, the terrible conditions detainees were kept in, or anything else. It assumes you know what the G20 is, what the protests were about, and a number of other things.

But I found it worth reading because it gave me an idea that I'd never thought of before. It claims that the police abandoned police cars at strategic places because they knew they'd get vandalized/burnt. This had a three-fold effect. It concentrated the protesters efforts on something that didn't do anything, it captured the media's attention (and influenced how they reported the events), and then when the media did cover these things in a negative way it turns the viewer away from the causes the protesters supported.

Yeah, it's a conspiracy theory, but it sounds entirely plausible to me.

Peach Melba #22, #23, #24

2011-09-29T17:12:00.000-07:00

By Pearl
PO Box 74
Brighton
BN1 4ZQ
UK

It's been so long since I reviewed Peach Melba (a rad list zine made by a 14 year old), that not only do I have three issues here, but apparently there are more issues waiting for me in the mailbox of my previous residence (I'm trying to get them!).

Each issue of this zine is folded in a crazy and neat way using only one piece of paper. It's hard to explain, but if you ever see it you'll also think it's neat. Within the carefully folded pages you'll find lots of typewritten lists about whatever Pearl is thinking about in a given month.

Some of my favourite lists in here are "rooms in a house" from issue 22 ("secret passageway" is the first listed room, awesome!), "Things that I've been hating recently" from issue 23 ("capitalism"!!!), and "Animals that I'd never even heard of until I wrote them in this list" from issue 24 ("zorilla").

I also love that Pearl is so political at a young age, being involved with critical mass bicycle rides (the dates of which are listed here), the UK Green Party (while acknowledging that "they are the lesser of many evils"), and generally hating the royal family!

Reading an issue of Peach Melba always leaves me smiling, and I hopefully they'll make you smile too.

Teeth

2011-09-26T06:12:00.000-07:00

By Elliot Baggott
surrealistetiquette.blogspot.com

So this is by far the most delayed review ever. I've had the images uploaded for months. Sigh.

This comic opens with two awesome pages that combine words written by Charlotte Bronte about the Crystal Palace, with drawings of Westfield shopping centre in London. It's a pretty neat juxtaposition of ideas, and I like how it compares things that were incredibly amazing with things that we now consider just common place. One hundred years ago people couldn't imagine wearing clothes made in another continent.

After this, we move into the main story, which is a short piece about the daydreams of a guy who works in a teeth whitening place in a mall. The whole piece has expository narration boxes that mirror the style that Bronte uses at the beginning of the piece. These help to make the idea of teeth whitening seem amazing and terrifying at the same time.

In addition to traditional panel based art work, we're also exposed to diagrams, anecdotes presented as asides, maps, and some pretty rad lettering. The story itself isn't that amazing or anything (dude works in a job he doesn't like, thinks about what he'd rather do), but the way it's put together is pretty fun and uses some innovative techniques.

A Conversational History: Roberts Street Social Centre

2011-09-16T07:40:00.000-07:00

By Caleb, Nicole, Jyelle, and a whole bunch of other people
www.robertsstreet.org

The major reason as to why this site hasn't been that updated over the summer is that I moved to Halifax and developed a social life. I've also spent a lot of time volunteering at the Roberts Street Social Centre and the Anchor Archive Zine Library contained within it.

This isn't to say I haven't been writing things. I continued writing my column for The Beat until this month, I've made a couple of zines (mostly at a 24 hour zine challenge, more info soon!), and have also spent a lot of time updating the website, facebook page, and email announcements list for Roberts Street.

So it is with a fair amount of bias that I approach this zine.

The Roberts Street Social Centre is a space in a former house that houses a zine library, the People's Photocopier, a screen printing co-operative, a meeting space, and more! It's been around for about six years, and this zine (which was about a year in the making it seems) is mostly a transcript of a dinner conversation (from 2009?) between eleven (I think) people involved in the space, and their memories of how the space began, and how it's grown and evolved since then.

There's also an interview with the people that set up the website and online zine catalogue (really interesting to me, but possibly boring to everyone else), an interview with the owner of the house who we rent from (more interesting than it might seem), and flyers and posters advertising events from the beginning of the space.

As someone (heavily?) involved in the space, I find this all really interesting, but I'm not sure how interesting it would be to someone who has never visited. There are some problems (all of the pieces just seem to stop, with no real ending or conclusion), and there's some information that I would have liked to have seen included (why start a zine library at all?), but overall I think it's a really awesome zine, and the style of it (while a nightmare to transcribe I'm sure), is one that allows a lot of different people to tell their memories and opinions in an organic way.

Oblast #13 - Ten More Videos I Watched On YouTube

2011-09-15T00:14:00.000-07:00

This is the other zine I made at the Roberts Street Social Centre. Collect them all!

Unlike the last YouTube zine I made, this time I bothered to make a playlist, so you can watch along!

Upheaval

2011-09-14T02:36:00.000-07:00

By Stathis Tsemberlidis
www.decadencecomics.com

Reviewing this silent, dream-like comic is pretty hard. There are no words or dialogue anywhere inside, and the plot is one where events flow into each other with no explanation of what's going on or why anything's happening. My friend thought they might be stuck in Hell. I wondered if the comic was all about how circular life is and how nothing truly changes. One side wins and they become who they were fighting against. Maybe that is Hell.

The comic opens up with a groups of protesters facing off against police officers in riot gear. Part of me really thinks that this is inspired by the riots that happen in Greece fairly frequently. Tsemberlidis is (I'm pretty sure) from Greece, and he is presumably more aware of the events going on there than most people.

After that the comic becomes more metaphysical and mystical, and there are panels that wouldn't feel that out of place in some of Alan Moore's weirder comics. (Actually there are a couple of panels that wouldn't look out of place in a more popular Alan Moore comic either.)

However the story (however strange it may be, and ignoring the three paragraphs I've written about it) is not the reason to check out this story. The real reason is Tsemberlidis' amazing, though hard to describe, artwork. Each image is filled with incredibly amounts of detail and texture, and while there aren't that many backgrounds I feel that this is done on purpose, and adds to the mystery of the story. What backgrounds are there also look amazing, so it's not like he's avoiding drawing something he's not good at.

Mostly though, we're left with unanswered questions: Where did that crocodile come from? Is it actually an alligator? (I can't tell the difference.) Is that a vagina? Is Tsemberlidis ever going to draw a zombie comic? Cause I bet he would draw amazing zombies (I don't even really care about zombies!).

Oblast #11 - Places I have Slept January 1st - August 28th, 2011

2011-09-13T00:07:00.000-07:00

By Matthew Murray

Last month the Roberts Street Social Centre held their 6th annual 24 Hour Zine Challenge. I participated, and this is one of the two zines I made during that time. (I've actually worked on it a bit since then, and changed the cover slightly, but this is the version that physically exists at the moment).

It features manipulated photos, and stories and information about the the 25 places where I slept between January 1st and August 28th this year. Check it out!

DIY Zine Libraries

2011-09-12T04:56:00.000-07:00

By Cheyenne Neckmonster
neckmonster@gmail.com
cheyenne's tumblr

I really love zine libraries, which if you know me you would already be aware, as I spend a lot of my time nowadays hanging out at the Anchor Archive Zine Library (you should come by!). One of the awesome things the Roberts Street Social Centre (where the aforementioned zine libray is located) is a summer zine residency program. This is where various zinesters and artists come and live in our shed for two weeks and work on art and zine projects.

So far this year we've had some pretty rad people come by, one of whom was Cheyenne Neckmonster, who finished her zine a few ~~weeks~~ months ago. It's kind of strange reviewing this zine as not only do I know Cheyenne (and hung out with her a bunch while she was here), but I helped her a bit in this zine by giving her the contact info of some zine library people I know (I'm even thanked on the back page!).

This zine combines general info about zine libraries with quotes from people involved with some libraries. The general info didn't interest me that much, but that's probably because I already know about zine libraries! I was interested by the quotes from various librarians and wish there was more information about them. In fact, I'd rather read profiles on each individual library, but that's me asking for a different type of zine than this is.

This zine is cool though, and I know Cheyenne is already planning a second edition (or a second issue), with information from more libraries. If you're interested in the idea of zine libraries and want to start your own this zine is totally worth checking out, though you don't have to take it as your bible. As Cheyenne says "Every zine library is unique.", and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Melon Farmer

2011-08-25T08:20:00.000-07:00

Melon Farmer 3
By Orson and Zeel
aligon-adventures.blogspot.com
zeel.co.uk

[Yeah! It's my birthday! So to celebrate that (and the fact that someone just asked that I remove the review of their zine that I posted six months ago) here's a review I wrote weeks ago but was unable to post due to internet problems and traveling. More soon.]

When I went to the Brighton Zine Fest earlier this year one of the really neat things they had was a zine scavenger hunt. This was a list of different types of zines that you had to try to collect in order to get a prize. The list included things like "a blue zine", "a tiny zine", "a zine about tea", and other things. However, the organizers wanted to give out the loot bag prizes and would allow pretty much anyone to get one if they made up some decent reasons.

Part of my lootbag was this zine created by a little kid and (I assume) his dad. This is reminiscent of Axe Cop and also a project I was involved in recently that involved redrawing children's characters. I really love the ideas of these projects, as it encourages creativity at a young age.

From what I can tell Zeel drew the panel borders, did toning and lettering, and maybe drew other background background elements. Everything else seems to be by Orson. The art is mostly the type you'd expect from a little kid, with little consistency, and the story frequently doesn't make a lot of sense.

Despite this there is definitely a lot of charm in this comic, and there are some panels (like below) that I really like the look of, as they have a style and energy I really enjoy. There's a lot of charm in the work in here: characters powers being based upon their names (as opposed to vice-versa), diagrams showing the powers and equipment people have. This reminds of what I used to do as a kid, and I think it's awesome that kids are still doing this.

Plus the lootbag also had one of those party noisemakers (with a pirate!), a glow stick thing (which I've broken), a temporary tattoo, and a rad stamp/marker thing.

You're the Best.....Around!!! #1

2011-06-22T14:19:00.000-07:00

By dumbbunnynz@hotmail.com

Honestly, when someone emailed me asking if I wanted to review their "kids in sports films" zine I was a bit wary. I mean, what the hell type of topic is that? But ultimately that's one of the things I love about zines: they can be about anything. And by having people send or trade me their zines I end up reading some weird stuff that I would never seek out.

So this zine pleasantly surprised me. It begins with a discussion of the ideas behind "kids in sports films" and how they generally follow identical plot maps, feature the same type of characters, have the same messages, and are pretty damn predictable. Now after reading this you might wonder why someone would even bother watching them, but I think if you know anything about any type of genre fiction you know that they have the same tropes that they follow pretty frequently. I mean, I watch terrible science fiction action films and read a lot of super hero comics, and you can describe those in such a way that they sound incredibly awful (and to many people they are!). Yet I enjoy them anyway, even if they are bad a lot of the time.

Next there's a description of all the different character types that appear in these films (from "The Coach" to "The Ethnic Minority"), which was informative but probably could have used a few more examples from films. Then we have an indepth discussion of the Will Ferrell film "Kicking and Screaming". In fact, I think this might be the most ever written about this film as it doesn't sound very good, even by the conventions of the genre.

The plot is discussed, the actors are discussed, the director is discussed, hell, even the uniforms are discussed! It's kind of insane really. But it's all written in a fairly informative and entertaining style, by someone who seems to love this genre, but hates this film in particular. It sort of reminded me of something like the Zero Punctuation video game reviews, which find every flaw and problem in a game and scream "why why why was this decision made?". (Well, it's not as good as Zero Punctuation, but this is only the first issue.)

There's also an interview with the band My Dad Is Dead (about "kids in sports films" of course), and a recipe for a baked chocolate banana thing. So all in all this zine was a pleasant surprise, and now I'm actually kind of looking forward to reading the next issue.

Crazed Mazes Issue #1

2011-06-21T02:57:00.000-07:00

By Myron Smith
$2
PO Box 354
Ridgeway, VA
24148
USA

When I made my last zine (Potato Maze) I was super stoked with the maze I made for the cover. I thought it was incredibly cool and I was really proud of it. After reading the first issue of Crazed Mazes I'm incredibly glad that I waited so long until I read it, because now all sense of pride has disappeared.

The mazes in here really are crazed! No basic rectangles here, rather the mazes form faces, symbols, trees, and pictures that I didn't even understand were mazes until I looked at them. The difficulty of the mazes differs from ones that looked too hard for me to even try to ones that are pretty simple (because all of the borders are cats or fish, adorable!), so there should be some for everyone to try.

If mazes aren't your thing there are also find the object drawings set at a circus and on the street, and a crossword! The answers to everything are also in the back, so if you're really not sure how to finish one of the activities you can always cheat (or "check your answers").

The only problems with this zine are some less than stellar reproduction on the cover, and that it's just on 8.5 x 11 paper and stapled in the upper left hand corner. Still, this was a preview issue and I hope that in the future Smith will be able to use 11 x 17 paper and make some awesome activity books.

The Meanest Greenest Frog

2011-06-20T17:00:00.000-07:00

By Eric Baker

While I've categorized this as a comic (and it is one), I think it can be better described as an illustrated "children's book". Baker has taken certain aspects of comics (speech balloons) and added them to a single large picture on each page.

The story concerns a young boy's quest to find the titular frog somewhere in a forest. Baker has chosen to present the narrative text and the characters' speech in rhyme. Combined with the somewhat repetitive nature of the text this means that the story seems as though it should be read out to someone else (while of course showing them the pictures at the same time).

The art is all pretty good, and I enjoyed Baker's depiction of various frogs and other animals. He's also put a lot of work into the general appearance of this book, with end papers, page numbers, and a "This book belongs to" page. It's all very professional and nice to look at, though I did think that the colouring could have been a bit brighter.

It's pretty clear that I'm not the target audience for this, but I can see kids enjoying either reading it or having it read to them. Let's hope that this is what's happened with other copies of this story.

Robots and Electronic Brains number 14

2011-06-15T03:04:00.000-07:00

Edited by jimmy possession
www.robotsandelectronicbrains.co.uk

This music zine is packed full of reviews, interviews, and articles about music and bands. Unlike most zines of this type it doesn't focus on one particular genre and the content can go from discussing Welsh language hip hop to the bands influenced by '60s French pop music.

Writing about music can be a pretty difficult thing to do, and I think even the best writers are writing it for people that read music writing. Thus, as someone who doesn't know that much about music I often felt a bit lost when reading some of the content here, which perhaps can be said to be aimed at the sort of people who spend their weekends searching through crates of records at garage sales in the hopes of finding that one amazing seven-inch.

However, some of the interviews were pretty good, and it came with a compilation CD with loads of different music on it (everything from hip hop to indie to weird cut up spoken word bits featuring Vincent Price), and it's worth it just to get hold of that.

Echo Echo 8

2011-06-14T09:50:00.000-07:00

By Kagey
wemakezines.ning.com/profile/kagey

Reviewing perzines is hard sometimes because they are so personal. When someone is spilling out their mind and their soul onto the page it's difficult to criticize their layout or their writing style. It's even harder when the person writing the zine is a friend of yours. You can find out more about what they think and how they feel by reading a zine they made for dozens of strangers than you ever did by talking to them.

Saying all that I did enjoy this zine. I felt a connection to Kagey and her fears and anxieties. The physical and metal actions she describes rang true with me, and I thought about putting on masks and pretending to be someone you're not, drinking in art galleries, and awkward conversations. "One thing you hate about being drunk is that, while you forget your shyness, you're still as awkward as ever, so you cringe harder in retrospect." (And even if you're not actually that awkward, your mind still concentrates on the small details and ignores the larger picture.)

I didn't dig everything in here (the poetry didn't register, as usual), and I wish that Kagey included more of her drawings as I like those, but I enjoyed the writing style that Kagey used; it was filled with loss and loneliness and little truths.

Out of the City and Into the Trees Issue #2: The Battle of Dalkeith Country Park

2011-06-13T19:15:00.000-07:00

scaletreesdistro.subrella.net

I think the environment is awesome! I think that (sub)urban sprawl is terrible! I think that there are many things our society does that could be done better and without hurting the earth and the people that live there. We could focus less on cars and more on bicycles and alternative forms of transportation, focus on using what we have instead of buying new things, and focus more on people instead of profit.

I think that these things are important and that we have to fight for these things if and when it comes to that. And so I have some amount of respect for people that go and lock themselves into trees and and other places to prevent nature being destroyed.

However I am frequently left very confused by some of the people who are incredibly moved by the beauty and importance of nature, are involved in movements like this, and express dislike of modern society and a desire to go back to something more "primitive".

(Now please note, this isn't all necessarily aimed at this zine and its creators specifically, some of these complaints are more general.)

So how is flying a large group of protesters/activists to Iceland good for the environment? Perhaps if you spent the time, effort, and money trying to educate people wherever you are and creating a community that cares about where they live you will have more effect than going to another country and chanting.

And how can you justify owning cars and iPads and things like that when you express your rejection of modern society and technology? I love society and civilization and technology and would be incredibly sad if I had to live a hunter gatherer/farming existence due to the lack of opportunities to learn and the lack of art to see. And yet I don't have a car, I don't have an iPad, and somehow manage to get by fine on a technology I've found or been given. I guess I choose a "consume less" lifestyle, but find certain eco-primitivists to be pretty hypocritical. (Of course other people probably find me hypocritical too.)

This zine has some interesting stuff, but at the same time I find the writer's viewpoint to be somewhat naive. If you're really into this sort of stuff and are interested in reading more about it, I'll recommend that you check out the highly enjoyable Holidarity, a minicomic about environmental protest camps in the UK.

Panel 13

2011-06-11T11:07:00.000-07:00

Behind the neat cover (both sides open like doors) lies a a comics anthology put together by a group of creators in Ohio. They function like a writing group, getting together every few weeks to show each other what they're working on and to give constructive criticism. Twice a year they put out an anthology, and this is the 13th. Impressive!

This anthology is based around the theme of superstition and bad luck, and, like all anthologies, the contents are up and down with some comics just leaving me confused as to why they were even created. (Though I suppose that could just because because I don't really see the appeal of baseball.)

The two comics I liked the most were one by Craig Bogart that told of the unfortunate ends of the various contributors to this "unlucky" book. Each person is given a panel and their fates are revealed as everything from being forced to see the world like Thomas Kinkade to being burnt alive. No fun!

The other piece I liked was by Molly Durst and Brent Bowman and was a sort of pre-World War II adventure piece that recalled stories like The Shadow. It features a mansion, fencing, chemistry labs burning down, and the Spider King! How can you not love a giant centaur like spider goblin? I wish this comic was longer so that we could have seen more of him.

And so, once again, Matthew's love of monsters triumphed over all.

Every Reason #4

2011-06-10T19:20:00.000-07:00

Edited by Keith

You know, the only way to get better at writing (or anything) is to do it every day. Do it all the time and you will improve. I've really been slacking on that front, but I feel like I've turned a corner and am doing zine stuff again (I've already posted more reviews than last month!).

Thus the importance of zines like this, which provide amateur writers with somewhere that they can submit their work to. I'm pretty much stealing this idea from the introduction where the editor says that he sees the zine as social work and wants it to promote writing and give more people the opportunity to read work (and to have writers have their work read). And yeah, what's the point of making a zine if nobody's going to read it?

Mostly though, the content of this zine didn't really leave much of an impact on me. There's a bunch of poems, which generally go in one ear and out the other when I read them. I did like the first one, though mostly because after a mention of Bukowski in the introduction I heard it like this piece in my mind.

Other than that I didn't really dig anything in this anthology. I feel as though I can't even critique the writing quality as the styles and story content aren't things that really interest me. The characters in the fiction pieces act in ways that I don't really understand, and clearly have different goals and thoughts than I do. So yeah, this is pretty much a non-review as I think all I can say is "not my thing".

Chloe Noonan Monster Hunter #2

2011-06-08T14:03:00.000-07:00

By Marc Ellerby
marcellerby.com

Sometimes the comics industry makes me sad. Not because it's mostly based around superheros. Not because it's not the most sexually or racially enlightened of places. Not because they are ignored by so many people.* But because there is really good work put out by amazing artists that seems to be almost completely unknown.

Case in point being Chloe Noonan by Marc Ellerby. This is an incredibly well drawn, well written, and funny comic with characters I like reading about, yet Ellerby is self publishing it with no major distribution. Now sure, maybe he wants to self publish it, but after reading about some of the problems he had getting issue 3 printed I wish that all of that was being taken care of by someone else and he could just draw more comics.

Still, apparently he is currently pitching it to various people. So hopefully we'll have a full book before too long. I certainly can't wait to read more comics about this not very good monster hunter, and her adventures with bands and clothes stealing friends. Until then I'm just going to have to go and read all of his webcomics.

* Okay, yes, all of those things make me sad too.

Peach Melba #21

2011-06-05T18:05:00.000-07:00

By Pearl
PO Box 74
Brighton
BN1 4ZQ
UK

Peach Melba is a zine made by a 14 year old girl, and she's been doing it monthly for almost two years! I can't even seem to update this site that much sometimes.

Each ingeniously folded issue is filled with lists of whatever has caught Pearl's fancy recently. Thus this issue has lists about pirates, spies, clothes (though I think that skirts and dresses aren't always impractical, and sometimes they are made for men!), food, and Doctor Who (everyone loves Doctor Who right?).

This final item made me think about my own memories of Doctor Who. When I lived in the "old country" (a long time ago), I used to watch Doctor Who on TV, and I was terrified of the Daleks. I remember a girl running around with a baseball bat, and hiding behind the couch. Ah, memories. Now all I want to do is watch the old episodes of Doctor Who with the Liquorice Allsorts robot.

Um, anyway: Peach Melba is super rad, and this issue features a reprint of instructions on what to do if arrested at a protest in the UK. Super useful! (Especially of late.)

Hope for the Future 7

2011-06-04T15:58:00.000-07:00

By Simon Perrins and Andrew Livesey
www.hftf.co.uk

Reading this comic now is a little bit frustrating, as I saw the guys at various events in the UK, but never picked up their comics. I even read the first issue online, but didn't read any more. Why is this a problem? Because I really enjoyed this issue and want to read more, but am in the wrong country. I will just have to read all their comics online (well, at least it saves me some money).

One thing that's pretty neat is that about this comic is, despite the fact that it's issue seven and features a full page of small text recap, it's enjoyable without any prior knowledge of the characters other than "they're university students who keep getting into supernatural trouble". In this case they're traveling back in time to the far off and distant lands of the mid-90s. How horrible!

They're on the trail of a painting with some mysterious connection to something. We don't really know what it is, but the story's well written enough that it seems as though there will be a decent pay off at some point (though not necessarily in this issue).

The art by Andrew Livesey plays a large part in my enjoyment of the story. It reminds me of Andi Watson and maybe a bit of Steve Rolston. The characters are angular, pointy, and a bit blocky, but they're generally attractive, individualized, and the overall art features some nice toning. It really looks nothing like the cover at all! (Which is a good thing, as the cover didn't really grab me, partially because I didn't really like the movie it's based on...)

Also: there are monsters!

But ignoring my obsession with monsters (and ghosts), this is a supernatural adventure comedy that's well written and fun. I wish I'd started reading it sooner.

(Maybe not really representative of the general art, but a pretty rad page nonetheless. click to see it bigger.)

Secret Spots Halifax anti tourism tour

2011-06-02T18:33:00.000-07:00

I was super pumped when I found this zine in the Anchor Archive Zine Library. Things to do in Halifax! I've just moved here and don't know where there is anything to do. Plus: maps! I love maps! Sadly, this zine is something of a disappointment.

While it's totally cool that all the information in here is bilingual, it does mean that there's less space for locations to be included, but that's not a big deal. The actual list is a bit disappointing too, though it's not really aimed at me. There's a number of islands and lakes and stuff included, which aren't really things I have any interest in going to see, though I can understand other people finding them interesting, and there _is_ some stuff I thought sounded cool.

However, the real problem with this zine is the map. It's just photocopied from another source with numbers placed on top. It is not designed for the page, and is so dark I can't find where anything noted actually is located. Since the text refrained from including any addresses this becomes an "anti tourism" guide in that it tells you about places you cannot visit, you can only imagine them in your mind. Which, in some cases, might actually be an improvement. I mean, how cool can that lost overpass be?

Automatons in Love

2011-05-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

By Jesse Durona, CJ Joughin, Kevin Uehlein, and Carl Mefferd
kevinuehlein.wordpress.com
piratesvsquid.blogspot.com

Robots! Robots! Robots! I love robots so much. And this zine is beautifully put together, with a silver cut out cover, pages printed on clear plastic, and occasional spot colour. It all looks really nice!

The four stories in here are pretty varied, and while all of them feature robots, not all of them really fulfill the title criteria. I was a little disappointed by this, as I've recently been reading Pluto by Naoki Urasawa. It's a fantastic comic about what it means to be a robot and a human, artificial intelligence, and how the two groups would interact with each other as robots get steadily more advanced. I've just read the first six books and I'm (im)patiently waiting for volume seven to come in at the library so I can finish reading the series.

So back to this comic! The first story, by Durona, appears to be from their webcomic that no longer exists. It's a cute little story about a robot who befriends some monkeys. Rad! I like the way the various apes are drawn, though I don't enjoy the human's designs as much.

Joughin's comic is an interesting one about consumerism and wants vs needs. However, while I liked the idea behind the comic, the actual story didn't really grab me. The pencil only (I think) art didn't reproduce that well either, so maybe Joughin should work on either their inking or digital manipulation skills to ensure better reproduction next time.

Uehlein's comic was my favourite out of all of them. The art is reminiscent of old funny animal cartoons (in no small part because most of the characters are animals in fancy clothes), and the plot of a robot performing cello in an orchestra seems like something that would fit right into an animated short. The comic is almost entirely silent, and one of my few wishes is that Uehlein had made the entire comic without anybody speaking. Still, it's pretty awesome in general.

The final comic, by Mefferd, features some really good robot designs. However the story doesn't really grab me for some reason. Maybe it's the pages of build up for what turns out to be a fairly old joke.

Overall though, this is a well put together anthology that features a variety of different styles. It's worth checking out even if you're not a huge robot fan (or a fan of huge robots).

Khyber Komix Jam #4

2011-05-28T11:13:00.000-07:00

Comics Jams are when a bunch of people get together, hang out, drink (or not), talk, and draw comics. They're a pretty neat way to meet other people into comics, and they allow people to draw really bizarre stuff.

Generally what happens is that each person draws a panel of a comic, and then passes it off to the next person who continues the story. It's sort of like an exquisite corpse thing.

While I think they are great for the people who are at them (meet new people! practice drawing!), I think that reading them afterward is a less satisfying experience. The comics may feature some nice art, but the stories are just insane mashes of ideas that don't lead anywhere, sentient hamburgers giving oral sex to girls, or comics that remind me of this song. What? I mean....

So yeah! At the very least, I hope these sort of publications inspire people to create their own comic jams. More comics is more better!

Eyeball Suck #4

2011-05-27T10:07:00.000-07:00

By Andrew Lips and Tom Evans

While the cover of this comic may make you think that it will be filled with nonstop zombie action, it's actually mostly Lips' autobiographical comics. The comics cover losing teeth, random thoughts (such as zombie attacks), being single (I didn't have a girlfriend until I was 21, it's okay!), and writing letters to Stephen Fry.

There's also a comic drawn by Tom Evans about a fetishy relationship between Batman and Robin, which is a trope that gets brought out by many different people, but isn't one I really understand.

Lips' art isn't that great, though it generally manages to get the stories across. I would like it if he drew more backgrounds though, as people standing in blank white voids is kind of weird. Evans' art uses a lot of lines, and I'm not sure how well it reproduces in photocopies, but it's fairly good overall.

Sunday of Apples and Blood Oranges

2011-04-30T19:15:00.000-07:00

By Beth Hetland
www.beth-hetland.com

While I'm sure it took a lot of work, the nature of the cover (with the apples and oranges being cut out and stuck onto a white background) made me think that this would be a really boring slice of life style comic.

And the first page and a half inside didn't really disprove me of this thought, but then oh my gods there's a talking snowman and a robot shows up later on in this comic and now I really like it. I mean, if there wasn't a robot here I wouldn't care about this girl's shopping trip, but there is a robot and he has a pet cat and complains that humans can't deal with robot emotions, and I really like robots and don't judge me.

It's not like the robot is just there acting like a human, it's clearly part of society, has it's own feelings and goals in life, and plays a roll in the story. It's the contrast between the normal (going to the grocery store, waiting for a bus) and the abnormal (a robot cashier, fruit yelling at you, a melting snowman trying to bum money) that creates humour in these situations.

Hetland's art is probably what you would expect from indie autobio comics, so it's extra surprising when totally bizarre things happen in the comic. I like the contrast, but I feel as though I'm explaining myself poorly. I had a couple of drinks earlier, and my room is really hot even though my window is open. This is what happens when I try to review something every day. This is a good comic though, I read it when I was sober.

Deadtime Stories

2011-04-29T19:10:00.000-07:00

By Emix Regulus and Frater Alarph
origamiship.blogspot.com

This is a collection of short comics and prose pieces by two authors. They frequently have a strange sort of metaphysical bent to them. One of the comics is about cosmic rays from another universe penetrating human minds and causing mutations, so that space aliens can eat us. We are, of course, saved by post-mammalian super genius creatures who seem to communicate entirely in math.

Another comic features a narrator telling about their experiences after waking up as a grain of rice, while the last features some sort of weird thing about shared consciousness or something. While these all could have been interesting, in a Kafkaesque or Gogolian way, none of them really achieve this, in part due to confusing page layouts, and narratives that seem to be more about expressing ideas than telling stories.

The first of the two text pieces is a strange story about attending a psychic phenomena class and encountering a possible spirit (ie. ghost). The story is sort of interesting, though, as I'm not sure if it's supposed to be fictional or based on a real event, it's kind of hard to see what the author was trying to achieve.

The final text piece is the most interesting, though also the most simple. There are two word clouds, one created by each author, using dream journals that they kept over several months. Dreams are pretty cool things, and the best (like the ones I had last night about exploring underground lairs and fighting super-villians) are really awesome. It's interesting to see which terms recur in the people's dreams and wonder if they have any meaning. Why does one person dream about mothers and the police? Why does the other dream about houses and holidays? More than likely no reason at all.

Some of my Best Friends R Strangers

2011-04-28T17:30:00.000-07:00

Ooooh, a sealed white envelope. How mysterious! (I love mysteries!) What's inside? Two minicomics!

It's Cold, Up North, This year. / New Year

By Mike
zine-it-yourself.blogspot.com

Both of these are diary comics by Mike. Or rather, they are pages from his diary which happen to be in comic form. Is there a difference? I don't really know.

The comics in "It's Cold, Up North" are rather sad and deal with it being cold and dark, Mike feeling uninspired and not knowing what he's doing with his life, and breaking up with his girlfriend of ten years. They're not the happiest of comics, but reading about stuff like this kind of makes me feel better about my life, in that it means I'm not alone in my thoughts and feelings. This isn't to say that there are no moments of humour or joy. At one point Mike states "My travelling companion today is a sousaphone." a line that, in its seemingly normal take on a (to me) absurd situation, brings a smile to my face.

"New Year" is comics from the first few weeks of January and continues the tales of depression, cold, and darkness. Somehow these ones seem more optimistic than "It's Cold", and it could be that with the new year Mike has attempted to concentrate more on the positive things in his life instead of dwelling on the negative. That's something I should really take to heart as well.

Afterhours

2011-04-27T19:30:00.000-07:00

By Laura N-Tamara
www.explosante.com/dandy
strobolights.deviantart.com

The way this minicomic starts I was almost sure it was going to turn into porn. The library is closing, the (sexy) librarian is kicking everyone out, one person hasn't left yet, the librarian starts to take off her clothes and...

CREEPY!

And then we start getting bizarre Inception/meta-textual references as the story changes to almost self-referential illustrated text.

The story (and the stories within stories) reminded me somewhat of Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, both authors who liked to play with telling stories using non-linear styles, and narratives within narratives. I like some of the stuff they've produced a lot. Oh! And Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, it's a really good book that features nested stories.

Getting back to this comic, the art is very clearly influenced by manga (to the extent that several of the books have the covers on what we would consider the back). Some of the weirdness that shows up in here reminded me a bit of Shintaro Kago and other artists that I've seen on the Same Hat blog. The interior art is generally pretty good, and way better than the cover would have you think. (~~I'll try to scan some tomorrow!~~ See below.) There are a lack of backgrounds, and I think the artist needs to work on their page layouts a bit, but I enjoyed the weirdness and the art and wouldn't mind reading more of their work in the future.

Lucid Frenzy Digest 2011

2011-04-26T19:00:00.000-07:00

By Gavin Burrows
lucidfrenzy.blogspot.com

It's almost...ironic that I reviewed a zine about about mental health issues and then almost immediately didn't update for two days because of my own problems. Haha. Hilarious! (No wait, it's not.)

Um, so, this is a collection of pieces that Burrows has run on his blog, and despite liking what I read in the last issue of this zine, I've never actually gone to his blog to read anything. This is probably because Burrows' pieces are quite long and in-depth and take a while to digest and process. Thus I find it easier/better to read these things in paper form when I'm not being distracted by someone talking to me in another window or funny pictures of cats or something.

In this issue Burrows talks about zines, and reviews concerts, movies, and art shows. I enjoy Burrows' general writing style, which is most evidenced by the fact that I read all of his pieces about music I had almost no familiarity with. Music articles/interviews are probably the bits of zines I skip over with the most frequency, as I find that they generally require you to have knowledge of the artist to really get anything out of them. Here, however, Burrows has managed to weave information about the band/music, history of the genres, and descriptions of the bands that are considerably more informative than "band x meets artist y". So yeah, I enjoyed reading them even if I don't want to seek out what the bands actually sound like. That's what music writing should be like!

Though I must admit that the repeated references to Francis Bacon kind of flew over my head. I guess I should read more about him at some point.

Treasure Hunt issue two

2011-04-23T10:27:00.000-07:00

treasurehuntfuns@gmail.com

I think the strange collaged cover featuring multiple drawings, photos, text and other elements is possibly the best part of this group zine.

The contents are as random as the cover, and include pieces of art, poetry, a few bars of musical notation, photographs, an incredibly long and dull (to me) interview with a musician (that I just couldn't get into because it was about someone I'd never heard of, and didn't seem to discuss why I should care about him), a recipe, found art, and a prose piece about a breakup that was pretty good and written in an interesting style.

The zine was supposed to be a showcase of ephemera, and to that extent it succeeded. However there really wasn't anything in here that stuck in my mind. I looked at the cover of this zine before writing this, and couldn't remember a single thing featured inside. I'm not in the best of mental states right now, and I do like zines that collect random things and found objects, but this issue didn't do much for me.

Pathologize This! A Mental Health Zine

2011-04-22T10:26:00.000-07:00

mentalhealthzine@gmail.com

Mental health is an important issue, and one that is frequently ignored by many people and most media. Zines are one area where there are people telling their stories about mental health issues. This allows people to learn that they are not alone, discover how other people live with their mental health issues, and heal through writing about their own lives.

However, it can be hard to read this sort of thing, and even write about it. This zine is filled with brief, anonymous accounts of different mental health issues. Anxiety, depression, eating disorders, physical problems, dealing with rape and sexual assault, and other things are written about in stories, poems, interviews, and essays. They are not all easy reading, and some of them kind of upset me.

It also made writing this review kind of hard, as I didn't know what to mention and what not to mention. However, if you are interested in this area, you might enjoy this zine.

Shabba's Crappy D Stories Part: 1

2011-04-21T10:36:00.001-07:00

By Saban Kazim
www.shabs.net

I have, thankfully, never worked in fast food. However, as I am currently not working anywhere I suppose those working in fast food have one up on me in that they have a paycheck and know where next month's rent is coming from.

The two brief stories in here are good at showing how terrible these sort of jobs are, and how to find humour in them. The horrible customers, the worker/manager relationship (where all the power seems to be with one, but occasionally the other can get the upper hand), the nonsensical rules, the horrible tasks, the trying to do as little as possible. It's kind of impressive that all of that is portrayed in just a few brief pages, but I guess so much of those things are part of popular culture nowadays that it just has to reference them and I understand them far more in depth.

There aren't many backgrounds and Kazim reuses panels and character art, but you don't really notice that on your first read through. I like the character designs of his boss and the customer, both of which remind me of muppets (is it the eyebrows? I think it must be). Kazim's art style isn't the most polished, but it manages to tell the stories that he's set out to tell, and I was a little disappointed that this was so short, as I wouldn't have minded reading some more tales of fastfood life.

Before the Law

2011-04-20T19:00:00.000-07:00

By A. Moore
www.mooredraw.com

My knowledge of Kafka is pretty limited. I've seen The Trial (I think), and I read a graphic novel adaptation of the Metamorphosis (actually, more than one if I think about it), but I don't think I've ever read any of his actual work, or even read much about it.

And so I look at this short adaptation of one of his stories and I think it is something I would appreciate far more if I was more familiar with the source material. It does seem "Kafkaesque" (though perhaps I only use this term because I know it's based on a work by Kafka), is printed nicely on cardstock, and is laid out in an interesting manner, but...

I don't know, is the point of Kafka that life sucks and doesn't make any sense? If that is the case I don't really want to read any more of it. If it isn't the case I'm pretty clearly not getting something.

A Man's Zine: 6 Types of Women to Avoid

2011-04-19T18:00:00.000-07:00

By Sarah Cai
www.thegirlwhoateink.com

So I'm discovering that living somewhere where there are things to do means that I do lots of things, and thus have less time to goof off on the internet and write these reviews. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop (not until my review box is empty), but it does mean you're getting another short zine review today. Hopefully soon I will figure out a way to fit everything into my schedule.

The back page of this zine says that it shouldn't be taken "too seriously" by women, but that men should reference it often. Each page inside features a type of woman, and a drawing of the woman with a speech balloon.

Most of the advice seems fairly sensible, but at the same time anyone who reads these things probably isn't going to end up with a girl who wears high heels every day and is a slave to makeup.

However, I must admit that I probably am the "over apologizing" type, and I think getting drunk is pretty cool, or at least fun sometimes. So boys beware! You should clearly stay away from me as I am, to the surprise of nobody, terrible girlfriend material.

Things I Wonder About but Don't Really Want to Know the Answers to

2011-04-18T13:30:00.000-07:00

By Nomi Kane
www.brewforbreakfast.com

This short zine features a number of drawings representing various things Kane has thought about, but doesn't really want to know the answer to. Just like the title says!

They're all pretty funny, and several of them are things I've thought of myself. (Especially "How long has this been in the fridge?".) There isn't a lot of room for Kane's art to really be seen, but what is there is attractive. I do wonder about the way she draws herself, always with the same sort of worried/sad look on her face. I hope she is more cheerful in real life!

Halifax Urban Maple Sugaring Project

2011-04-17T02:44:00.000-07:00

(Apologies for the less than stellar cover scan.)

By Mike and Juele

I'm pretty much guaranteed to give this zine a good review because I got to try some of the maple syrup that they made! Mmmmmmmm. Delicious!

The zine is made by some people who are all about bringing food production to people, through guerrilla gardening, urban farming, and similar projects. In this case they decided to tap a number of maple trees, collect the sap, and make maple syrup out of it! I guess I knew that maple syrup was made from tree sap (or maybe I didn't...), but it's kind of strange to think about it.

It turns out that making maple syrup is considerably easier than I would have expected. You can get up to four litres of sap from one tree in a single day! Of course, once you've gathered enough you have to build a fire and boil it down for hours on end, and the day these guys choose to do that on was pretty horrible weather wise. I guess if you have to be outside when it's raining, snowing, and windy, being gathered around a fire is probably one of the best places to be.

The zine was generally easy to read and follow, with illustrations showing the various tools and objects that they used at each step. I think it could have been a little better organized, but it's not a particularly long zine, so you can easily read it all before you start making maple syrup yourself.

Child of the Atom

2011-04-16T08:40:00.000-07:00

By David Blandy and Inko

Just before I left the UK I happened upon an art gallery showing a kind of neat exhibition. It featured action figures, comic books, a video game, and several video pieces all about the creator, David Blandy. Not that Blandy created all the stuff himself, rather he had hired other people to draw the comics (and maybe make the other stuff?) based upon his ideas.

It was a kind of neat idea, and the reverse of the art pieces I've seen that try to take a fictional character and make them real.

This comic is about Hiroshima, and if you'll allow me a brief moment I will tell you about my time there, as at this point I don't think I'm ever going to make a zine about that trip. I visited Japan in 2007 after living and traveling around Asia for most of the previous two years. I did the normal geeky stuff in Japan: went to Harajuku, went to the science museum, went to the Ghibli museum, looked at the homeless people's cardboard dwellings, hitchhiked on buses of old people (okay, so maybe my trip wasn't always normal).

And then I got to Hiroshima, which in many ways was my favourite city in Japan. There was a rad tram system, the food was good, there were art galleries, the people were friendly, and it just seemed nice. Except that you never knew when you would turn the corner and uncover a memorial to the people that died because of the nuclear explosion.

I cried looking at the monuments and museums. I cried reading Barefoot Gen (a really good, if brutal, comic you should read) in a library. I cried because to so many people this was just another tourist attraction to be bussed to. I cried because I don't know how the war could have ended with less loss of life. I cried because I remembered how the Japanese had kept their prisoners of war in Sandakan a few months before. I cried when I saw the paper cranes.

All of this is to say that I don't really know how to review a comic like this. The wordless comic and images of Hiroshima conjure up a lot of memories for me, but I have no idea what someone who hasn't been to these places will take from it.

One thing that is interesting, and the reason Blandy created this comic, is that he and his family sort of feel they owe their lives to the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Blandy's grandfather was in a Japanese POW camp and believed that if the war hadn't ended the way it did, he wouldn't have survived. Which is something to think about at any rate.

l'âge dur

2011-04-15T02:37:00.000-07:00

By Max de Radiguès
www.maxderadigues.com

This is a cute little set of five minicomic bound together with a paper band. The comics focus on small events from teenage life. The characters skateboard, ride bicycles, get into fights, lust after girls, and the like.

As a Belgian de Radiguès's art is clearly influenced by the clear line style popularized Hergé, but there are aspects of other creators in here too. His large eyed females remind me of somebody. The name is on the tip of my brain. I was going to say Hope Larson, but I just looked her up and while her characters do seem to have large eyes, the rest of the art style isn't the same. Dang, this is going to bug me for ages.

Uhm, so anyway, the way de Radiguès draws boys and girls in his comic, combined with the stories he tells, really separates them into two groups. The girls seem knowledgeable, worldly, and sophisticated, while the boys seem little more than children. Even those boys that do manage to achieve any kind of connection with the girls are seen as having skills and knowledge beyond the norm.

These comics have thus captured some of the awkwardness prevalent in being a teenager. Not knowing what to do, not knowing what you're doing right, and not knowing how to get what you want.

Though, I say that's prevalent in teenagers, but I'm pretty sure I still deal with all those problems on a daily basis.

Things That I Have Eaten / Things That I Have Drank

2011-04-14T03:39:00.000-07:00

By Devin Renshaw

These are two cute little zines that show everything that Renshaw ate or drank in a one week period of time. Each page features a number of small drawings of food or drink that he consumed in a given day.

It's a neat idea, and I'm wondering if it's something I should do (if only to keep track of what I actually eat), but I'm kind of disgusted by Renshaw's eating habits. He eats fast food stuff like every day! Who goes to IHOP three times in one week? His drinking habits seem somewhat more reasonable, though he still consumes way more sugar than I would be comfortable doing.

Carnet D'un Sauvage

2011-04-13T08:37:00.000-07:00

By Nye Wright

I love traveling, I love writing about my own trips, and I love reading about other people's trips too. If it's somewhere I've never been to, I get to live vicariously through them; if it's somewhere I have been to, I get to compare what they did to what I did, wonder why they didn't go to that awesome place I found, and feel dumb for not doing that awesome thing I didn't even know about.

This zine takes the form of a sketchbook that Wright made during a trip to Europe. He tries to draw something every day, and in the margins writes about what he's been up to. It's a format that allows him to show the people he met, the different types of architecture that he saw, the food he ate, and other random things.

Wright's art certainly manages to capture snippets of what he experienced, and I enjoyed the drawing of him exhausted from traveling (after only a few weeks, the amateur!). However, the text is considerably weaker. Some of his lettering is really nice, and I enjoyed the titles that he did, but the longer pieces of text are harder to read.

The text also suffers from it not being a complete account of what happened, so the reader isn't sure of everything that's going on in the trip or why certain things occur. There's also some unfortunate xenophobia and general weirdness stemming from Wright being an American. However, he does at least point out these faults in himself, so it's not that distasteful.

Khyber Komix Jam #2

2011-04-12T08:31:00.000-07:00

Edited by Kyle

A comics jam is an event where a bunch of people get together and draw collaborative comics. Usually each person draws a panel, and then passes it on to the next person (who in turn passes on the comic they'd been working on). You spend an evening hanging out with other comics artists, and at the end you have a pile of usually bizarre, generally nonsensical comics.

While these are great drawing exercises for the artists, both to get them to actually draw something and to draw within a certain period of time, they results are generally incredibly uneven. You have some participants who try to continue the story started by the previous artists, but others who go for random jokes and non sequiturs.

You also have an incredible variety of art styles, and while a few of the artists here are quite good at drawing something within the allotted time, others are not. My favourite comic had to do with a horrible jelly fish attack, both because jelly fish (or at least the idea of flying ones) terrify me, and because on average I think it has the best art. I guess jelly fish aren't that hard to draw.

Ultimately though, I think the biggest problem is the lettering. I can't even read a bunch of the dialogue! I'd be really interested to hear of any comic jams have used a writer/letterer who would write the dialogue/captions in advance and have the artists draw things to try and match up with that. I don't know if it would work better, but at the least the produced comics would (probably) be more coherent.

Peach Melba Issue 20

2011-04-11T08:35:00.000-07:00

By Pearl
PO Box 74
Brighton
BN1 4ZQ
UK

While no longer the youngest zinester I know of, (almost) fourteen-year-old Pearl continues to put out my favourite monthly zine.

Each issue is filled with various typewriter-written lists of seemingly random things that have caught her fancy recently, and they never fail to put a smile on my face.

This issue includes the life cycles of sheep (both male and female), a list of eyewear, "Things you can do because you're wearing a hat" ("signal secretly to a helicopter"), and loads more. What other zine mentions both zlotys and axolotls in the same issue?

Aliens: First Encounter

2011-04-10T16:16:00.000-07:00

By G.P. Bonesteel
www.killerinkcomics.com

I really enjoy the format of this zine. It's wide and skinny, and each page is filled with a single panel like the cover (except it's in black and white). It's a neat size, and can be used to tell a story in a suitably "wide screen" style.

The comic itself disappointed me somewhat. There is no plot other than "aliens attack", and honestly, as much as I love that stuff you still need more than that and a few old jokes (yes, yes, everyone hates hippies, but really, X-Files references in a comic released in 2009?) to get me onside.

I think one of my major issues with this comic is that the "wide screen" format isn't used effectively. Instead we get page after page that feature identical panels where very little on the page actually changes. I'm not dissing that style of storytelling, I think it can be very effective, but I think if you're going to use it you need to have a lot of panels and a lot of room. When most (or even half) of an entire page doesn't change for five or six pages I wonder why the creator bothered framing the story that way. Instead, it might have been better if Bonesteel had used a more traditional size and used smaller repetitive panels instead.

The other problem is that isn't even a complete story. The last page tells us that the story is to be continued, but as the "story" so far is an entirely generic space alien invasion with no actual characters, I'm not sure why I'd bother really.

I See the World in Hipstervision

2011-04-09T05:54:00.000-07:00

By Elliot Baggott
surrealistetiquette.blogspot.com

Hipsters get a bad rap. I mean, there are songs about how they are stupid. This becomes all the more ridiculous when you consider that almost nobody describes themselves as a hipster, and in fact few people can even describe the term (leading to this comic, which I think explains the concept quite well).

So I was a little excited by this, as I thought it might be someone trying to reclaim the term (ironically of course), or some sort of comic poking fun at hipsters.

It's neither, instead it is (as the subtitle says) a collection of sketches. Some of the people look kind of hipstery, others just look like normal people (though I'm not really sure if the elf is based on a real person or just imagination). The art mostly shows people with haircuts and some girls that seem pretty cute, though the ones I liked best where the drawings of buildings. Yay architecture!

Really though, these sketches just have nothing on sketches done by other people. (Yes, that is me.)

WJC Comics No 3

2011-04-08T04:50:00.000-07:00

By Warwick Johnson Cadwell
warwickjohnsoncadwell.blogspot.com

Cadwell's comics shouldn't really work. His artstyle seems to ignore so many things that I think should be present in "good" comic art. The characters' proportions don't make sense, the panel to panel consistency is weak, and characters warp and change.

And yet I love his style. There's something about the way he draws weird looking creatures, robots, and even humans that really appeals to me. His work has energy, dynamism, and an appeal I find hard to pin down.

Of course it's not all perfect, the reproduction on this is kind of terrible. Greys come out so dark it's hard to make out any detail, and I just know we're missing out on certain aspects of the art. Storywise it's just a chase scene, but it's effective at what it does, and as part of a longer narrative it would work really well.

Cadwell has a book coming out from Blank Slate Books later this year, but until then I'll just have to keep looking at his blog so I can discover awesome drawings like this one of Batgirl vs. Killer Croc.

Qwerty Pop

2011-04-07T02:37:00.000-07:00

By The Thomas Ferguson Band
www.mixcloud.com/ttfb
fulsomeprism.wordpress.com

Every now and then I get a zine and I have no idea where it came from. This one was made for a typewriter festival (in February) at the Sticky Institute (a rad zine shop in Melbourne Australia). Well, no, that's not exactly true. The creator of this zine was asked to make a mixtape/cd about and inspired by typewriters for this event. What on Earth do you have to do to get a reputation as someone who can make a mix based around typewriters?! (I guess the answer is just "be pretty good at making mixes", and this guy is. I listened to the typewriter one already, and am now listening to another right now. Hurray!)

You can listen to the mix in the link above, and it's actually pretty rad. This zine acts as a companion piece to the mix, and I'm a little disappointed that it's a halfsized zine. I make a fair number of mix CDs (do you want to trade? Let me know!), though none with as weird a theme as typewriters. Quite frequently I make little booklets to slip inside the CD case. This zine works in much the same way my booklets do: there's information about the bands, the individual tracks, and random anecdotes about how the music was discovered. It's all pretty fun.

This zine also had a weird and awesome story as an insert. The story is a first person narrative about someone, who is completely oblivious to society as they don't know what money is, serving Salvador Dali in a super market. It's presumably an attempt at creating a Dali-esque piece in text form. I'm not familiar enough with Dali to really know how successful the author was, but I enjoyed it.

Plus the mix features a Missy Elliot/typewriter mashup, I mean, what's not to love about that?

Carck Presents Menagerie

2011-04-06T02:29:00.000-07:00

By Harriet Jones & Vicky Samuel

Oh look at the adorable kitty cat! Awwww. And it's head is on a folded paper spring thing, how clever!

NO! Do not be fooled! This zine is nothing but smut! Once you open it you are exposed to a pop up penis! And that's it, it's kind of funny, but I can't imagine how much work went into cutting, folding, and gluing everything together for this. And the penis even sticks out of the side! How shoddy! (I'm joking.)

It's kind of impossible to review something like this. I do really wonder why there are twenty three different website addresses on the back page. Are they sites related to the creators of this zine? Why am I supposed to go look at them? I have no idea. (Actually looking at them it seems a couple might be related to the creators, but I really can't be bothered looking them up.)

Fifty Fearful Faces

2011-04-05T02:10:00.000-07:00

By David Mack
www.monkeyfingers.net

From the title and cover of this zine you may be expecting it to be fifty drawings of monstrous faces. Well, you'd be completely wrong if you thought that, because however you count it there are not fifty faces in here (there's either more or less depending on if you count the cover).

Of course Fifty Fearful Faces sounds a lot better than Thirty-Six Sortof Frighting Heads, so it becomes obvious why the cover was chosen.

I'm not sure how much fear the drawings within inspire within me. A fair number are gross or somewhat unsettling, and I'm sure if I saw people that looked like this in real life I'd be terrified, but as drawings they mostly lack in scarification.

That's not to say the art isn't good! I really enjoyed the drawing below, and there's a heavily lined drawing of an alien/monster thing that becomes increasingly scary the longer I look at it. *shudder*

My Zine #6 Christmas Special

2011-04-04T13:49:00.000-07:00

By Alyssa
www.lightsgoout.co.uk/products-page/

At the Brighton Zine Fest a few months back I saw the youngest zinester ever! Apparently when this was made she wasn't even six! Wow!

I think it's awesome how creative kids are, and how tragic that so often people stop creating by the time them become adults. I don't know what it is about the school system that erases the creativity and enjoyment of learning that kids have, but we should probably fix it...

This full colour (!!!) zine features drawings of Santa Claus, a snowman, some sort of horrible monster (yay!), trees, other Christmasy stuff, and what I think is a giant beetroot (but I might be horribly ). Super awesome. I hope she keeps making these forever.

Halifax Hooligans

2011-04-04T02:51:00.000-07:00

So the reason for the recent break in service is that I moved back to Canada. Hurray! Just in time for my tenth anniversary of becoming a Canadian.

I've moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in large part because of the Anchor Archive Zine Library. It's a pretty rad place, and I spent yesterday (Sunday) volunteering. I'm sure I'll be around a bunch, and hopefully doing more shifts. I'll also be there to do Food Not Bombs (Sundays), participate in the craft nights (Tuesdays, come make artist trading cards with me!), and other stuff.

Also, from here on our pretty much all of the zines I review on this site (and make myself) are going to end up in the library. I'll look into linking to the entries in their database.

Apologies for the terrible image quality for the next little while, I was hoping to have access to a scanner, but I couldn't get the one at the Anchor Archive to work.

Onwards!

Zine Interview Part Two

2011-04-01T05:44:00.000-07:00

The first part of this interview went online yesterday.

6. You have made a lot of zines yourself, what inspires you? How do you decide on a subject matter?

My recent zine series (Oblast) is pretty scattershot in what each individual zine is about, but if you look at my zine history as a whole the overarching theme is one of travel. I love travelling, and a lot of my zines take the form of rewritten diary entries of my trips to various countries.

More recently (over the last year and a half) I've been doing zines on more random stuff (YouTube, potato crisps/chips, etc.), and I think a reason for this is that I haven't been writing for magazines and newspapers as much as I have in the past. I used to write for magazines and newspapers in university and afterwards when I lived in Asia. This really helped me use up my creative juices (for good or ill), but my crisp review zine is a pretty clear successor to some of the articles I wrote in South Korea where I reviewed types of soju (a Korean alcohol) or weird ice cream flavours.

I just write about what I'm interested in at the time and hope other people will like it too.

7. How would you describe the style of your own publications?

All of my most recent zines have been laid out using a computer design program. I use a free program called Scribus, but I have experience using Adobe InDesign. I guess my style is slightly more "polished" than some creators, but at the same time I'm clearly going for a different aesthetic than people doing cut and paste zines (though I've made those in the past).

(Edit/addition: Also, my handwriting is terrible!)

8. What do you find to be the positives and negatives of publishing your work in this way?

The work gets published and is out there. I mean, I could make a blog, but I'm not sure how well the haphazard and random things I write about would go over.

I like having a mini project to work towards, and when I'm done I can hand it to someone and say "Here, I wrote and made this". That's something I couldn't do with the print articles I've written (where once the issue it's printed in is gone, it's harder to show people).

Since I have a physical object that I created I can also swap/trade/sell it to other people. They can even act as a sort of business card, providing my contact info and an example of what I'm capable of doing.

9. Do you have full control of every step that goes into creating your zines, from concept through to printing?

Yes. Well, you are limited by the amount of money you have to spend (ie. colour printing is expensive), and the quality of the printers/copiers you are using. It's frustrating to photocopy a bunch of stuff and have it all be slightly crooked, but I can't let it bother me too much.

10. What advice would you give to someone who would like to start creating their own zines?

Just get out there and do it! Zines can be photos or drawings or collages or comics or essays or poetry or stories or reviews or any combination of the above or anything that can be printed on paper. You don't have to make hundreds of copies of your first zine if you don't want to, you don't even have to make any! (I have numerous zines in various states of completion that I gave up on.) However, my friends have been excited to see my new zines, and it's nice to get feedback on what you've created from people you know.

And that's the end of the interviews! (Well, I was also interviewed on video recently, but that was for something not zine related. Proper reviews should return on Monday.

Zine Interview Part One

2011-03-31T05:13:00.000-07:00

Shortly after the last interview, another girl asked to interview me about my site and my zines for her honours project at Liverpool John Moores University / St. Helens College.

I'm going to split this interview into two parts, with the second one going online tomorrow.

1. When did you first become aware of zines and where did the initial interest come from?

I don't remember exactly, but I'm guessing it would have been around late 1998/early 1999 during my first year of high school. I would have been fifteen at the time and remember going to parties at a punk house in which my friend was renting a room. I recall a couple of zines from that time period, though exactly when I picked them up I do not remember. I think the first ones I read were actually by people I vaguely knew (ie. friends of friends), but it was a long time ago. I didn't make my first zine until about four years later when I was in university.

2. You're clearly passionate about the zine industry, what attracts you to it so much?

I'm a big fan of DIY, and the idea that you can just make your own magazine and sell/give it away is something that really appeals to me. I enjoy the way it sidesteps the mainstream, and find it interesting how literally anything can be the subject of a zine. The only thing that really unites them is that they're printed on paper.

Going back to the DIY aspect I like to encourage people to make stuff and do things. I really enjoy making and trading artist trading cards, and it bothers me sometimes when people say things like "Oh, I'm not an artist" and don't want to create something. I can't draw anything, but everyone has skills doing something. I really wonder what the education system is doing to kids that stops them being creative and wanting to learn.

The same applies to zines. Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone has something they're passionate about. I want to encourage everyone to create more, though I don't know how good a job I do of that.

3. You feature a wide range of zines on your blog, where do you source them from?

I get a lot of zines from zine events. I was recently at the Brighton Zinefest and got a bunch from that. I also go to a lot of comic book events (this one was the most recent). I usually try to trade/swap with other people at the events (I am bad at capitalism), but I also buy them sometimes.

People also send them to me in the mail. I usually get one or two emails a week from people asking if I could review their zines or comics. I always agree! I pretty much always send them a zine back too.

4. How do you differentiate between a 'good' zine and a 'bad' one?

Woah, how philosophical! How do we differentiate between good and bad anything? Or even the very concepts of good and bad?

Reviews are very personal things, and I know there are zines that I don't particularly like that other people really enjoy. I've also learnt that putting a robot or a monster into your zine is probably going to make me like it to some degree.

But I think the most important thing is care and effort. Some people equate "do it yourself" with "do it quickly and badly", and while there is certainly a place for 24 hour zines and similar projects I find myself incredibly frustrated when I come across zines filled with spelling, grammar, and layout mistakes. Just because you want to hand write your zine and use a "cut and paste" style doesn't mean the content has to be a first draft.

5. From your time reviewing zines, do you have any favourite or stand out issues that you could highlight?

I've reviewed over four hundred zines and minicomics by this point, and going back and making a short list would be incredibly difficult...

But! I really enjoy Peach Melba, a monthly list zine made by a 13 year old girl. She's already up to issue 19! I've read/reviewed more issues of PM than any other zine, so it kind of sticks in my mind.

I just read a zine (Loserdom #21) with a massive (over twenty pages!) series of interviews with four or five different punks who lived in a small town outside of Dublin in Ireland in the early '80s. It's a fascinating look into a subculture, a time, an the people who lived during them.

There's a lot of comics I've really enjoyed, and some artists I've enjoyed are Philip Barrett, Will Kirkby, Nich Angell, Nikki Stu, Isy Morgenmuffel, Steve Rumlad, and I could go on listing all day really.

Come back tomorrow for part two!

The Last Ten Videos I Watched on YouTube Interview

2011-03-30T16:11:00.000-07:00

It turns out that moving continents can be more stressful, anxiety causing, and crazy than I had anticipated. You'd think I'd know better by now. Reviews should return next week, but until then I'll be running some interviews I recently completed.

The first is an interview about my zine The Last Ten Videos I Watched on YouTube that I completed for a girl who attends the London College of Communication (apparently my zine is in their library!). Her project was about how video sites effect how people interact with art, and apparently my zine was interesting to her. Amazing! I still have copies of this zine available, so if you'd like one just let me know.

What made you choose the videos you did for inclusion in the zine?

It was literally the ten videos I watched in full on YouTube in chronological order after I decided to make the zine. It was just after the Lady Gaga Telephone video came out, and the internet was filled with people talking about that, so I choose that as the starting point, and over the next few days I screendshotted (what an awkward word) and wrote about every video I watched. I didn't include videos I didn't watch all of (and there was at least one I stopped so I didn't include it in the zine, I can't remember what it was or why I didn't want it though), or videos I had open in the background so that I could listen to the music.

I thought it was an interesting look at what I actually watched on Youtube, and kind of showed how random some of the stuff up there is.

What made you choose YouTube as a zine subject?

I think it was a combination of several factors, primarily being people not understanding what a zine was and when you told them wondering why you didn't just do it as a blog or a website. I'd recently made a zine in the same format (sideways quartersized?) and realized that an image of a YouTube video would fit on the page pretty well. So I thought "Why not make a zine that _would_ make considerably more sense as a website?". YouTube comments (and many comments on websites in general) are generally thought of as stupid and things that you should ignore, so I found it amusing to write some and print them in a zine, "forcing" people to read them.

You might not be able to tell now (or from the quality of the zine you read), but I really attempted to make the zine look as much like YouTube as possible. It has the same fonts, style, and images as the website did at the time. Funnily about a week after I finished making the zine YouTube revamped the design of their website so that my zine now also functions as an archive of what YouTube looked like in March
2010.

Why make this zine in the first place?

Why make any zine at all? Why make anything at all? Because I thought it was a funny thing to do, and because other zine projects I was working on where getting bogged down as I got fed up with them. I like to have a new zine ready for each zine event I go to (even if I don't always manage!), and I made this one in less than two weeks before a Midlands Zinester meetup I helped organize. I can spend ages on zines that I care about a lot, but I seem to get more response from the silly, funny ones that take less time to make (my guide to last year's Eurovision song contest, a zine that reviewed various flavours of crisps). One of the best responses to this one have been people telling me that after reading the zine they've gone out and searched for some of the videos I "reviewed". I don't think this zine could be more successful than that.

I started making a second issue of YouTube videos, but I stopped about halfway through grabbing images. I've got about five videos screenshotted (and some of them are pretty good!), and another one bookmarked, but somehow it would seem weird to specifically go out and watch videos that are wierd on purpose. I liked the mundanity of some of them. I am currently working on another zine about the internet, which is a story/history inspired by a Wikipedia page. We'll see how that one goes.

And just because I can, here are a couple of quotes about the zine from some people.

Jimi Gherkin (one of the organizers of the London Alternative Press Fairs, and who I reviewed last month) said "I really enjoyed [the] zine [...] [I] wish I'd thought of it!!".

Lights Go Out (a UK punk fanzine) said "Genius! [...] Seriously such a fun and unique zine!".

Like vs Shit

2011-03-28T03:51:00.000-07:00

By Bernard Boulevard and Gordon Gordon
Chow Chow Productions
PO Box 20204
Seattle, WA
98102
USA

My slang usage is pretty ridiculous sometimes. I totally say "like" and "rad" and "totally" and "killer" like all the time. On at least one incidence I impressed someone with my knowledge of literature, philosophy, and history despite saying something along the lines of "I love going to art galleries and shit like that". I've been told I speak Russian like a Russian valley girl (whatever that means). My accent is vague to the point that other Canadians don't know what part of Canada I'm from.

What I'm really saying is that just because you may say the word like from time to time (or constantly) it doesn't mean that you're an idiot. Yeah, I fall into that trap too when people say things so filled with slang, but you shouldn't really judge people on that sort of shit.

And speaking of shit! I was hoping that this zine would go through all the different definitions of the word "shit", but it only mentions a couple of them. I was having a conversation with my brother a while ago about how hard it is to learn English, and we thought of all the different ways you can use the word, so let's list some:

1. Excrement. "That dog shit on the floor."
2. Something terrible. "That book was shit."
3. Something good ("the" is always required for this one). "That zine is the shit."
4. A bad situation. "You are in deep shit because of what you did."
5. Pot. "Oh yeah, this is some good shit."
6. Things in general. "Just need to clear all this shit off my desk."

There's loads more! Maybe we need to get Joe Decie to do another minicomic.

Little Garden Volume 1 Part 1

2011-03-27T05:21:00.000-07:00

By Ayo

Whereas yesterday's comic suffered from a lack of monsters, this one is nothing but monsters! Monsters with wings! Monsters with hoofs! Monsters with three eyes! Monsters with horns!

Okay, so I guess they're pretty much just mostly human women with some weirdness, but that's close enough for me. The images contained in here aren't really a comic, rather they just show random snapshots from the lives of these women letting us know how their community functions. They farm, they deliver mail, they hang out, they go swimming. There's no plot, but rather we see these characters just living their lives. It's a fun little book even if I'm not really down with the portrayal of males (either a target of derision or tied up).

The art is pretty clearly not for everyone. There's an ugliness to a lot of it that appeals to me somehow. I find it kind of hard to describe, though funnily it's the way the lips and eyelids are drawn that make these characters look the most monstrous rather than their extra appendages.

The Sweeper

2011-03-26T05:08:00.000-07:00

By Amy Peltn

I'm in Canada! I haven't even looked at a zine (other than to pack it) in over a week. There might be some radio silence for a bit next week, but if there are any gaps I should be back in action by April.

Sometimes I come across comics that just leave me utterly mystified. This is definitely such a case. I don't know why this comic exists. Twelve entirely silent pages of full page images like those below. A guy hangs up something on the fence (what it is I have no idea), his broom falls over, he picks up it, the thing blows away. What? Why did I read this?

Am I just missing something? Maybe if the main character had been a robot I'd like it more.

7String Volume Zero

2011-03-25T08:17:00.000-07:00

By Nich Angell
nichangell.co.uk

This big, glossy, full colour comic is filled with impressive art and some pretty cool action, but it is more definitively a zero issue. This means that it gives some background info about the characters, has some (really nice) pin ups, and features a couple of short comics. They all help to set the up the world that Angell is creating, but the major story he's working on clearly hasn't happened yet.

That story is explained in the opening text page, which is probably the weakest part of the comic. Not the ideas, which feature a maniacal villain trying to destroy the "eternal cosmic melody" by stealing a magic flute and an "elite group of cosmic musicians" creating a seven stringed sword instrument to save the universe. But rather parts of the text are a bit awkward and could have used one more rewrite. Generally the short comics don't fall into this problem, but I guess Angell's skills lie more in drawing some pretty awesome pictures instead of paragraph after paragraph of text.

The first comic is a three pager with the main character, Zachary Briarpatch, facing off against a cowboy type character, and the thing it reminded me of the most is the pre-credits action bit at the beginning of certain cartoons and TV shows. We're introduced to the main character, see that he can do awesome things that are beyond the abilities of normal people ("But, that's impossible... No-one can harmonize that fast"), and defeats the bad guy. The end! It's a compliment to Angell's art style and use of colour that I can easily see it as the intro to a cartoon. The sound effects make noises in my head and I'm kind of upset when the opening credits don't come up and then we head into the longer incredible adventure.

Looking at Angell's art it's clear to see that his inspirations are manga, video games, and cartoons, but his combination of all these aspects is original and looks really amazing. Part of this is down to his fantastic use of colour, which at times reminded me of the teaser trailer of Molly Star Racer (did anyone actually watch the show that eventually came out? Was it any good?).

Design-wise Angell's characters are more human than those in MSR (noses!), though they are still fairly stylized, featuring incredibly pointy knees, and haircuts that can only exist in a comic book.

The only major failing of Angell's art is that at times I find his faces aren't up to the standard of the rest of the art, being less detailed and looking a bit strange at times. Upon realizing this I then wonder if Angell has designed his main character's hair so that he doesn't have to bother drawing his eyes. Hmm...

The action sequences sing, the colours pop, the story seems like it's going to rock, and to be honest I'm having a hard time thinking up any more music related analogies. I can't wait until Angell finishes this and I can read the whole thing.

Loserdom #21

2011-03-24T16:38:00.000-07:00

loserdomzine@gmail.com
www.loserdomzine.com

One of my favourite things about reviewing things for this blog is that I read so many random things, and sometimes I am completely and utterly blown away by content I did not expect.

That is the case with Loserdom #21. I'd read some issues before, but nothing prepared me for the massive (over twenty pages!) history of the Dalkey punks that appeared in this issue.

Dalkey is a village suburb of Dublin in Ireland, and it doesn't seem like that exciting a place to live. Anto grew up there, and remembers being a little kid in the early '80s and being both scared and fascinated by the punks he saw hanging around town. Almost thirty years later he's tracked five of them down and interviewed them about what being a punk in that time was like, how they got involved with the scene, what music they listened to, how they dressed, where they hung out, how the group came to an end, and what they're up to now.

It is an incredibly epic piece of journalism, and feels more like the basis of someone's thesis in folklore, anthropology, sociology, or history than an article in a zine. It's a fascinating piece made all the more interesting because of the real emotions that the interviews conjure up in people. You can feel the joy and fun that these people had back when they were kids, and then, in the most brutal and unexpected part, there is a tragedy. I don't really want to spoil what happened, but it was a big enough thing that it was mentioned in newspapers at the time (which have been dug up, photocopied, and included here).

Even if that was the only thing in Loserdom #21 it would be worth picking up, but this is a massive zine and there's loads of other stuff too! Comics about riding bicycles, an interview with a woman who's been busking in Dublin since 1985, and more. Not all of it appealed to me, but that's always the case with anthologies, and I think this is definitely worth checking out.

Skillshot 13

2011-03-23T03:53:00.000-07:00

By Chow Chow Productions
myspace.com/skillshott
PO Box 20204
Seattle, WA
98102
USA

(Moving countries caused me to miss a review the other day, be prepared for more missing days coming soon!)

I've read a couple of issues of this pinball zine, but it still blows me away every time I read it just because I have a hard time imagining a pinball scene. It's not something I've ever really played, yet these people organize monthly tournaments that have dozens of people showing up! It all seems kind of strange, but also makes me want to start playing pinball more (last time I played was at a new year's eve party, where I was completely terrible at it).

This zine includes news and rumours about the Seattle pinball scene, telling what happened at recent tournaments, who's setting records on the machines, where the new machines are, a complete (?) list of every pinball machine in Seattle, tips and strategies for specific machines, high score contests, rule variations, and more. It reminded me of the video game magazines I read when I was a kid, and while I barely understand a lot of the strategy in here I'm sure you could write the same sort of thing about Street Fighter or poker and I also wouldn't understand it (I might like it more if it was Street fighter because hurray punching people!).

If you're into pinball and live in the Seattle area you have probably already read this, but if you're into pinball anywhere else in the world it's worth giving a read because it's pretty interesting and fun.

Food Magic!

2011-03-22T03:14:00.000-07:00

By Erin

This zine marks an incredibly important day for this blog, as this is the final zine I got at the 2009 Portland Zine Symposium. When I started this blog last January I had a stack of around sixty zines, most of them from that event, but (as you can tell from the fact that there are more than sixty reviews on this blog) I kept getting more, and certain zines ended up getting pushed to the back of my review box.

This isn't to say that this zine is bad, in fact I enjoyed the recipe I (finally!) made, and both of my parents complimented it saying that it was very good. The only reason I didn't use it sooner was that whenever I opened it I didn't feel like cooking any of the recipes, and you know how that happens. That recipe for tempeh bourgignon might be really good, but tonight all you want to eat is cookies. Also, I don't currently have access to any tempeh.

I'd also love to someday try the cocktail recipes that are included (the white sangria sounds delicious), but at least for the moment I can say that the peanut stir fry sauce recipe is a good.

The Beloved Ones

2011-03-20T03:58:00.000-07:00

By Cathy Khampoor and Timothy Batiuk

It's kind of crazy when four hundred something reviews into this site I still discover things I've never seen before. In this case it's a zine that reads right to left, and instead of the Japanese influence you might expect from such a thing (I've read a lot or manga that reads that way) it's actually a collection of terrible puns based on some Arabic words.

Well, it starts off reasonably enough explaining what "habiibatii" and "habiibii" mean using illustrations. Though, oddly, they don't really explain the gendered versions very well. Which one does a gay man or woman call their beloved?

After that it becomes a series of jokes, some of which are pretty ridiculous. However the first time I was reading this I didn't catch on that these weren't real words until about the half way mark (around "habobbl'hedtii"). I mean, they have things written in Arabic right there! Clearly it was a completely true illustrated dictionary.

Most of the jokes are amusing (and there's a ghost!), though a few of them took me a while to sound out exactly what they were referencing. Though that was more a problem with my comprehension skills than anything else.

To Share is to Divide

2011-03-19T04:42:00.000-07:00

By Nick Souček
miscomp.wordpress.com

Reading Souček's comics I can't help but feel kind of bad for him. They're filled with near constant existential doubt, anxiety, loneliness, depression, and other bad stuff. I mean, breaking up with someone sucks, being lonely sucks, but neither of those things are the end of the world.

Of course it seems that Souček is exaggerating his feelings for comedic effect. Even ignoring the fact that I don't think I can take the phrase "forever alone" serious in any way, he follows a scene where he is blown out of a tree by loneliness by saying that he has a tendancy to be melodramatic.

Helping to create this sense of melodrama in Souček's comics are the words that he uses to describe the scenes. There's not much dialogue here, instead we have the poetic monologue of Souček himself. I really feel that much of the text here could be reprinted without the pictures as fairly effective blank verse poetry. Of course, if that was done I would read it and then forget it again almost instantly, so clearly Souček has the better idea by pairing his thoughts with images.

Souček's art is at its best when it's drawing inanimate objects (there are some pretty rad boats in here), while the inhabitants of his stories kind of remind me of Lego people. Large heads, no real expressions, grasping claw like hands, they're totally minifigs! Actually, that's pretty awesome. I really like the idea that these are Lego people and that potentially Souček storyboards all of his comics using actual toys.

Okay, that idea is completely ridiculous, but if Souček is allowed to draw himself being eaten by a whale, I'm allowed to imagine what I want. And if I had any minifigs around I would totally make one and either give it to Souček, or make a photo comic in the same style.

Souček also does comics for Boneshaker, an awesome little bicycle magazine. I really liked his comic in the last issue of that.

TBA issue 4

2011-03-18T03:34:00.000-07:00

This music and art zine actually uses a really cool format. The whole thing is screenprinted onto a huge piece of paper, and once unfolded it features a pretty rad poster with art by one of the artists interviewed inside.

I think screenprinting in general is pretty neat, though I have pretty limited experience with it. I keep meaning to learn how to do it well, but up to this point that day has not arrived. Instead I can just read things like this, be impressed by the general readability of the screen printed text, and dream.

Content wise there are two interviews with artists, two with musicians, and some info on bands and other art/design publications, all of which are pretty good. I would have liked a few more pictures, but the poster really does make up for that.

Unfortunately, the website address included doesn't lead to anything anymore, so I guess they stopped putting this out. It's too bad as it's a pretty awesome idea.

The Sea Part Three

2011-03-17T02:09:00.000-07:00

By Will Kirkby
chamonkee.livejournal.com

Dang, it's been like six months since I last read one of these, and almost a year since I read part one. Maybe I have too many things to read. And maybe (probably) I should dig up the first two issues of this series and reread them since upon starting this one I'm a little lost (but I'm not even sure if I still have those issues anymore).

My confusion as to what was going on in this issues makes me think that anyone picking this up without reading the previous two issues might not enjoy it much (though I suppose I could be completely wrong). We're dropped into the middle of a plot, there's a time jump I didn't really get, characters aren't introduced very well, and one of them only speaks Japanese. Okay, so the main character (who's thoughts we are able to read) can't understand him either, and by not translating the speech Kirkby is putting us more into the mindset of the main character, but it's kind of annoying because he's clearlying saying _something_, I just have no idea what.

The story itself invovles captivity, monsters, escapes, amateur surgery, ominous predictions, and similar things. Kirkby uses first person narration to tell most of the story, and unfortunately it doesn't work as well here as it did in issue one. There the character was trapped on a boat and had only himself to talk to for most of the comic, whereas here we have other characters but have no real knowledge of what they're up to.

While the story disappointed me somewhat I continue to enjoy Kirkby's art. He uses a lot of close-up images of the characters heads in his art, each almost filling the panels. These are good at creating a sense of claustrophobia, and I remember them working really well in the earlier comics. However once the characters escape from captivity I'm left longing for bigger images that show more of what's going on. Kirkby at times does leave the four panel grid behind and draw images across an entire page, but all these really do is make me wish that all of the art was bigger and that this had been released in a different format.

If you haven't read any of Kirkby's comics this isn't the best place to start. Instead you should go and pick up issue one of The Sea or the Birdsong anthology he's involved with. He's an excellent artist, and I look forward to seeing what he'll work on next.

Metal Between Two Faces No. 1

2011-03-16T02:05:00.000-07:00

By Michael Lomon
thenursinghome.co.uk

In serialized fiction you've got to figure out how to break your story into satisfying pieces. Each part could potentially be someone's first, but the most important part is the first. You have to get the key players on the page, explain the plot, and hook the reader to make them come back for more. This can be hard to do when you're working with limited pages, and is the major stumbling block of this comic.

The thirteen pages presented here did manage to convey that the story is set in some sort of horrible dystopian city filled with robots, radition contamination zones, and killer mutants (exciting!), but failed to really tell me what the story is going to be about. Is it a romance set against the backdrop of this strange city? Is it a crime mystery with certain characters (but which ones?) trying to track down a murderer? Will there be a rebellion against the dictitatorial rule that seems to exist? Some combination of the above? Something completely different?

There are definitely things I liked about this comic (who doesn't enjoy a good mutant-robot muder mystery?), but I can't help but think that if this first chapter had twice as many pages to set the scene it would have worked far better (and perhaps I would have understood what happened on that last page).

Artwise Metal Between Two Faces differs rather radically from the background-lacking comic I reviewed yesterday, as almost every piece of the page is covered with drawings. Scenes set outside feature massive buildings in the backgrounds, while those inside feature densely crosshatched walls and crossword style floors. The gutters between panels are solid black and rarely straight, while speech bubbles are jammed into corners and sometimes cover up artwork. This makes everything flow together, and at times it can be a bit hard to concentrate on one specific area of the drawing. Still, the larger images manage to convey the busy, chaotic city that the story takes place in and are quite nice to look at.

Somewhere City 1

2011-03-15T02:41:00.000-07:00

Written by Adam Clegg
Drawn by Michael Scott
somewhere-city.blogspot.com

Noir crime stories are filled with cliches: the missing girl, the tough-as-nails hardboiled detective who smokes all the time, the feeling that even if the hero wins the battle they've lost the war, and even more that I cannot remember. While lots of people are really into this genre they never really click with me unless the creators add something extra: a science fiction or fantasty element that makes it more interesting to me because I love monsters and robots.

Somewhere City takes an idea reminiscent of Dark City. There doesn't seem to be any way out, and nobody can remember who they are or why they're there. The inhabitants seem to have been there for several years, and try to live their lives as best they can in a town surrounded by forbidden zones and filled with sketchy areas. Of coruse all of that is background info that we learn while the main missing person plot is going on, and it works well. The hints suggest that that Clegg and Scott have a whole world and society built up and they'll reveal it as the story progresses.

This first issue features the detective talking tracking down informants and trying to find some clues. I generally liked the art and Scott manages to pull off all the talking heads used throughout the issue (though how much of that is down to the female lead having a Betty Boo haircut I'm not sure).

The major problem with the art is that many of the panels are lacking in backgrounds. This lack of detail leaves the characters floating in white space, and is especially noticable because some of the pages and panels do feature backgrounds, and they're quite nice ones that help to set the scene and show you more things about this mysterious city (a stall selling "books in lost languages" for example). I guess the artist either ran out of time before they wanted to print this or just decided it wasn't worth it. I hope future issues have more backgrounds as I'm looking forward to reading them.

City of Roses

2011-03-14T02:04:00.000-07:00

www.thecityofroses.com

This is another excerpt from a larger work, and it too is printed on only one piece of paper, but it's quarter sized and stapled! There are eight pages! Clearly this makes it an actual zine instead of whatever it was I was reviewing yesterday. Yes my standards don't make any sense. (Also, I just got rid of a couple of things from my zine box that I decided weren't actual zines, one less thing to review! Parts of one of them might end up on my 365 Artist Trading Cards site though.)

Portland is known as the City of Roses, and that's where this story fragment is set. Whether it's part of a longer series or not I don't know, but this small piece of urban fantasy did manage to hold my attention and make me wish that I'd gotten one of the complete issues.

Instead, I'm left to wonder what the characters who appear are (they don't seem to be fully human), what the monster mentioned was doing, and what the hell was going on in the train at the end of the story.

I generally enjoyed the prose that was used, though I did find the use of present tense a bit weird for some reason. Another thing I thought was strange was the way the characters spoke. The characters frequently speak in sentence fragments, which reflects how people speak in real life but often feels awkward in prose. At times I wasn't sure if there was a word missing or if the author had meant for the sentence to end that way.

This was in contrast with one place where a character told a mythological story of some kind and spoke in a strange manner, both archaic and fanciful. Of course, the character says that "everyone knows" this story, so it could be that they are repeating words that have been told by others for a long time.

I'd like to read more of this, though I feel that not knowning Portland that well (I've never even been on the train system, I rode my bicycle everywhere) I'd miss out on a lot of the little references that residents of the city would enjoy. Of course, those could just make my next trip more exciting when I visit places where fictional monster battles happened.

What is a zine?

2011-03-13T06:33:00.000-07:00

Well? How do you define it? (Please comment and let me know!) I barely have any idea except that sometimes I think something is "zine-y" and sometimes I don't.

Today I'm reviewing three short photocopied things that I've somehow managed to attain. Where did they come from? How did I get them? Are they any good? Are they even zines? Can you tell that these are some of the things from my almost empty box of zines that I mentioned?

Each of these is a single photocopied piece of paper folded in half, and that's my first major stumbling block. It seems too small, too inconsequential, to count as anything. Yet, I've seen things (like Peach Melba) made from one piece of paper which I definitely think of as zines. It seems that "thickness" is a major factor in how I define what is and isn't a zine. Fold a single piece of paper in half once and it doesn't count, fold it twice (or more!) and it does. Why is this? I think it must be because I generally assume you could just shrink these pages down and have them fill half the space. But surely you could do that with any zine?

Well, enough pointless thinking, it's time to actualy look at these individually and decide whether or not they count as zines.

Goodbye Midlothian Hello Greater Edinburgh
www.bilstonglen-abs.org.uk

This provides information regarding a proposed expansion of roads in some area of the UK that I'm guessing is Scotland, but other than the title I have never heard of a single place name included here. The writer wants there to be less cars and more public transit (yay!) instead of whatever the government has planned. If you're from the area that it's about it could provide you with some useful information about the proposal.

I'm going to say that this isn't a zine; it's a flyer, a leaflet, an informational publication, or something else that is about important stuff, but really needed to be edited (it misspelled "council" on the first line) and reformated (type written and hand written text?). This leads to two further questions: why do I care so much about format and where they hell did I even get this?

Strange Biros
www.wychwolf.com

This one is a preview for three different things. Two pages of a comic about a paranormal investigator in the 1940s which features a giant snail, one page of a prose story about the same character, and a single page comic that is clearly part of a longer piece and tells you almost nothing about the comic (a Nazi robot demon is mentioned but not shown, and that's not a good enough pull for me).

Maybe I'd read more of these stories, but the previews haven't attracted me in any real way.

Tapas
By the Brothers McLeod
bromc.co.uk

Okay, now this one has almost enough content to get its own review, but I'm just going to do it here. It's a collection of drawings that I think can be best described as character possibilities. It seems like the McLeods drew a bunch of different people and doodles and maybe something will happen with them and maybe not. My favourite was Mr Tweed, a stereotypical university looking man who carries around a bag full of lobsters and books he's never read. I wouldn't mind reading some more stuff by these guys, maybe some day.

And that's it! So yeah, I'd really only count one of these as having enough content to be a "proper" zine, but really whether something is a zine or not is up to both the creator and the reader. I'm hardly the expert in this stuff, and something I hate could easily be someone elses favourite.

Word, Peng #1

2011-03-12T03:19:00.000-08:00

By James 'Couk' Downing
www.couk-art.co.uk

I remember back when I was in high school and university I would read Exclaim! every month. It was a free, monthly, newsprint magazine about music and other stuff. I'm probably more into music now than I was back then (listening to Radio 6 everyday exposes me to new music, fancy that!) but the two things I remember about it was that my university radio station was too crap to send in lists of what the most popular songs being played were and Marc Bell's bizarre comic strip Shrimy and Paul. It was a strange comic that I can't really describe very well (especially since I haven't read it in like eight years), and while there doesn't seem to be much of it online, you can take a look at a couple of pages here.

Okay, so why spend so much time talking about Canadian music magazines and Marc Bell? Because at times the short comics in Word, Peng really reminded me of Shrimpy and Paul both in the style in which it was drawn and the type of humour it used. (The art also reminds me of someone else, but I can't remember who, so we'll just forget about that.)

Downing has drawn a number of different comics in here, ranging from just a few panels up to several pages. The comic strips frequently suffer from overly sketchy art and while the shorter pieces can be funny (I especially enjoyed all the ads for fake products) my favourites in here are the incredibly surreal, and more nicely drawn, ones that Downing has clearly spent more time on. These feature some sort of weird flying worm, the adventures of Three-Head (see below), a fill-in-the-blanks comic that becomes increasingly nonsensical as more and more is left to the reader's imagination, and one with a giant evil robot yeti that starts off as normal as something like that can be but by the end has become somewhat unsettling.

These longer comics share a surreal sense of humour and stories in which you have no idea what will happen yet. Bizarre things occur, and while you may at first find them funny, when given more thought they somehow seem almost tragic. Now if only all of these comics in here had more of that and less of characters shitting everywhere.

The Matter Second Issue Preview

2011-03-11T03:07:00.000-08:00

If you look at the cover of this zine you can figure out why it was made. The Portland Zine Symposium was about to happen and apparently they didn't have all the content ready for their second issue. But the problem with previews is that they're often kind of lacking in content.

This one features excerpts from a number of comics and prose pieces, but half of them are actually the second part of stories that began in the first issue, this means that the first issue is a more effective gauge of what will be in the second issue, and, since it includes complete chapters instead of excerpts, will give you a better idea of what the second issue will contain. (Though to be honest I'm not even sure if the second issue came out, as the website address listed in here no longer leads to anything.)

Still, I like the cover (I love that typographic style), and there's an introduction to this piece about what zines are that is kind of interesting. It's interesting to think that zines are _everything_. They can be comics or prose or poetry or art or photography or recipes or music or travel or personal or educational or anything. The only thing that really unites the people that make them is that they don't just want to make something, they have to, and they'll go to all extents to create and distribute what they've made.

Speaking of which, have you seen my zines? Want one? Email me and we can work something out.

Lone Pilgrim and Orochi Pilgrim

2011-03-10T03:23:00.000-08:00

By David Blandy and Daniel Locke
www.daniellocke.com

Saturday: I photocopy some zines, I walk around town, I go into an art gallery. Oh that's cool, this artist has made action figures of himself, and created a fighting game staring himself, and made some comic books about himself (or his various alter egos). Neat.

Sunday: Maybe I should read this comic I got like a year ago. Oh wait, that name looks familiar. Ah, I see it was written by the guy who did that art show yesterday. Wait, what? That's a kind of strange coincidence. Especially as I got the comics in different cities, bought one directly from the artist (who is different from the artist of the other two comics), and have never met the writer. Still, it was bound to happen eventually I guess.

The comic is a discussion of philosophy, the meaning of life, and the way of the samurai. It's kind of strange as the characters mostly just walk through a garden and discuss various ideas like the concept of Mu, the idea that reality is an illusion, and similar things. It's probably a bit hard to understand if you don't have some familiarity with East Asian philosophy, though there's an amusing bit of self reference when a character says "Those things that are easily understood are rather shallow."

Locke does a pretty good job of illustrating the many pages of talking heads, though I wouldn't have minded a few more backgrounds. His art style isn't particularly Lone Wolf and Cub-like, but he uses some Japanese styles, and it's all perefectly fine for the type of story being told.

Why'd I just mention Lone Wolf and Cub? Well the comic is designed to look like the Lone Wolf and Cub volmes that Dark Horse put out a few years ago. There's even a neat little glossery in the back like they had! It's a really nice homage to a pretty rad comic series, and it's amusing to see a glossery that switches between discussing aspects of Japanese Buddhism with describing characters from '90s fighting games.

Amazing vs Asshole

2011-03-09T03:51:00.000-08:00

By Bernard Boulevard and Gordon Gordon
Chow Chow Productions
PO Box 20204
Seattle, WA
98102
USA

This is one of a series of really weird little zines. They're short, thankfully, as I'm not sure how much of these things I can read. (And yes, I do try to read every single word in every zine I review on this site. If I don't I generally mention it.)

So this is two sort of strangely written rants, one about how people overuse the word "amazing" making it meaningless (ie. towels aren't amazing, major events are), and the other about how some people are assholes, but real assholes can be awesome? Like I said, it's rather strange. And all accompanied by pictures of the aforementioned assholes, both people and the physical part.

I'm not really looking forward to reading the ohter one of this series that I have, but as this is apparently the third printing of this issue I am apparently somewhat alone in that.

Tales of Diversity

2011-03-08T03:22:00.000-08:00

This is a slickly produced (full colour! Glossy paper!) comics anthology created by Eastside Educational Trust and funded by the UK government. Or the last government at least, I doubt the new one would ever give money to something like this.

It features contributions from about twenty teenagers living in London (or at least I assume it's London), and it's neat that they actually are pretty damn diverse. The photo on the inside front cover features more diversity than seemingly the entire town I grew up in Canada (not that that would be that hard really).

The comics that these kids have created are pretty varied in a number of ways, namely quality and content. Some of them are quite accomplished, while others are kind of terrible. Since there are so many different strips in here I'm just going to comment on a few of them.

The opening piece (The Dollhouse by Leke Adekanbi and Shantel Cherebin) is about acceptance of people with different sexual and gender identities to the norm. It's a good message (though an old one for me), but is more notable for the use of colours (each page uses only one colour, giving the comic an interesting look), and the kind of bizarre way some of the characters speak. I guess this second thing is probably more due to the fact that I don't hang out with many East London teenagers.

The second piece is by Charley Hayter and is kind of a strange thing to be created by a teenager as it starts in 1980 and features some school kids discussing what they want to be when they grow up. Cut to the present day and they meet up again, where one has achieved her dreams and the other hasn't. It's, uh, kind of depressing (the person who hasn't works in retail). I do like the art style (sort of amerimanga influenced, and no, I never thought I'd use that word either), and someone's job is a beekeeper. Awesome!

After this strong start many of the other pieces in here aren't so good. Some don't seem to make any real sense, some aren't really comics but are really more just pin ups, some don't seem to have any connection to the theme at all, and one (the longest in the comic!) seems to miss the entire point of the project and features people going on holiday somewhere, complaining about the food served, and then getting sick after eating it.

That's not to say they're all terrible, several of them have some merit (either in theme or art), and one by Nickita Patterson is pretty awesome. Matching high contrast black and white photos with text the piece (it really isn't a comic) talks about the African diamond industry and the brutal rebel groups, child labour, and general exploitation involved in its running. It's nicely laid out, and has a powerful message, even if it might not "properly" match the theme of the book.

One interesting thing I saw through these pieces was how terrible the lettering generally was. Only a few of the pieces used digital lettering, most preferring to do it by hand, but either way it frequently looked bad and was hard to read. So I guess aspiring comics creators should take note, spend time working on your lettering as well as the other parts of your comic. It doesn't matter how amazing your story is if nobody can read it.

Peach Melba #19

2011-03-07T00:18:00.000-08:00

By Pearl
PO Box 74
Brighton
BN1 4ZQ
UK

When I was 13 I spent most of my time playing Magic: The Gathering and Super Nintendo, and reading X-Men comic books. I was so cool. (Now of course I do...much the same things. I think I play cooler games than Magic at least.)

What I wish I'd been doing instead at that age was making rad zines like Pearl does. Each intricately folded zine is filled with lists of what she's been doing, what's interested her lately, and random other things.

This issue's got lists of things Pearl doesn't like ("evil twins"), ways to eat people (how would you even mash someone to eat them? They don't have the same consistancy as potatoes. I don't think this was throught through to the extent that I am doing so...), and things made of metal ("the angel of the north", "some parts of clocks") amongst others.

There are also instruction for how to make a square envelope, that I haven't tried, but I'm sure work well. This isn't my favourite issue of Peach Melba, but it never fails to put a smile on my face when I read it anyway. Hurray!

The Leeds Thought Bubble Festival

2011-03-06T03:22:00.000-08:00

By Aaron "Smurf" Murphy
aaronsmurfmurphy.deviantart.com

I got this at last year's Thought Bubble comicon (probably the best big comic event in the UK, it's really fun!), and it's really just a comic about going to the event itself. It's kind of weird metatextual in that way, but if you read it outside of that context it's really just a diary comic about, well, about how fun and well organized the event is.

Murphy's art is pretty good, though the oversized format he printed this at really kind of hammers home the lack of backgrounds in many of the panels. Probably the funniest thing about the art is that he is (or at least was when I met him) entirely unrecognizable from version that shows up in this comic, having shaved off all of his hair and beard for charity.

Overall the comic is a decent idea, but it's incredibly general about the event as a whole. Murphy seems to have been at the event before, so I'm kind of curious as to why he didn't include any anecdotes, or even the aftershow dance party in the casino (it is a kind of weird comic event).

Of Martial Traditions & The Art of Rebellion

2011-03-05T02:56:00.000-08:00

By Seaweed

Sometimes I find writing this blog really strange. I mean, the concept of zines is so vague that I really can review anything I want as long as its printed on paper. (Or even if it's not!) Since I review everything that I've received this leads to me reviewing comics where Godzilla and other monsters review movies one day, and an anarchist treatise on the importance of learning martial skills the next.

The whole idea of using physical force to achieve your ideals is something I struggle with. I feel that the things happening in the Middle East are pretty important and exciting, but there are many different things you have to consider before you start a revolution in your own country. This zine actually takes a pretty pragmatic take on the whole thing, and there are two quotes I thought were important enough to write down.

The first is "all rebels who want to overthrow the present social order[...]need to ask themselves what success means for them" and the second is "[...]it makes absolutely no sense for a minority of revolutionaries in North America to contemplate attemtemping an outright military contest against the police and army. The states [sic] combat power is simply overwhelming.".

These two pieces of information answer some of the questions I had about the idea behind this zine. The author may want societal collapse and a new system in place, but they know that there is no way for that to happen now (and if the economy hasn't collapsed after everything that happened in the last few years I don't know if it ever will), and so they advise people to take the long view. That is you must stay in one place, gain local support, create communities, and eventually you may be able to create real change in the way that people live. It's kind of depressing, but it also makes a lot of sense.

However, there are lots of other ideas in here, and at times the author seems to be arguing themselves in circles. I mean, how do you create "an anti-authoritarian culture that values martial skills" yet doesn't have warrior aristocracies? The only way to prevent a warrior aristocracy seems to be to train everyone in the community in weapon skills, which leads to the fact that you are taking away the ability for people to _not_ do something if they don't want to.

One thing the author references are tactical works, such as The Art of War, and how it is important to know about these even if you don't plan on using them. Seaweed explains that this is because those you are confronting on issues will be aware of them (think about how many business people read those books).

There are definitely a lot of interesting ideas in here, and there are also a lot of things that I don't really agree with. I'm not really down with using physical violence to achieve my goals, but at which point does violence become justified? The zine asks these questions, though doesn't give me a satisfactory answer.

The zine is well written (unlike this review!) in a somewhat academic style, and if you are capable of dealing with that and are interested in the idea of rebellion and revolutionary change it's probably worth reading this and discussing it with others.

Godzilla the Film Critic

2011-03-04T03:23:00.000-08:00

By Ben Clark
www.magicbeanscomics.co.uk

Okay, so it's a tiny minicomic, and the joke is pretty much told on the cover, but still, somehow, I was expecting a bit more from this. Mainly I guess because the "plot" (such that it was) mostly involves two monsters arguing about whether Cloverfield is any good or not. Their discussion reaches about the heights of your average Youtube comment (ie. it sucks! It rocks! I'll fight you!).

Meanwhile, several other monsters chime in on what they think of various TV shows and movies. These bits are fairly funny ("It's Britney's kids Gamera feel sorry for."), and I wouldn't have minded an entire comic just filled with their brief "reviews". I guess I set my heights too high, but really, this could have been the Citizen Kane (or insert good movie here) of tiny, humourous Godzilla comics. Or at least Clark could have spent a little bit longer on the art.

Brighton Zine Fest

2011-03-03T17:18:00.000-08:00

So almost two weeks ago I went to Brighton for the Brighton Zine Fest. It was lots of fun (if somewhat smaller than last year's) and it was cool to see lots of people I know, talk about comics and zines, explore another town, discover the magic of My Little Pony cartoons, and lots of other fun stuff (the programme had a zine scavenger hunt! How fun!).

Of course I failed to take any photos whatsoever, and I've been procrastinating doing this post cause I wanted to finish the site redesign (look at it! What do you think? What should I add/change?), and because I wanted to get my flight booked back to Canada so I could tell you all when I am moving.

Well, I still haven't done that (procrastination!), but it'll be soon. I'll be at the London Comic and Small Press Expo on the 12th. I think this'll be the last event of this sort I'll be going to in the UK, so if you want to say hi to me (or get one of my zines for some reason) you should let me know if you'll be there. I think we'll be going out for drinks somewhere nearby afterwards. Hurray!