Docs Issue 1

PO Box 26183
Baltimore, MD
21210
USA

I'll admit, I wasn't really sure what I was reading until I got to the final page of this zine and read the guidelines for people who want to submit to future issues. So what is Docs? Well, it's brief three topic/page biographies of people: living, dead, or entirely fictional.

And by "biography" I'm speaking pretty loosely, there are pictures, and sheet music, and weird stories, and to be honest I really didn't have any idea what I was reading the first time through. Where these true? They didn't really seem to be...

But then I hit the final "biography" in here (Hrtumt Slitte by F. L. Smith), and even if it still confused me to some extent, it read like the sort of collection of ephemera that I love and I didn't really care that I didn't really "get" the rest of the zine". Each page of Hrtumt Slitte is clearly part of a larger piece that does not exist. The table of contents (with footnote) seems to have no relation to the other pages. The first page is a description of Kid Kinney ("a loathsome creature") from someone who hates him. The second page is a series of TV show proposals that all finish with everything unraveling. But the final page was what clinched it for me. A description of someone exploring an abandoned building that features a hidden message amongst the text _and_ stops midway through a sentence with no resolution? That sounds like something that I'd write! (No wonder nobody reviews my zines...)

I'm not sure what the next issue of Docs will contain, but I hope it has more content like that final biography.

Deadtime Stories

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.

City of Roses

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.

The Matter Second Issue Preview

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.

The Superman Stories 2

By Mark Russell
dreadful-blog.livejournal.com
Half size, 60 pages, $5.

Do you know that meme about how Superman is a total jackass? All those out of context panels and covers from ‘60s comics where Superman is feeding Lois Lane to wolves and saying “Haha Lois, I bet you wish you’d never found out my secret identity was Clark Kent.”* and similar? They're pretty hilarious, and the stories Russell has written seem to owe a lot to them, because the Superman that appears in his stories is frequently a total dick.

*I may have just made this up.

This isn’t to say that Russell doesn’t have a firm grasp of Superman’s character. If anything he’s thought through the idea of Superman more than a lot of the people that have written him in recent years. (Though that may say more about current Superman comics than anything else.) His portrayal of Superman as a kind of world-weary guy who’s just doing his job (saving the world) every day until he can retire (never) is pretty effective overall.

And Russell’s Superman does seem to spend most of his time flying around and rescuing people. He doesn’t fight many super villains, instead trying to stop them before they start. The only appearance by one of Superman's comic book enemies is when Lex Luthor goes to his high school graduation.

This book really drives home how many (fictional) people Superman does save. When Superman (he seems to have given up on Clark Kent) marries Lois Lane they go on their honeymoon, but only for three days because Superman has calculated that he saves twenty lives a day, and that by taking three days off he’s let sixty people die. Brutal.

Of course it’s not all Superman rescuing people, as one of the other main characters is Jesus (yes, that Jesus), and he spends time rescuing people too. God also shows up, and there are some angels and scenes that occur in Heaven, none of which I really cared for. I mean, the Jesus who appears is a pretty nice guy (he doesn’t judge people or anything, he just helps them) and the other scenes are written well enough (unlike this review), it’s just that I don’t care. I’ve experienced enough Judeo-Christian-Islamic centred stories for one lifetime and it doesn’t bother me if I never read another one.

Russell explains his inclusion of God and Jesus in his introduction, where he says that as a child he watched Superman cartoons on Saturday morning, and went to church on Sunday morning. Thus he viewed God as a superhero, and felt Superman had theological implications. Yeah, he’s probably right, but I’d rather have more stories about Superman fighting intelligent gorillas.

In addition to God and Jesus, Russell also makes up a bunch of new characters for no apparent reason. If you’re already writing the people that already exist incredibly far out of character what is the point of creating Superman’s grandmother and her obsession with finding a sack of gold (which Russell clearly found far more hilarious than I did)? Just make it his mom, she's already old. And all the other stories about old people! These clearly don’t belong in a book about Superman (insert smiley emoticon).

Despite these complaints this book is still pretty funny and worth reading. The brief portrayal of Aquaman as a guy who thinks democracy is stupid (royalty is awesome!), the introductory piece about how screwed up and boring Krypton was before it exploded (soup is awesome!), and the suggestions people give Superman on how to improve the world are some of my favourite bits. All it’s missing are what every Superman story needs, monsters and robots.

Complete Story of Assassination

Woah, this is a pretty epic group zine with lots of different types of content. There’s loads of different drawings and other pieces of art, 19th century smut (and an essay about it!), other types of smut, and lots of other stuff!

There’s very much a steampunk-y vibe running through the content here, and that can be seen in the opening story, which I kind of feared would fill the entire zine. It features a number of lesbian circus performers who are also engineers, music makers, and just all around amazing people. However, when walking through the woods with someone, listening to the birds and appreciating nature, I think I would run away if they started talking to me like this:

“We are at the end of a cycle of incoming legislation that has removed rights of access and use to commons previously enjoyed by anyone, and enables land to be titled to a single owner. This theft pure and simple results in many people moving to the factory-cities from which you escape, just in time to be exploited by the ‘Industrial Revolution’, and to land being used for cash crops such as cotton. We prefer rather a sufficiency in which people become their surroundings, not alienated figures in a landscape.”

I mean, what?

I felt there was very much an anti-urban/city/modern society feel to much of the content here, which isn’t something I’m really down with. I love cities! I mean, sure in theory I’d be fine living somewhere smaller if everyone there was super awesome, but the likelihood of that happening seems incredibly slim.

There’re instructions on how to make a spinning dream machine using your record player, poetry, weird found objects, tattoos, and an account of a weird encounter with a police officer in Holland. Overall a well put together and interesting group zine.

Phoenixii Issue 1

phoenixiizine@googlemail.com

I think I’ve mentioned before how poetry and song lyrics don’t really register with me. In university I was about two thirds of the way through the epic poem Ruslan and Lyudmilla by Alexander Pushkin before I realized I’d read it before. This is a poem several hundred pages long that I had studied in class and possible even written an essay about, yet I remembered absolutely nothing about it. Even now I don’t recall very much. There was a witch I think.

As you can probably tell by that intro, this zine features a bunch of poetry and song lyrics that I have completely forgotten. This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy these forms of art, more that I find them hard to absorb in the written form. I’ve enjoyed listening to poets perform their work, and think that the rhythm and cadence in their voice while performing can play a major part in how a work is absorbed.

This zine does feature more than just poetry though, there’s also a rather depressing short story about loneliness, drug abuse, and raves. It’s not the most comforting of reading material, and the stilted way many of the characters talk kind of draws you out of it. Prose writers (including me) should read their dialogue out loud first. People don’t talk in grammatically correct sentences all the time.

Menstruation Station: “Menarche Aboard!”

Menstruation Station: “Menarche Aboard!”
By Jen Vaughn
www.thevaughncurse.com
PO Box 141
Hartford, VT
05047, USA

The creator of this comic actually apologized to me when we were trading, because the only one of her comics she had left to trade was the one about girls bleeding, and boys hate that because it is icky and gross. I thought that was funny, and traded with her anyway (despite girls bleeding being icky and gross, ew).

The comics and art here are all related to, eep, periods. And some of them are gross, though probably not in the way you expect. There’s a “wimpy uterus” that you can cut out and wear like a menstrual mask (you too boys!), a comic about a rock band that almost makes me throw up a little in my mouth, and something about an “engorgement charm” that I don’t think I really want to know any more about.


Not that it’s all about that, the opening strip is a romance set at a circus, and while it does kind of tie in to the overall theme, you can just ignore the last panel and read it as a straight story.

So maybe I would have enjoyed one of Vaughn’s other comics more, but it probably wouldn’t have caused as physical a reaction, and that has to count for something right?

A Character Sandwich

A Character Sandwich
By Robin Layne
myspace.com/robin_layne

This is a collection of short pieces of fiction, and by golly are they ever short. None of them is more than two pages, and the shortest is just over one hundred words. That’s short!

The pieces were mostly written, and the zine made, for classes given by Write Around Portland and the Portland Community College. I don’t think I could republish anything I wrote for school, as I’m sure it is all awful. I recently reread the final history essay I wrote (on the history of Canadian comics) for my degree, and wow, I thought the writing in that was pretty terrible. Time passes I suppose.

As I said above, most of the pieces (Layne calls them sketches) here are really short. Too short to really get a handle on, or even see how competent Layne is as a writer. Some of them seem like they could be interesting and lead into larger works, but I won’t be checking them out, as the longest piece in here is four pages on how Layne found god as a child and great religion is. Anyone with a world view like that isn’t someone whose work I’m actively going to seek out.

I did like the table of contents though, which referred to different parts of writing as different ingredients in an actual sandwich. Cute.

Blink Vol 2

Blink Vol 2
By Julia Lipscomb

I very almost didn’t read this zine. Or rather, I almost didn’t bother to finish reading it.

The opening piece of writing is presented in huge blocks of text lacking in capitals and looks like

datta. dayadhvam. damyatta. to give. to sympathize. to control. you lost control of who you are, so you try to control me, so i am trying to control you but i know that i can never control you because you can never control me you can’t assume that i will automatically adapt to your empathy.

and so forth. I put down the zine and dreaded reading more. Did I really want to read more than thirty pages of this stuff?

The second piece was fiction. This time it had capitals, and was considerably clearer to read, though it still featured passages such as

...he stared down, a definite integral is computed by any of its infinitely many antideriviatives: zeroes, no zeroes, there are always the non-zeros. But what is in the non-computable, and why is she still looking at him? It was longer than infinitesimal.

What. The. Fuck. This is a story about a boy liking a girl or something.

(And what is the proper way to pluralize “zero”?)

The zine continues, with page after page of text written in this strange, verbose, detail oriented, repetitive, stream of consciousness, conversational style. Some pieces seem to be fiction, some seem to be reminiscences, and I can’t really tell which is which. However as the zine progressed they become more readable, or my brain became attuned to their style.

A piece on the impossibility of reading Achebe in the sun by a pool became almost self referential as it stated how I felt when it said that the “maddening theoretical analysis ... became synonymous with a deafening insanity.” I felt like I was reading the words, but not absorbing anything.

And then things clicked as I read the final two pieces of the zine (which I read as one long piece because they seemed to meld into each other).

The first of these pieces is written by a narrator who is drunk, and becoming drunker. She repeats what she says, she goes off on tangents, she defines things, and she tries to think ideas through to their ends. It reads like a drunken arts student who has read too much theory, and suddenly I had a point of reference because that drunken arts student had been me. I had done the same things, I had rambled and talked about things nobody else cared about or understood, I had done things I later regretted doing, I had remembered half forgotten memories unconnected to everything that came before, I had vocalized my fears and dreams. It was all there.

If the piece was written while drunk it was either edited afterwards to make everything comprehensible or the author is the best drunk speller I have ever encountered, either of which is commendable.

In the end I came out of the zine thinking. I had felt a connection with the author that I hadn’t expected, and was glad that I’d persevered to the end.

Zine Libs Issue #2

Zine Libs Issue #2
By Caroline Paquita and Erick Lyle
www.carolinepaquita.com
PO Box 40272
San Francisco, CA
97170
USA
Half sized.

Mad libs! Those stories from when you were a kid that were missing words that you filled in to create amusingness. Except these ones are about punk houses, protests, and the end of the world.

The stories work pretty well and there’s even a grammar guide in the back explaining what all the different grammar terms mean. So if you can’t remember what an adverb actually is, then there’s a handy definition plus examples!

My only complaint is that the stories are way too long. After about two pages of asking my friends for adjectives, nouns, and places, most of their enthusiasm disappeared. So it was sometimes hard to get people to keep listing off words for up to four pages before being able to hear the story. I think a larger number of shorter stories would work better.

Guide to Timefighting

Guide to Timefighting
timefighters.org

Well this certainly isn’t what I expected.

What did I expect? Some sort of bizarre, rambling, nonsensical guide on how to organize your life and stop wasting time maybe. Or possibly some sort of bizarre, rambling, nonsensical narrative about travelling through time and fighting against agents of order/chaos and oh no the government is out to get me and you have to know the truth before I am killed and they’re coming for me you have to get out of the house right now.

(Why did I think this? I have no idea. I got the zine from some nice kids at the Portland Zine Symposium last year, and, while I didn’t talk to them much, they didn’t seem insane.)

Instead, this zine is the product of a collective that strives to create stories, media, and projects that hope to help create a sense of community amongst those who experience them.

It starts up with an introduction to what timefighting is, and what a timefighter does. It seems that timefighting is all about documenting what’s going on around you, so that others can learn from your experiences. Or maybe it’s something to do with sub-atomic particles, magick feathers, and time machines (yes, it does mention those things, which, combined with a page entitled “What to do when you find yourself stuck in a past life,” makes me wonder if maybe my second guess about what this zine was about wasn’t that far off the mark).

After the introduction, the zine goes on to give a number of examples of how you too can become a timefighter (!). The first is possibly the most interesting/inspiring. “Become a news source,” it says, “one of the best ways to get the news you want is to investigate it yourself.” In today’s world where the news we are presented with is frequently sensationalist garbage chosen by corporations in order to sell ad space, while the stories that you care about probably aren’t covered at all, this, unfortunately, rings incredibly true.

The rest of the writing projects are less revolutionary, though not necessarily less fun: revisit a place you’d discovered and see how it’s changed, write a story as both true and false, investigate the mundane.

The example given for writing a story as both true and false features possibly the most typically “zine-like” part of this publication. The true story tells of someone wanting to find out what is on the other side of some portholes that are installed in the bathroom of a restaurant. I’d totally want to know too if I’d seen them, and someone exploring things like that is the kind of thing I like reading about, so I’m glad someone went and found out. However, I won’t tell you what was discovered on the other side of the port holes, as that helps fulfil the goal of the final project.

That final project is creating mystery for the person reading what you’ve written. It features a story about someone building something. What is that something? I have no idea, as that’s blacked out every time it’s mentioned. I feel like I can almost see what it says, and that perhaps with a scanner, and some time spent with image programs I could figure it out. But do I really want to? Part of the appeal is trying to figure out what’s been created from the context, though I have to say I have no idea what it actually was (or if the story was even real).

There’s also a comic that is half how-to guide for timefighting, half battle with a giant clock. And really, what more do you want from a zine?

The Matter #1

The Matter #1
The Royal Springs Entertainment Company
therseco.com
Half legal sized.

What differentiates The Matter from a small press magazine? The screen printed cover? The fact that I bought it at the Portland Zine Symposium? The paper quality?

Ultimately it’s the intentions of the creators (and the cover), but the people working on this publication have clearly put a lot of time and effort into its design, which is something I fully support.

The book is a mixture of illustrated fiction and comics, from a number of different creators, interspaced with mostly black pages featuring single quotations from various people that represent what the magazine is about (words, pictures, conversation, science fiction, dragons, art) better than the three page editorial note at the end.

The first comic is about an issue I have yet to see any fiction about: Somalian pirates. The creator, Matt Strackbein, has clearly spent a lot of time researching this, as the only dialogue in the piece is in Somali. Or at least I think it is; my attempts to find an online Somali-English translator on the internet failed. He could just be writing gibberish. Not that that’s a problem, I already own comics in numerous languages I cannot understand, and the storytelling here is clear enough for me to follow.

The comic itself seems interesting enough, though at only seven pages of a longer narrative this part doesn’t really give you a feel for how the work will be. I do wonder about the somewhat cartoony style that is being used for the artwork, I’m not sure how well it goes with the story.

The next comic, the Brink, is billed both as the first chapter and as a sneak peak. The idea of a counsellor working on a space station seems pretty good (admittedly, I haven’t watched that much Star Trek), but the short piece here isn’t really enough to go on.

The final comic thankfully doesn’t have the problem of being an introduction, as it tells a complete story. It’s short, humourous piece about supergenius babies who want cookies. It didn’t do much for me to be honest.

Nor did either of the two prose pieces included here. I definitely feel as though more could be done with the second story, about a girl who is the only person left in a huge empty office after everyone else had been fired. It could definitely be developed more.

One major complaint I had is on the type of paper used. I’m sure people putting this zine together spent a lot of time choosing it, and while the flecked look works fairly well for the text pages, it doesn’t look so hot for the comics. White should be white, not some weird speckled beige. Unfortunately this is made even worse on the first comic because of the grey background that surrounds all images, hopefully they’ll clear up that problem for future issues.

So a not so fantastic start, but the creators put in a lot of work, and hopefully future issues will reach their potential.

Secret Space Inhabitants

Secret Space Inhabitants
Quarter sized.

The title of this zine is a complete and utter lie! It’s not about secret space inhabitants at all. It’s about creatures that live here on earth!

Unless it’s supposed to be about inhabitants of secret spaces, instead of secret inhabitants from outer space.

Factual or not, it features a guide to some thoroughly ridiculous creatures. There are descriptions and drawings of raccoon tailed birds, fungus farmers, tiny cyborgs that crystallize sunbeams, and the giant monster that lives under Halifax (why did nobody warn me?).

My two favourites were the skizzards, small rodent things that thrive on punk and metal music and live at the bottom of mosh pits, and the teapot whale, which brought back memories of the house hippo. Here is the video if you have never seen it before.



I was so sad when I discovered that the house hippo was not real. Everybody I knew wanted one. At least I can hold out hope for a teapot whale.

The Sex Workers of Planet San Taurus

The Sex Workers of Planet San Taurus
By Robot Earl
robnoxious.wordpress.com
$3, half sized.

This is a collection of two pieces of “queer sci-fi smut,” which is kind of an awesome idea. I remember several years ago I was dumpstering a bookstore for coverless magazines (collage material!), and found a bunch of romance novels that had been ripped in half. One of the (only) ones I took was a sci-fi romance novel, about a space alien who came down to earth and had sex with a girl. I couldn’t believe that it existed. I don’t know how it ended, as I only had the first half, but it can’t have been any worse than the romance novel I read about a girl starting (or stopping?) a revolution in a small European country for a guy who she hates/loves.

Anyway, while I was surprised at the time, the shelves full of “supernatural romance” (ie. vampires) show that there is a huge market for weirdo romance stuff, so hopefully this too can find its audience!

Both stories are set in the same universe, one where Earth has made contact with another planet and its inhabitants, the San Taurans. They’ve come to earth, given humans technology, and are, of course, fascinated by sex, which they don’t have. So in their cyborg bodies, which imitate human functions, they meet and have sex with Earthlings. The first story features some lesbian sex, and the second one features some guy-on-guy action, plus some group sex. Woohah.

How’s the writing? Well, it mentions space herpes, and the writer keeps using “tho,” “thru,” and other words that might be intended to make it sound more futuristic, but only succeeded in annoying me. But really, you know if you want to read this based on the title alone.

Cometbus #52 – The Spirit of St. Louis or How to Break Your Own Heart, a tragedy in 24 parts

Cometbus #52 – The Spirit of St. Louis or How to Break Your Own Heart, a tragedy in 24 parts
by Aaron Cometbus
$3 - Half Sized.
PO Box 4726
Berkeley, California
USA
94704

My friend who gave this to me was saying how he felt that everyone who was involved in the punk scene came from a kind of fucked up background, probably had some sort of family issues, and ended up embracing punk as a new family. I felt there was some truth to this idea, but that there were at least some people who ended up involved in the punk scene for other reasons (my brother and myself being examples a and b).

Now, I have to admit that this is my first issue of Cometbus, and I suppose that makes me a bad zine reader. I’m not quite sure how I’ve avoided it for so long. I’ve seen both issues and the books around, but have never sat down and read one despite having the opportunity to do so. That left me a little confused with this issue, as it reads so true, but is a work of fiction. Fiction that includes a lot of experiences Aaron has probably had, or heard about from his friends.

It’s about living in a not so great city, which is at least better than where you came from. About communities of friends that become so tight knit because there is nobody and nothing else there for them, and what happens when they inevitably fall apart. About love, and life, and everything else.

It’s pretty thick for a zine, weighing in at over sixty pages, and I can only assume that the massive print runs he must do on this thing are how he keeps the cost down. The production quality is pretty rad. It on good paper stock, and is well laid out, though fans of Aaron’s hand lettered pages will be frustrated that it’s all done by computer for this one.

The story will be pretty familiar to anyone who has lived in a punk house or been involved with punk scenes probably anywhere in North America (and maybe even in other places), but I enjoyed the story, and it was nice to read about these characters, despite the sad bits, after not really being involved in the scene for a while.