One Thousand Lies

By Laura Terry

www.bravesailor.com

This was a cute little story about a travelling itinerant who returns to LA to visit his former guardian, a bit shot lawyer. There's an immediate disconnect between the lives of these two people. One who is constantly dealing with huge piles of money, and the other who has all of their belongings strapped to their back.

The comic is about telling stories, and features the traveller telling increasingly ridiculous stories about some of the places they've visited on their travels. There's a city where the library is where you go for drug deals while intellectuals hang out in the playground providing answers for people, one where the railway tracks separate the mobile part of the city from the permanent part, and a city that was built to reflect the universe, but is now eerily empty.

The rapport between the two main characters is well represented, and you can tell a lot about the relationship between the characters just from their body language and the way they talk to each other. The dialogue and actions manage to reveal a lot about their interests and how they feel about both their own lives, and the lives of each other. That the friendship even exists despite the vast differences in lifestyles says a lot!

The stories are all fun, and even when they're being "creepy", it's still in a humourous way. The art works pretty well for the story it's telling, and Terry is good at making pages of "talking heads" look visually appealing as the characters banter back and forth. I also enjoyed the use of gray shading to give depth and shadow to the artwork.

Chase the Sun #2 Westwarder-Bound

By Emily

So those of you blessed with amazing powers of observation will notice that the title of this post differs from the text on the picture above. This is because I, in my infinite wisdom, managed to scan the back cover instead of the front. And I'm too lazy to go scan it again.

When I went to Portland a few years ago I used the Zinester's Guide to Portland. I thought it was a pretty awesome guidebook that told me where lots of cool things were. I've travelled quite a lot, and used guidebooks that told me little that actually interested me (Lonely Planet's guide to Japan being the most disappointing*), so I was excited to use a guidebook that told me where all the vegetarian restaurants and thrift stores were.

When I went back to Vancouver I drew and made my own guide to the city. It was fun to make, though it could have been improved in about a million ways. I left copies in a bunch of places, and one of my friends said that they gave copies to people that visited them.

This zine made by Emily is similar in many ways. It's a tiny zine she made for her friends who visited Vancouver. It tells you about vegetarian restaurants, parks, libraries, used bookstores, and other neat stuff. I enjoy how personal it is (the guide on how to get back to her house and the phone numbers in the back mean I can't just give this to other people), though a more general one would have been good too.

Ultimately, I love travelling to cities and I love zines, so zines about cities are one of my favourite things. You should definitely make a zine guide to your city and then send me a copy!

*When it talked about castles and geisha-girls being the Japan of "your imagination" I realized I had the wrong book. The Japan of my imagination is full of robots, neon, and comic books.

Futuristic Dwellings

By Philippa Rice
thejuzzard.blogspot.com
thejuzzard.etsy.com

Robots. Spaceships. The future.

This zine is pretty much aimed directly at me. It’s just page after page of beautifully drawn futuristic cityscapes. They’re completely ridiculous and unrealistic, but the intricacy in the art is just incredible.

The details on some of the pages are kind of insane, and there’s lots of little hidden easter eggs in the pictures (the zine even comes with a “things to find” insert). However it’s not just the details that are impressive. After looking at the pictures close up I went through it again and looked at everything at arm’s length, allowing myself to take in the full picture all at once. I wish I had bigger versions of these images.

Here’s a video of Philippa drawing one of the pictures! Amazing!