What a Whopper

By Dan Archer

www.archcomix.com

It's interesting to think about your own biases and how the decisions you make don't really make sense. I don't remember the last time I ate at, or was even in, a major fast food chain location. Except Subway, which I've grudgingly eaten at while cycling somewhere or just when I forgot to bring lunch to work. Why? Because it's "healthy"? I have no excuse really, as it's the largest chain restaurant in the world, and while their wikipedia page is mostly controversy free I'm pretty sure that as a huge multi-million (billion?) dollar company, they're probably as bad as any other large capitalist corporation. (Though maybe that's my biases showing...)

This comic deals with some of those controversies that large companies frequently deal with (and which most people never hear of or care about). In this case it's slave-labour (or close to it) that's used to pick the vegetables that are served in these "restaurants". The comic communicates this information effectively, beginning with a (true) story about migrant workers trying to escape from the terrible conditions they're dealing with, and then tackling the way the corporations have dealt with these issues.

The issue at hand is how terrible the (frequently illegal) workers who pick these vegetables are paid. They work in appalling conditions, for money that hasn't increased in 25 years. In the case covered here they fought for a 1 cent increase per bucket of tomatoes they harvested. Bringing the total they earned to 51 cents per 32 pound bucket. How much do you think you could earn hauling those around all day? I'm guessing I could make pretty much fuck all.

While the comic eventually concentrates on the actions of the Burger King company to avoid paying any increase to workers (including fining companies who they worked with who agreed to pay their workers extra), other information is also conveyed to the reader. While the conditions the tomato pickers in this comic deal with are deplorable, I already knew that migrant workers dealt with those issues (and more!). But one small throw away piece of information completely blew my mind. 

While discussing a boycott of certain companies who refused to increase the amount workers earned the comic states that "Taco Bell was blocked from 22 college and high school campuses". Maybe nothing in that sentence seems weird to you, but to me? Oh my fuck! High schools have Taco Bells? What the fuck is wrong with society if high schools have fucking fast food restaurants (presumably with high school students working in them)? Underfunding education while lining corporate pockets. Great job everyone, pat yourself on the back.

So yeah, corporations are horrible, capitalism is awful, humans are frequently terrible, but this comic by Dan Archer was pretty good. Even if it made me upset and angry at least it talked about the good that many people and organizations are doing and provided places for people to find more information about the issues.

So in the spirit of that here's some information about Burger King labour controversies, and the Student/Farmworker Alliance who hope to "eliminate sweatshop conditions and modern-day slavery in the fields". I wish them my best.

Travel and Going Stories

By Claro

So after months and months it's hard to get back into the swing of writing reviews. I'd much rather procrastinate doing my homework in some other way!

But I keep getting more zines, and if I'm ever going to read them all I need to get reviewing, so here we go!

Travel and Going Stories is a travel zine, but whereas most travel zines are about an entire trip, Claro has made the choice of creating a zine that only covers the journey of getting somewhere. Claro takes a taxi across Newfoundland, hitchhikes in Ontario,  gets lost in a field full of stinging nettles somewhere, and has other adventures, but I generally have no idea why they were going to these places.

This doesn't bother me, as I liked these short travel stories of things that could have gone horribly wrong somehow, but ended up working out alright in the end. Some of them reminded me of some of the trips I've gone on: sleeping under a table in a hallway in Montreal, or hoping that we could get in touch with my friend's friend after we got stuck in the middle of nowhere hitchhiking.

The layout and design is kind of strange, switching between text that was created on a typewriter, handwritten, and even cut out and pasted. This can happen in the middle of a sentence! But while that seems like it might really mess with the reading experience I didn't actually find it that problematic, and found this zine to be an enjoyable read.

A Conversational History: Roberts Street Social Centre

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.

DIY Zine Libraries

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.

A Fall A Part

By JP Coovert
onepercentpress.com
jpcoovert.com

The inside front and back covers of this zine are filled with not quite spirals. This almost terrified me enough to throw the zine across the room, run away, and find somewhere to hide. Why? Because spirals are terrifying. Don't believe me? You should read Uzumaki by Junji Ito, one of my favourite comics of all time. Look at this page. (Don't look at that page if you are squeamish.)


(Inside front cover.)

Coovert's actual comic isn't anything like Uzumaki, though it is still somewhat scary. It's about when his mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. It's a scary thing to experience I'm sure, and as her hair falls out, her body fails her, and her marriage starts falling apart it's not exactly happy reading.

I don't really want to ruin anything about what happens to the various characters, but not everything that happens in here is doom and gloom at least. This isn't the usual thing I'm into, but it's a well put together, attractive little comic.

Squatters Handbook 13th Edition

By the Advisory Service for Squatters
www.squatter.org.uk
£1.50

There are really only two reasons to read this zine. Either a. you’re incredibly interested the legalities involved with squatting in the UK because you’re studying law or something, or b. you are squatting somewhere and want to know what rights you have.

This massive (over eighty pages!) zine is packed full of information relating to what rights squatters have, how to find a place to squat, what to do once you’ve moved in (how to get electricity and so forth), and what to do when faced with eviction orders.

It’s technical, there’s a lot of legal jargon, and it’s not really that interesting to just read fully unless you need to know the information here. I skimmed most of it, because I just couldn’t really deal with reading paragraphs like...

Actually, screw it. I can’t even be bothered to type out some boring paragraph.

This zine is incredibly informative, and if you have intentions on squatting somewhere in the UK it’s something you should definitely have so you know what rights you have. But if you just want to read about tips and stories about squatting you’re better off finding something else to read. Then tell me about it so that I can read it too.

Larry - Spring '10

By Lee

I got the second issue of Lee's zine months and months ago, and as I think I'm going to get issue three at the Birmingham Zine Festival next week, I thought it would be a good time to actually read this one.

Despite being an art student Lee fills his zine with loads of text. Anecdotes about feuding accordionists, complaints about how the bus system where he lives is terrible (it certainly sounds awful), and things he's overheard at the barbershop.

There are also longer pieces dealing with social anxiety, which is certainly something I can identify with, relationships (or rather a lack of them), and a "how to" I will ever do (anything with ingredients that "will burn through your hands and corrode your bones into dust" isn't coming near me, even if it is for art).

While's Lee's zine isn't entirely personal, there are aspect that are. I find these zines kind of strange as they can allow you into a person's personal space, and know some of their fears and internal confusions. Considering how often zinesters seem to be somewhat awkward in social situations I wonder if they feel as though writing, isntead of spoken words, is the only way they can properly express their emotions. Strangely I think I'd rather tell people about my feelings in real life than print them in a zine.

Oh, and if you're at all interested in this zine you might want to check out the zine I made about the first Midlands zine meetup for which Lee wrote about desperately trying to finish his zine before hand.

i live in a fukt up! society three

It’s things photocopied out of newspapers! Headlines, articles, some photos, infographics and stuff.

Some of the pictures are good (there’s clearly a reason why they were cut out and photocopied), but the articles generally fall into the category of “depressing”. Hmm, I guess that’s why this zine is called what it’s called.

I generally “read” the paper every day. This usually means I ignore pretty much anything about politics or politicians because I find them incredibly boring and disheartening. They’re either saying stuff I violently disagree with, or proposing ideas I like but that I don’t think have any chance in hell of actually happening.

The rest of the paper is much the same, horrible things happening to people. Except that they don’t even mention places where real horrible things are happening (ie. Africa) unless it’s super major important, but even that will probably get bumped if there is some sort of local scandal.

Perhaps I am just too cynical and jaded, but I’m honestly not sure if the world can even get better at this point. What do you think?

So what do I read? Headlines, opening paragraphs to stories, “interesting” stories, some of the arts coverage, letters in the sports section that complain every week that there is no coverage of female athletes. I’m honestly sort of drawing a blank on what I do read, which indicates that most of it doesn't leave any sort of mark in my brain at all. Blah.

The Shed – An Unexplained Mystery

One of the problems with this site is that I’m left looking at things like this and wondering if I should even review it. I mean it’s only one (double sided) piece of paper. Is that a zine? But if it was cut and folded smaller it would, of course, be a zine. Double standards!

Perhaps an even greater unexplained mystery is where I got this comic and who made it. I have no idea to either question. I sort of wonder if it’s even finished, I mean, there’s that big blank space on the cover. Surely something must fit into that space? It really seems like it, as the second page begins with “Then one day I...”. I don’t think you’d start a comic with that, there has to be something happening beforehand for the “then” to make any sense.

So what’s the comic actually about? Well a shed. A mysterious one that appears on an allotment. It is mysterious, and the (true) story is built up around it in a fairly effective way, but this really seems like it belongs in a longer collection than by itself. Perhaps that was the original/eventual plan, but it’s not how it ended up in my hands.

Larry #1

By Lee
myspace.com/the_screever_lee

This is the other zine I got at the recent Midlands zinester meetup in Nottingham, and it totally helped me pass the time on my train ride home. I was a little worried when I first opened it, as it stated that it was made to fulfil the ideas of “anti-perfect” and that spelling and grammar mistakes had been intentionally retained. This kind of drove my inner editor insane, and I worried that it’d be almost unreadable.

Thankfully, Lee seems to be able to spell and put together a sentence, so any errors that existed were ones I didn’t notice. Larry is sort of like a personal magazine, filled with loads of different content. There are little essays about his social anxiety (which I can totally relate to, having gone through pretty much the exact same things, though I’m sure he won’t believe me based on how I acted in Nottingham), why he’s straight edge, a piece on his university, and a completely valid complaint about the bus system near where he lives (“We’ve subcontracted the buses on that route, so your bus pass is no longer valid.”).

There’s also instructions on how to emulsion transfer (which were a little hard to read as they were hand written, but which I think I might try), a piece on single player rpg books (like choose your own adventure I think?), photographs (which generally didn’t reproduce that well), reviews, an activity page (!!!), a picture of dinosaur (!!!), and a piece on why you should turn your cellphone off at night if you’re not in the habit of getting emergency phone calls in the middle of the night. Holy shit, that’s right! I will be saving electricity by turning off my phone. Thank you Lee! I feel really dumb now. I hope issue two will have similarly life changing information.

Horses!

By Ray
myspace.com/granandpop

Recently I helped organize a Midlands zine meetup on the wemakezines ning http://wemakezines.ning.com/. A few of us got together in Nottingham, and despite fewer people coming than expected, a good time seemed to be had by all. We talked about and traded zines, went to an art gallery that was having an exhibition about/inspired by the Soviet space program ( like oh em gee totally awesome <3 <3 <3), had dinner, and made vague plans to meet again.

One of the zines I got was this one about Ray’s “irrational fear of horses”. Now to be honest, he may claim his fear is irrational, but it is far, far more rational than my greatest fear (or at least one of them), which is flying jellyfish. Eurgh. Even thinking of it gives me shivers. Floating around in the sky with their electric tentacles going every which way, preventing me from ever leaving the house again. I am eternally gratefully these monstrosities do not exist in real life.

But horses do exist! And Ray is afraid of them. In his zine he goes through the reasons why people usually have a fear of horses, explains his previous exposures to horses, and tells about instances when his fears have caused him inconvenience. Plus he explains the, far more sensible, reason why he’s afraid of birds. I could tell you about my hate/fear relationship with swans, but I’ll leave that for my own zines.

An Investigation: Shoplifting

By Badface

I used to shoplift a lot. Well not “a lot” a lot, but I stole several hundred dollars worth of stuff over a couple of years. It adds up pretty quick, especially when you’re stealing text books from your university (expensive!).

Shoplifting becomes addictive, the thrill, the adrenalin, the rush, the sense of accomplishment. Badface says that after shoplifting the “relief and buzz is like a drug running all through my body. Except it’s way better than drugs...”. Even if you start out shoplifting for need, you probably end up shoplifting random crap you don’t even want because it becomes an addictive habit. Something that is both incredibly easy and almost second nature. “Oh,” you think “that looks vaguely interesting, but I can’t be bothered spending money on it” and then you walk out of the store, and later find that no, it wasn’t worth paying for, but it also wasn’t worth stealing.

This small zine is about Badface’s first time shoplifting. The fear, the thrill, the excuses: it’ll all ring true to anyone who’s ever shoplifted before. The only really puzzling thing is that it’s all about shoplifting CDs. I’m kind of shocked anyone would bother to do that in a world where you can download pretty much any song you can imagine in about five minutes. To each their own I suppose.

Kiahan: A Tale of Migration

By Carrie MacKinnon
Calais Migrant Solidarity
noborders.org.uk

Sometimes I read things that are uplifting and make me feel good about humanity, not often, but sometimes. This is not one of those times. Instead, this is a comic that makes me angry and frustrated with humanity and the life of privilege that I have just by being born a white English speaker.

This zine starts with comics telling the story of the title character, Kiahan. He was born in Afghanistan, but when his father is killed by the Taliban he and his brother flee the country and try to make their way to the UK. Is Kiahan a real person? It doesn’t really matter as the experiences described here are real. People spend all their money to be packed into trucks and smuggled into countries that don’t want them. They are placed in terrible living conditions and must fight not to be sent back to a country most people in the west would never want to visit, let alone live in.

Interspaced between the comic pages are text pieces that range from reports on the Calais shantytowns where Kiahan lived, to more general pieces of information on refugees, detention centre, and the No Borders group.

There are website addresses and contact information for a lot of different support groups involved with refugees, and if nothing else this zine reminded me about issues I care about and inspired me to try and do some good instead of sitting around reading comics all day.

Out of Control #4.2

By David Drexler
www.azothdesign.com

I was quite looking forward to this zine, as I really enjoyed the last issue that I read. However, I found it disappointing.

The zine is made up of three essays, and unlike last time the language used in them seems far more...normal. The first essay is on the nature of time and a theory on why coincidences happen. Now I myself have spent time thinking about the nature of the universe, and what if everything we know is a lie, etc. (mostly through the “we all live in a computer simulation” idea), but I just couldn’t really get into this. I don’t think of coincidences as something special or important, for every person whose last name seems to reflect on their career, there are thousands we don’t notice who have no connection.

The second essay continues to discuss various aspects about the creation of a reality, and focuses on the idea of “hronir” from a Borges short story (that as I believe I read on the same trip that I got this zine, perhaps fulfilling Drexler’s idea that thought can create imperfect objects). The whole thing sort of reminds me of Philip K. Dick (and Borges), and I’m realizing that I much prefer my discussions on the nature of reality to occur in fiction. A Dickian short story about trying to create thought-ideas in reality sounds pretty good.

The third essay is on the nature of truth, and again discusses something that sounds like a good basis for a story. The concept of “vac siddhi” is “if you never speak anything but the exact truth, eventually, everything you say will become true.”
The essay goes into a bit of territory I find a bit...off putting. Namely equating the idea that there are certain cultures/countries that lie more than others and that has led to do their current impoverished state. Surely Americans, and politicians, lie all the time, yet they are amongst the richest people in the world. (Yes, yes, global economic collapse, whatever.)

Overall there are some interesting ideas here, but I guess I’d rather have them conveyed to me through fiction. Maybe I should write them myself. Also, there are no mummies doing strange experiments in this issue. A clear failure!

Peach Melba #8

By Pearl
PO Box 74
Brighton
BN1 4ZQ

I recently attended the Brighton Zine Fest, and one of the really rad things I saw there was a little girl (12? I am terrible at ages) who made her own zines and came to my artist trading card workshop (though I just like anyone that comes to my workshops really).

Anyway, her zine, Peach Melba, is super cute. It’s a single, double-sided piece of paper that is cunningly cut and folded to create lots of pages of different sizes. On them are random lists and writings: words she might use in a story about pirates, questions for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (“Can I assume you have read Animal Farm?”), the fact that she likes Philip Pullman novels (aaaah, my friend just met him and I am so jealous), countries that have laws about blasphemy, uses for string, things that are green.

I will stop myself before I list everything in the zine, but yeah it’s super cute, and way more interesting than some zines I've gotten from adults! I can’t wait to read the other issues I have.

Blackout IV

By Phillip Buchan, Jack Fallows, and Phil Marsden

You’d think that by this point I’d be better at reviewing comedic comic anthologies, but I’m really not.

The first story here, written by Phillip Buchan and drawn by Phil Marsden, is a pretty cute one that reminded me of Pizzeria Kamikaze a little. You’re dead? And in somewhere that might be hell? Well time to get a job digging graves for no apparent reason. Now let’s go get drunk! Anyway, it manages to be cute, funny, and rather grim all in the span of just three pages. I wish I had a hoodie with skeleton bones printed on it.

The next two stories are both “true life tales”, or whatever they’re called. The first one, by Jack Fallows, is a tale of teenage awkwardness, which is actually pretty good (“but I only went to the club to use the bouncy castle!”), and the second, again by the two Phil(lip)s, is just kind of surreal. What would I do if I was “kidnapped” by a group of hippie girls? Strange!

The other stories (all entirely done by Phil Marsden I believe) I didn’t really care for that much (sorry Phil!). The one about how long he’s been drawing comics is alright, but I guess I just don’t find comics about fat, naked, drunk people vomiting on each other that hilarious... Still, his art in the stories that Phillip Buchan drew works quite well.

List #13: moving on

List #13: moving on
By Ramsey Everydaypants
www.everydaypants.com

Seven things you learn about Ramsey by reading this zine

1. What she’s thinking about
2. Who she’s lived with
3. What television she watches
4. What vegetables she grows
5. How she goes through a breakup
6. What she does at work
7. What she looks for in a boy

Six things in this zine beginning with the letter ‘D’

1. Drawings
2. Differences
3. Dreams
4. Disclaimers
5. Dinosaurs
6. Dogs

Four reasons why List #13 is rad

1. It’s an insight into someone’s mind
2. There are revelations from the past
3. Guest lists!
4. It made me want to make my own lists (who have I lived with?)

Milkyboots 8

Milkyboots 8
By Virginia
milkyboots.blogspot.com

One thing I find really interesting in the world of mini comics are the sheer number of autobiographic comics that are produced. I think I have way more autobio mini comics than any other genre. At times Milkyboots seems more like illustrated prose (lots of narration), but that doesn’t mean it’s not comics, or that I didn’t enjoy it.

I read this comic the night before I went to London to go to a zine event. I’d just printed off a bunch of copies of some of the zines I’ve made recently and was having a sort of crisis. ie. I thought they were all terrible and nobody would want them. While that did continue the next today at the actual zine event (where I did eventually trade away most of my zines), at least while I was reading about Virginia’s similar crisis of self confidence in (and about) Milkyboots I felt a little better.

And I guess that’s one of the appeals of comics like this, and maybe why there are so many autobio comics. You can say “That’s just like what I did/how I am feeling,” whether it’s getting really drunk at a party, trying (and failing) to find a job, baking cookies, or continuing a relationship that you know you shouldn’t but can’t stop yourself. In fact it really takes a lot of guts to put together something like this, and even more to give it to other people.

Last year’s Portland Zine Symposium was now so long ago I don’t remember the people I got zines from. Who were you Virginia? What did we talk about? Next time we can talk about our anxieties.

Pod Post Will Conquer Tokyo

Pod Post Will Conquer Tokyo
By Carolee-Pod
www.superdilettante.com
www.podpodpost.com
PO Box 170271
San Francisco
California
94117
USA

One of my big disappointments from last year’s Portland Zine Symposium was that I totally failed to get any Pod Post stuff (merit badges for sending mail!). I spent most of my first day volunteering, and by the time I got to their table they were out of a bunch of stuff. When I went back on Sunday (so busy that weekend) to get more stuff they were gone!

I did manage to get this one zine, though it was a bit of a disappointment.

Based on the paper size (a4!) and ephemera style contents I think this zine was actually made in Japan, which is something I never managed to accomplish during all my travels (or at least not entirely).

Pod Post Will Conquer Tokyo seems to have started as a diary/scrapbook more than anything else. It’s filled with stickers, ads, notes, stamps, coupons, and other papery stuff. Everything is taped, glued, paperclipped, or stapled into the book, and surrounded by (sort of hard to read) hand written notes.

Some of it is neat (sidewalk rubbings of weird designs! I wish I had thought to do that!), but having been to Japan (and spent two years in Asia) I guess I’m not as amazed by hamburger ads and pictures of hotel rooms. Next time Pod Post. (Except their site says they're taking the year off. Nooooooooo! That'll teach me to take six months to read a zine.)

Love Zine #4

Love Zine #4
By Liberty

Is that the name of this zine? Is that who made it? I don’t know. There’s not really any information included here. It says it’s the fourth edition of “my Love Zine” so I dunno, is that the same as issue four?

The zine is filled with lots of different quotes and excerpts from various things in tiny tiny print (in an attempt to “conserve paper” according to a note made by the author). I’ll admit that I didn’t read all the stuff in here. I read most of it, but the several pages of massage techniques, tennis balls in a sock stuff, and lists of words were just too much for me.

As for what I did read? Uhm, I have to admit a lot of it didn’t register. Poetry is something that just generally goes in one ear and out the other, while the quotes (mostly context free) did much the same. It is mostly feel good stuff. There are a few pages (with tiny tiny print) with an essay/thoughts on gender politics and queer/trans issues, which I found interesting, though I’m not sure is worth picking the zine up for. There are probably other zines that deal with that issue with less tiny type.

One thing I did really like was the neat little insert. It’s done with smaller paper (2.5 x 4 maybe?) folded and stapled into the crease of the zine. It’s neat! I love it when people play with formats like that.