Month: January 2016

Dear Crush
Lydia Martin
lydiamartin976@gmail.com

I didn’t intend for it to be ‘crush week’ in the review section of the blog, but here we are! I do love a good crush story (my first paid publication was about my crush), and Dear Crush presents notes the many crushes from her life – be them good and bad.

Colour! Unless you’re printing at home (and sometimes even if you are printing at home), colour printing can get expensive, so I suppose it’s no surprise that one might be attracted to the colour zine covers in amongst the treasure trove that is Sticky Institute. Colour combined with subject matter landed this zine in my stack of zine purchases.

Dear Crush features small pieces of art along with colour-copied sticky notes written out to crushes over Lydia’s life. Some where innocent. Some were quite obviously less so. I found myself wondering if the notes were in chronological order, as the seriousness of the ‘feels’ increased as the reading went on.

They are all short reads, so I had to remind myself to slow down and really take in the words as well as the drawings that went alongside them.

Art is like poetry to me – I often get the interpretations wrong. I couldn’t help my brain from being tickled by the presentation of the notes. They are, after all, on sticky notes. Reminders easily thrown away. I felt like Lydia might have been trying to say something about the nature of crushes by using sticky notes. In the end, though, I found myself feeling like there was a depth of feeling missing because of it. Maybe I’m supposed to feel that way? Perhaps that is the nature of crushes, the unrequited.

Either way, I’m not sure. It made me feel something, which is the goal of most art, but the feeling was of that of a shared secret that ended up not being as important as I thought it would be.

But hey, it made me think. It made me look at the presentation and content as one presentation instead of things that happen at the same time on the same page. Very curious, and an enjoyed intellectual dance.

There is something that I feel I must add into this review that isn’t about the content. I confess that if I’d been less anxious and paying more attention to the price of this zine, I wouldn’t have bought it because of the price tag. I have no authority to say what a zine should be priced at or how a creator should value their work. Colour print can get bloody expensive, I know first hand, but one of the reasons I love zines is because I can afford them. At $10, this zine is out of my range. It’s only by the levels of my anxiety and the fact I ended up having enough cash that I was able to buy Dear Crush.

Zine Crush 3
Various
http://pioneerspress.com/products/zine-crush-volume-3

Squee! It’s like Dear Anonymous for crush letters! *drowns in piles of fuzzy love hearts*

First let me apologise for my shoddy photography. The cover is actually a lovely pale yellow colour. My decision to go with natural lighting to photograph a bunch of zines was, for the most part, a bad one. Sigh.

Back to fuzzy love hearts.

Zine Crush is one of those things that I kind of thought that I might have heard of before, so at $2 on Sticky Institute’s shelf, I had to get me some of that. I’m so happy I did! This zine is great. And not just because of the very cute subtitle: even more confessions of like

I think crushes are one of those experiences that nearly everyone can relate to, be they sexual, intellectual, crushes on publications rather than people. One of the things that makes this zine excellent is that it includes all of those. It’s not ‘just for people crushing on other people’. I think that adds a fantastic element to the whole thing.

The singles ads/’ads’? here and there in the zine make it feel like more of a ‘zine crush digest’ with singles listings. The comics and the art add to this effect. I felt so ‘in’ (‘in’ what, exactly, I’m not sure. In the know? In with the cool kids?) while I was reading this. A digest of luuuurve. This is one of those zines that I’m so excited about, and I can quite perfectly articulate why.

I must admit that part of me went back to my wistful, angsty teenager days when all I wanted was someone to have a crush on me. How wonderful that would have been! Ah, the days of rosy glasses.

Anyway, definitely a thumbs up. I’m looking forward to hunting the first two down.

Strange News From Another Star
?
http://www.newseda.com/

Every now and then, you come across a person who has such a dramatically different view of the world than you that it feels like you’re speaking different language when you’re using the same words.

This zine was a bit like that. Down the rabbit hole!

Strange News From Another Star is a strange mix of comic, poetry, and cut and paste. I thought I knew what it was all about in the first few pages, but then it ripped out those assumptions. The first couple of pages mentions a book called ‘Interior Voyages’, and I felt like I was going deeper and deeper into someone’s subconscious or dream as I turned each page.

I like the surprise of it being so different, and I quite enjoyed the art. And how could you not like a zine that gently reminds you of which way is up and then invites you to step inside.

Perhaps, then, you can understand my Alice in Wonderland reference? (Eat me/drink me.)

I must confess, though, that I had no idea what most of it meant. I was happy to float along in my reading, but I can see that that sort of thing might bother some people. For me, it was more about the ride, even if the words were trying to say things that I just couldn’t straighten out in my head.

But, if you don’t mind the possibility of getting completely lost, then you should definitely give it a go.