Month: April 2021

A Book of Rainbows #1
Shei
12 pages
https://linktr.ee/_godsavethequeer_

A Book of Rainbows #1 is an A5, full-colour zine about witchcraft, magic, and how Shei makes it all a part of their life.

Shei opens A Book of Rainbows by writing about their journey to self-belief and claiming the title of witch. From there, Shei shares their personal take on what magic is, thoughts on witchcraft and metal health, and more. There’s even a list of witchy resources at the back, and I do love a good resources list.

I enjoyed reading Shei’s thoughts and feelings. I could feel Shei’s vulnerability about sharing combined with love of the subject. They write with passion about the subject all the while acknowledging that these are personal things with different meanings for different people.

A Book of Rainbows is primarily handwritten with the exception of a piece called “I Am Freaking Magical (And So Are You)” which serves as an awesome call to arms for people to embrace the magical awesomeness inside themselves. Shei’s handwriting is clear and massive points for minding the margins and not cutting off words.

Shei’s usual style with designs, sketches, cut and paste, patterns works so very well for this zine. I love their style in all their zines, but in this combination of perzine and educational/introduction to witchcraft zine, it feels like the zine is a scrapbook. There’s something about it that makes it feel that much more personal and fun.

All in all, I’m already looking forward to the next one.

If you’re at all interested in witchcraft and love a perzine, definitely pick this one up.

Outer Spaces Issue #1
Amanda Capasso & Others
80 pages
[posty2k@protonmail.com](mailto:posty2k@protonmail.com)
(website no longer working)

Outer Spaces is a half full colour, half black and white, US-sized half-fold photography zine featuring images from cities around the world.

One way to travel without leaving your seat.

Following an inner title page that gives you the ‘@’ for all of the photographers involved, Outer Spaces launches into a collection of people and places in cities around the world. From Hong Kong, to Chicago, to Rajasthan India, regular daily life has been captured in these images. The images are an assortment of full page spreads, half page photos, and quarter-page photos.

For me, photography is a lot like poetry: if you’re trying to tell me something specific, it’s incredibly likely that I won’t understand it. That said, I’m moving past the intimidation of such things to enjoying finding my own meaning in things. For this zine, I found myself thinking about how, yes, we’re all human, but what amazingly different lives we can lead.

We often take our world bubbles around us for granted as the normal. This zine serves as a collection of reminders that there are all kinds of normal. Beautiful walkways in front of shops filled with plants in Bangkok, so many motorbikes on a packed bridge in Vietnam… However, to juxtapose that, people walk their dogs, people gather together on public transport, and walls are covered in graffiti.

My thoughts are wandering a bit as I contemplate this zine, but I consider that to be a good thing. I enjoyed this zine the first time, and I have enjoyed paging back and forth through it many times while wondering about the people and places captured within.

The website doesn’t connect at the time of me typing this, which is a shame because I really like this project. I would have liked to have seen it continue with different focuses (this one with a city focus).

If you can find a copy of this, pick it up. I hope you get as much out of it as I have.

Things That Happen to Crash When She Has a Panic Attack
Crash Reynolds
4 pages
https://utopiabycrash.wixsite.com/hello
https://www.patreon.com/utopiabycrash

Things That Happen to Crash When She Has a Panic Attack is a full-colour, US-sized half-fold zine about Crash’s experience of a panic attack.

Crash comes to us once more with another mental health perzine.

I think the title makes the possible content warnings clear. I was wondering how I’d go with reading about someone else’s panic attack experiences, but I went pretty well. (Of course, that’s just me. No one knows you better than you.) I found it interesting how much we had in common but even moreso how different our experiences are. Nothing in life is ‘one size fits all’, and this is a good reminder of that.

On another level, it felt nice that Crash decided to share this. While she didn’t share this aimed at me as such, I do feel like I know her better as a friend. It gave me the idea that it could be good for people to make zines like this one about their experiences to help their friends and family to better understand what they go through (and perhaps even how they can help in different situations).

I love the glittery papers Crash uses in this zine. They’re so pretty, and yet I can’t help but be reminded of the medical videos where they demonstrate the connections inside a brain. I wonder if this was intentional on Crash’s part implying brain connections, sparks, electricity… or perhaps I’m reading too much into it. Either way, it’s an element I enjoy.

Wednesday
George Rex
16 pages
http://www.georgerexcomics.com/
https://linktr.ee/GeorgeRexComics

Wednesday is an A5 black and white Hourly Comics Day collection of short comics about a day of trying to create one short comic per hour in a day.

Reviewing a zine called ‘Wednesday’ on a Wednesday? Yeah, I’m pretty easily entertained.

I love a perzine, and a perzine comic is a fun flavour of the genre. George opens with a note on the inside cover by letting the reader know this is their first attempt (from back in 2017) at the Hourly Comics Day Challenge. From there we go into the comics.

For each one-hour segment, we get a one-page comic featuring something from that time slot. Breakfast, email overwhelm, existential scrolling dread… Wednesday is a real peek into a day that many of us can identify on one level or another.

George’s art style is fun and makes me smile. Everything is easy to read and easy to see. There are still little details that you could miss if you take things too quickly like a t-shirt slogan.

I thought it was fun to get a peek into an artist’s life and find out how much we had in common. We tend to think other people do things so differently, so much better, in such a more organised way… But a skilled artist scrolls perhaps a little too much and enjoys making pasta just like me. It is a fairly quick read, and a pleasant one.

Check it out if you’d like to see some chill ‘day in the life’ comics. (And perhaps feel inspired to take up the challenge yourself.)

The Puss And The Shade: Transylvania Bible #1
M.J. Ocasio & Monstark
http://mjocasio.com/
https://www.monstark.com/

The Puss And The Shade: Transylvania Bible #1 is a 7cm x 10.7cm black and white comic about an epic battle between a brave cat and a shade.

You had me at the metallic cover.

The Puss And The Shade is the first of the ‘Transylvania Bible’ mini series of graphic vignettes. The mini opens to a lovely inside cover page and then launches into the dark tale of a cat defending his baby human.

I love it. I’ll come right out and say it from the get go. Everything about this zine really hit the spot for me.

The art style uses a lot of lines, leaving the overall page darker at a glance and thus adding to the dark tones of the story. The story itself is great. Few words are needed, and the artists do a great job of visually telling a story. A cat and a baby but in a grim tale? Wow. It combines the usual cute with a horror feel in both art and overall story, and I enjoyed it a lot.

You may be able to tell I don’t want to give away too many details about the story itself because of the length of the zine, but the ending really caught me by surprise. Of all the ways things could have gone…

This is a great zine in the materials used as well. The cover is a metallic blue while the paper inside is textured. Things can be a touch difficult to read on the blue cover depending on the lighting, but that is a small hiccup and – I think – is worth the tradeoff with the awesome cover paper.

I’m happy to see a “#1” with this because I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next in the series.

I highly recommend checking out this mini zine for awesome art styling, an awesome story, and a well put together zine.