Month: August 2023

You Suck at Art: a zine about perfectionism, creative burnout, and finding your way back
Sapphic Bushtit – Skylar
8 pages
https://www.instagram.com/sapphic_bushtit/

You Suck at Art is a primarily black and white, US-quarter-sized zine whose subtitle covers is better than I could in regards to what it’s about:

“a zine about perfectionism, creative burnout, and finding your way back”

You Suck at Art opens with a short note about how this zine was “Made whilst stressing TF about EBABZ2022!!!”, which I had to mention for a few reasons. One, I love a little ‘outside the zine’ content (playlists, reading lists, this zine was made whilst) in zines because it makes the whole thing all the more fun. Two, I think many zinemakers can identify with stressing before a zine event, so it made me all the more empathetic to Skylar with this zine.

We open up with a fun comic-style drawing above Skylar writing about her relationship with making art. I love how Skylar writes about not being interested in being good but rather making art for fun because I feel like that is such an important creative spark that so many of us lose along the way. Unfortunately, as life too often goes, a lot of negative factors piled up with no self-compassion to soothe things, and Skylar stopped making comics…

However, things to take a turn toward the sunshine with better times, new passions, and (big, excited fairy zine-mama noises here) zines helped bring Skylar back into the world of art.

Skylar’s art style is fun and inviting. She uses just enough detail for us to know what’s happening with a more rounded overall style that invites you to ‘step in’ to the art without it being intimidating.* It would probably be helpful to do comparisons, but I’m not sure how comfortable I am with that because I don’t want to create any sort of associations the artist may take negatively.

Overall, I think You Suck At Art is a great, short read that mixes in art with telling a story of a creative struggle that I think more creatives than not have encountered some flavour of in their lives. As someone who is slowly but surely coming back to her fiction writing and zinemaking, this was absolutely something I empathised with straight away. (Especially the negative inner critic, which I have now at least momentarily silenced with a metaphorical doughnut and new zine to read.)

I think this zine is super cute, works on all levels, and is an awesome introduction to Skylar. Definitely grab a copy of this. If and when there is more zine goodness from Skylar, I am ready and waiting for it.

Welcome to the zineverse, Skylar!

*PS. I am trying to work on how I describe art styles, but I’m very much a work in progress.

Raise Your Horns – Badass Metal Tales
Hadass Bar Lev
54 Pages
hadass420.wordpress.com
Ko-Fi

Raise Your Horns – Badass Metal Tales is a black and white, A6 zine written as part of ZineWriMo 2018* created for the love of metal.

Raise Your Horns starts off in a very metal way with the table of contents named “The Enemies Within”. I smiled immediately seeing that, and settled in for the metal goodness to come. The metal goodness to come just so happened to arrive upon reading the first line of the zine: “In my previous zine, I wrote about how I got into Marilyn Manson.” Of course, Beautiful People started playing in my head immediately. I figured that boded well.

Hadass packs this nice chunk of an A6 zine with all sorts – from loved bands, to an itemised list of metal attire she owns (including little metal onesies for her daughter!), and far beyond.

We begin at the beginning, which is appropriate. Hadass writes about getting into metal, how riot grrrl and feminist punk led into female-fronted metal bands, and how her evolution as a fan of metal continued. We also get “Love,” “Like,” “Like But Not as Much” lists of bands, the rise and fall of a favourite band, and so much more. Hadass includes the story of meeting her husband and by extension the Jerusalem metal head community. Her words about the feeling of coming home when at a festival ground resonated with me, as I have found the metalhead community to be one of the most warm and welcoming communities I’ve had the pleasure of being welcomed into.

She also writes about Arch Enemy seeing her through some of the most difficult times of her life, whereas HateBreed (my introduction to metal as a baby metalhead) did much the same for me. Alas, as sometimes happens, she then documents the fall of the band once so beloved when led by Angela who ended up leaving the bank.

While this zine might be a lot to take in for a ‘metal baby’ or someone who isn’t into metal at all, there are plenty of references to bands, singers, and songs to pursue outside the zine if you’d like. The perzine elements warmed my heart as a fellow metal enthusiast, and I can imagine that people newer to the genre would be able to hone in on the clear feelings Hadass expressed and go from there. There is also a section that goes over some of the different ‘flavours’ of metal, which I found useful as I’m still a bit new to the nuance within the genre.

I love that this zine wraps up with a Twigz comic about how to properly make the hand gesture of the metal horns. I smiled at the clarification (because a lot of people do get it wrong), but I actually chuckled at the wrong examples, which included “Something to do with Star Trek?” Very funny, and a great way to wrap everything up.

All in all, Raise Your Horns – Badass Metal Tales was a great ode to metal as a genre with an emphasis on the perzine approach to it all. Hadass gets to the point of things, doesn’t hold back, and doesn’t mind dropping some swears in there as well (which I appreciate). If you have the faintest inkling of interest in metal or wonder how a badass mom living in Jerusalem got so much into metal, pick this one up. And part two as well!

*How has the time flown so quickly?! I’m proud as punch that this zine was made as part of ZineWriMo.