Author: Nyx

Every Morning
Mel Stringer
https://www.instagram.com/melstringer/
https://www.facebook.com/melstringerart

Sometimes, it’s better to let the zine creator to describe the zine:

Every Morning, as a zine, is an intimate collection of portraits of real and rad women who were willing to have their portrait drawn whilst sharing the simple notion of what their everyday morning looks like.

Every now and then, I fall hard for a zine because it’s so nice in so many ways, and I can’t find a single thing that I don’t like about it. This is one of those zines.

As mentioned above, Every Morning features the self-described morning routines of fascinating women I’ve never met. I love reading about the small, ‘normal’ moments in a life, and I have never before seen someone take on ‘the morning routine’.

It’s one of those ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ moments for me, but I’m glad I didn’t because I couldn’t have done such a wonderful job. I love everything about ‘Every Morning’, from the subject matter to the layout to the paper. (The paper. OMG. The paper. I love ‘petting’ this zine. Is that weird?) It pleases every part of my personality (writer, zine maker, graphic communications student).

I am, however, beginning to wonder if I’m one of the few left in the universe who doesn’t wear makeup… Anyway.

Peeking into lives is one of my guilty pleasures (I’m not weird…), and Every Morning executes that guilty pleasure in superb fashion.

Quote to remember: ‘Plus it’s good to say ‘fuck you!’ to something at least once a day.’

Every Morning definitely one for the permanent collection.

‘Bots is ‘Bots: Issue Two
Gregg
http://botsisbots.blogspot.com.au/

I’ve read the first one, too! Check out my review of ‘Bots Is ‘Bots 1

Where issue one of ‘Bots Is ‘Bots was of a more of an introductory collection of strips, I feel like issue two is more about taking a poke at human nature. Fishing, optimism, pessimism, being overworked… It’s a quirky mix of robots discussing humans while also taking on human behaviour.

While it is having fun and poking fun, he does put in things about the darker sides of life. I appreciated the ‘keeping it real’ aspect to those strips.

I really like the humour in the comic strips, but Gregg proves himself a funny guy in a subtle way as well. You can read the strips and enjoy them, but if you make sure to note the strip titles, they can sometimes make the strip joke all that more funny. I love little touches, and the comic titles could be little somethings that are easy to miss.

All up, I’m looking forward to reading the next issues.

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.