Category: Zine Reviews

Ghosting
Mr Zinester
https://www.instagram.com/misterzinester/

Ghosting is a landscape, full colour mini-zine both comic and art in two parts.

I’ll state right at the start that I really love Mr Zinester’s work, and I’m so excited to get the chance to share my excitement with you.

Mr Zinester once again blurs lines between zine, comic, and art piece with Ghosting. Twenty-three cards are held together by two bulldog clips, and with no cover, title, or introduction, you’re immediately thrust into the work itself.

Ghosting consists of two parts. The first half is printed on lovely textured cream paper in the drawing style you see pictured above with the text clearly separated by a box at the bottom of each. The second part is a completely different art style – more anime in nature with visual call backs to the first part that made me smile. This section is more akin to a realistic anime style and is printed on beautiful holographic card.

I don’t usually go into the physical aspects of a zine straight away, but they were the first things I noticed about this zine. Taking it out of the bag, I immediately stopped to run my fingertips along the textured paper before flipping it to run them along the smooth holographic paper. I loved Mr Zinester’s paper choices so much that I took the bulldog clips off rather than use them as a binding and risking possible damage to the cards.

Being familiar with Mr Zinester’s work, I happily Googled the words that went along with the pictures. Lo and behold, this is another piece inspired by (I’m assuming) and featuring song lyrics! I won’t spoil the song, but I felt like it was a fun little near-secret.

I was a little sad to see no mention of Mr Zinester anywhere on the zine. On one hand, I understand the desire to let the work be the work and want to assume that any sort of social or contact details would be given along with the zine on a separate card or something of the like. On the other hand, that is an assumption.

Mr Zinester is one of the zinemakers who intrigues me by pushing boundaries in regards to what is a zine and how you can make them. If you get the chance, I highly recommend you check out Ghosting and everything else Mr Zinester creates.

Stories Behind the Ink
Compiled by Mel Buttigieg
https://zinegang.home.blog/
https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/ZineGangDistro

Stories Behind the Ink is an A5, full-colour zine collection of real tattoos and the stories behind them.

If I have biases with this zine, they’re that I like tattoos, have tattoos, and am irritated by the amount of unwelcome commentary people with tattoos get from others.

Mel says much of the same at the start of this zine. With black print on a red background, the first page isn’t one to read in low lighting. However, it was worth the light delay of finding a better lamp as Mel writes about the strange (annoying, confronting, etc) phenomena where some people think they have a right to ask personal questions of and even touch tattooed people simply because they bear art on their skin.

But enough with the things that get my teeth grinding in profound understanding and empathy.

Stories Behind the Ink shows off glorious tattoo photos in full colour and on glossy paper. Along with the tattoo/s, each page shares the pertinent details (age, artist, etc) and the stories behind the art. Every page (with a full spread or two) are clearly titled with the person’s name.

I think I would have enjoyed this zine even if I didn’t have tattoos. It’s so interesting to me to read about the decisions behind each tattoos, the memories, the fun, and sometimes the heartfelt meanings. Whether they chose the art for smiles or to honour others and themselves, I loved reading about it.

I really adored Sylvia’s story – one of how even seeming permanence can still change. Of how we can adapt and grow with those changes.

I think this is a great zine to pick up. Especially if you have tattoos, want tattoos, or are a tattoo voyeur. Haha.

Adventures in Predictive Text
Saff Miro
https://www.instagram.com/saffmiro/

Adventures in Predictive Text is an A6 black and white zine predictive text written by Saff Miro’s phone and tablet. Hehe.

If you’re on Facebook, you’ve very likely seen the ‘type this on your phone and let predictive text finish the sentence’ type of posts. Tapping on that suggested next word again and again can create sentences that are strange, funny, and occasionally deep.

It was only a matter of time before someone made a zine of it, and I’m glad they did.

Adventures opens with Saff explaining how they went about making this zine. At the top of each page you find the few prompt words that started each predictive response below. With prompts like ‘In 2018’ and ‘My New Year’s Resolution Is’ there are some pretty funny responses. There’s even one response that got trapped in a loop of ‘again and again and again and again’ so Saff ended up using an infinity symbol when they ran out of room for text. Haha.

I thought I would pick a favourite response for this review, but it was a lot harder than I’d thought it would be to pick! So many of the responses made me smile. I mean, there are Bananagrams and mentions of hashtags taking over the world.

Maybe Saff’s phone is trying to warn us all.

Adventures in Predictive Text is a fun zine that made me smile a lot and also made me want to go on some predictive text adventures of my own. A win on all counts.

How to Pat Cats: A Guide to Being a Feline Friend
Rebecca Sheedy
http://mildscribblingzine.tumblr.com/
https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/rebeccasaurusrex

How to P at Cats: A Guide to Being a Feline Friend is an about 16cm x 7.5cm (a bit over 6 inches x 3 inches) full-colour comic about being a Feline Friend at the Animal Welfare League.

On four pages – each with three panels – Rebecca gives us a glimpse into being a Feline Friend volunteer at AWL. (The Animal Welfare League https://awl.org.au/ is an animal welfare and care provider.) From taking care of new arrivals to wanting to adopt cats every time they are volunteering, Rebecca packs a lot in their usual fun art style. A super cute style with the perfect amount of detail.

This is a lovely zine that makes me smile and feel good. What’s more is it also makes me want to check out local shelters to possibly volunteer at. I would absolutely love it if Rebecca made another zine on this topic with even more details about the ins and outs of volunteering at an animal shelter.

Grab a copy.

How We Met Dory-Bean
Dory-Bean’s Humans
https://www.instagram.com/dory.bean/

How We Met Dory-Bean is an A6 black ink on pink paper zine about how three humans met the adorable Dory Bean.

This zine was yet another case of love at first sight for me. Sewn binding? Rounded corners? A peeking cat on the cover? Yes, yes, and yes please.

How We Met Dory-Bean opens with Dory Bean falling out of the sky and, of course, then demanding some food. From there we read a very sweet story of cat food, notes passed via cat collar, and a cat who chose her humans instead of the other way around.

I love this zine to bits. The story is sweet, the illustrations are adorable, and the zine itself is so well made. Each page spread has text on the left page and an oh-so-cute illustration on the right. The interior page corners are rounded just like the cover. Plus, it’s sewn with pink thread that matches the pink interior pages.

I will definitely be getting extra copies to get for my cat enthusiast friends.

Dog Drawns
Ellie
?

Dog Drawns is an A7 one-page folded mini of dog drawings.

For anyone who doesn’t know, I love dogs. I couldn’t resist a cute dog mini. Heart squeeze guaranteed.

I must admit that the part that squeezed my heart the most is the note at the start of the zine. Ellie writes that they made this zine of drawings because they can’t have a dog of their own.

Six drawings of a variety of different dogs follow. I was also very happy to find an A4 dog drawing surprise when you unfold the zine. (I will never tire of the ‘surprise inside content’ of one-page mini-zines.)

One thing missing from this zine is any sort of social link. Not so much as an email. So if you know the Ellie who made this, let me know, and I will update the top info.