Category: Zine Reviews

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.

What’s in My Travel Zine Kit
J.E.M. Hast
https://www.jemhast.com/

What’s in My Travel Zine Kit is an itty bitty A8 black and white zine showing JEM’s zinemaker travel kit in words and drawings.

This is a very sweet mini-zine and the kind of peek into part of a zinemaker’s life that I enjoy. Small, cute drawings like the one found on the cover show pens, glue sticks, and other essentials in JEM’s travel kit. There are even a couple items I think I need to add to mine to spice up creating on the go.

My only wish is that I could see this zine in colour as well because I think it would be even more cute.

Honey Bear
Anna Gecko
https://cheslock.tumblr.com/

Honey Bear is a black and white US-sized half-fold perzine about living with Crohn’s disease, misdiagnosis, and mental and chronic illness.

Anna opens with trigger warnings right on page one, so I thought it’d be helpful to include them in the review:

Trigger warnings: suicide, self-harm, vomiting, eating disorders, abuse, needles

Honey Bear opens with a short and sweet (pun fully intended) story behind the title of this zine involving a very cute honey bear bottle of honey. From there, Anna introduces the reader to who they are and how having lived in Hawaii inevitably leads to the question of why they left.

Anna shares how their life in Hawaii was a dark one, and how, even after being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, their journey was a difficult one. Mental illness, misdiagnosis of an eating disorder (yes, after the Crohn’s diagnosis), and abuse in the background were slowly killing them.

A move to their dad’s in Michigan and a hospitalisation there saved their life, and they go on to write about life since then.

Honey Bear is a handwritten zine that is primarily text, and Anna’s handwriting is easy to read. (A must for handwritten zines.) It also has a sewn binding, which I think looks quite nice.

I get the feeling that this zine may be a first/early perzine for Anna, as it covers a lot of things but doesn’t spend a lot of time examining them. There was a lot about Anna’s life packed into a relatively short zine. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing; it’s all up to your reading preferences. It does leave me wanting more, so that’s a good thing in terms of me going to look around for more of Anna’s zines.

Plus, it just goes to show another reason to love zines – self-examination and putting thoughts somewhere other than your mind.

All up, Honey Bear was an interesting peek into Anna’s life that made me feel sad about what they have gone through and alluded to while also leaving me with a lot of questions. I’d like to see more from Anna.

Zine in a Day Zine 1
Warglitter Zines
https://linktr.ee/warglitter

Zine in a Day Zine 1 is a one-page folded black and white mini-zine about a mermaid who fell in love with a star.

There’s something about the unexpected phrase that gets me every time, so when I saw “Once upon a time, there was a moderately attractive mermaid” I couldn’t help but smile. ‘Moderately attractive’ caught my attention, that’s for sure, and that she fell in love with a star rather than a human? Well, of course I had to read on.

This amusingly lightly sarcastic tone continues through the short story. The words ‘bangin’ hot’ may have been used. The fun illustrations add to this but don’t betray the tone of the ending until it comes (so don’t flip through without reading it first!).

I must admit that I was a little nervous about the readability of not only handwriting but cursive handwriting, but I had absolutely no trouble reading it.

The story cumulates into a funny ending that had me chuckling and smiling.

I really enjoy Warglitter’s sense of humour, and I think you will, too. Check this one out.

Rum Lad Issue 12
Steve Larder
http://www.stevelarder.co.uk/
https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/rumladzinesandart

Rum Lad Issue 12 is an A5 black and white zine sharing Steve’s memories of his grandparents in words and drawings.

I had a feeling this one was going to pull on my heart strings the moment I saw it. I wasn’t wrong.

Rum Lad opens on the inside front cover with a beautiful dedication of this zine to his grandparents, both of whom have passed away. It is clear from the start that he admired his grandparents and loved them dearly. Other than Steve’s sweet words in regards to his grandparents, something else struck me as beautiful as well. Even in his grief, Steve writes:

“…hopefully anyone reading this will be able to recognise and reflect on the familiar, yet ordinary tenderness that you might share with loved ones of any description.”

It certainly did for me.

Following two text-filled pages about their early lives are an assortment of drawings and comics encompassing some of Steve’s favourite memories. Most are one page long, and all are filled with a lot of love. Little anecdotes along with Steve’s awesome art style give such a rich impression of these memories.

This zine is a heartfelt tribute to two people but also a realistic one with plenty of moments of humour to go along with the moments of sadness. From the footnotes that include ‘do keep up’ as well as the fun little moments with his grandparents, Rum Lad 12 took me through a full range of emotions.

I really love the entirety of this zine and am grateful that Steve chose to share these stories. It feels wrong to ‘rank’ memories in any sort of way, but I do want to mention how Tesco Bag made me smile so much, and I keep smiling whenever I think about it. The memory is lovely in and of itself, but it also reminded me of how important the ‘little’ moments are in our lives.

I think what impressed me the most is that Steve included both good and not as good memories. It’s all too easy to idolise those have passed away, brushing over the bad and focusing on the good. But Steve hasn’t done this, and that speaks to me as him being someone who wants to remember his grandparents for who they were rather than some idealised version.

I also loved that he included stories of them as told by his brother as well.

Steve’s art style is fantastic – a mixture of highly detailed and yet sometimes more simple. No matter what I’m looking at, I love looking at it.

Absolutely pick up this zine. You know where it will end because of where it starts, but it’s beautiful and a zine I highly recommend.

PS. I won’t spoil it, but when you pick this up, don’t forget to look at the page numbers. There’s a little fun something at the end of each memory.

Livor Mortis 1
@stphnrttly
https://www.instagram.com/stphnrttly/
https://www.instagram.com/livormortiszine/

Livor Mortis 1 is a zine a bit smaller than an A5 that contains black and white photography with a focus on skulls and skeletons.

Livor Mortis 1 is a photography zine that opens with a haunting quote about “…the dead, piled high and pressed ‘neath the earth” from lemierre, a deceased Perisian, before leading you into the catacombs of skeletal photography…

Skulls and skeletons are fascinating to a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons. For me, it’s wondering about the human lives once held in and around the bones. Who were they, what was their life like, and how did they end up where they did? In that way, the black and white (as opposed to colour photography) really worked for me, stripping away another layer of identity and thus compounding the sense of never knowing.

The photography itself feels… I think ‘unassuming’ is the best word for it. Photos feature skulls with fully clothed skeletons, slightly mummified remains, skulls piled high in a sort of macabre room decoration. There are no ‘artistic angles’ (I’m not taking a shot at that – I do it myself) nor does it feel like anything was set up as such; the subject matter of the photos is curious and intriguing all on its own.

I didn’t find myself wondering why the photographer took a picture this way or that – I was too busy wondering about the individuals in the photos. When there weren’t so many skulls as to overwhelm the imagination, that is.

I think there is an obvious level to this zine being one that you will likely know already whether you want to check it out. I found it strangely curious in the way writers – especially horror writers – are curious about things.

I will say that if you are curious, do check it out, because there’s more to come in the rest of the series…