Category: Zine Reviews

The Stay At Home Girlfriend 22
Kendy P. / MissMuffCake
http://www.missmuffcake.com/
www.missmuffcake.etsy.com

The Stay At Home Girlfriend 22 is a cute and fun perzine with a huge variety of bits and pieces inside.

If you want a ‘too long, didn’t read’ right from the get go: I really love this zine. On an ‘I would like to get the entire series’ level.

I’ve talked a few times about zines that have come into my life at the perfect time, and this zine is included in that. When I was writing down my review notes for this, I was also struggling to get any writing done, it was too hot to cook… I had to smile at how, despite the distance and time between her writing and me reading, I found so much in common with Kendy.

It didn’t stop there, however. Kendy touched on the topic of anxiety – specifically around other people. I imagine there are plenty of people out there who will identify with things like avoiding people they know at the shops. I love that Kendy later included an Anxiety First Aid list.

There is an ample ‘things I like’ section that had me eager to look up quite a few things – despite the ‘yucky but relaxing’ like that made me a little ill. But that simply proved to be a good reminder that people have all sorts of likes! It also made me want to try out blind boxes because I’ve never had one.

Kendy’s piece on zine community had me scribbling down so many different ideas for blog post topics and will definitely have me going back for multiple reads. There’s so much to think about, and my heart went out to Kendy as we’re reminded that it only takes one (or two) to spoil things – even in something as (usually) awesome as the zine community.

The thoughts on making zines that Kendy shares are beautiful and sad, just going to show that art is hard – even with the creative freedom that making zines can bring.

“You are like why am I doing another issue… Then you get a letter telling you how great your zine is… and you realize that not everything is always going to be good. Making zines is not always going to be great, easy or whatever.”

As I mentioned, this is a very cute zine with stickers, stamps, doodles, and such, but not so much that it’s overloaded or too much. The aesthetic really fits with the variety of different topics.

There is such a variety of things in this zine, and I think it’s a lot of fun. I know I have praised other zines for having longer pieces, but I think it’s all about the spirit of the zine. Bouncing from thing to thing really suits this zine and gets me excited about the content. The style suits the tone, which suits the voice, so on and so forth.

I will be reading this again and saving up for more in the series.

PS. Yay for long-held post boxes!

The Other Side
Te Hao Boon, Jennifer Nichole Wells, Ghostwulf
IG: @tehaoboon
www.jennifernicholewells.com
ghostwulf69@gmail.com

The Other Side is a one act play zine about three snails and the mysterious Other Side.

This is definitely a first for me. I don’t come across a lot of fiction zines in general, and this is the first script zine that I’ve ever seen. When you’re creating zines, I think there is a bit of a special allure to the possibility of having created the ‘only one of its kind’.* With multi-coloured snails and road signs (promising trouble for snails) on the front, how could I not be drawn in?

Aesthetically, this zine is pretty fun. I wish all the scripts I’d read as a teenager came with pictures and little line drawings on the pages. It reminded me that, while this is a script, it’s still also a zine.

I must admit that the zine lost me a bit content-wise, but I feel like my editing and theatre background influenced that. I would have thought that a play about snails would be for a younger audience, but there’s swearing and other not-quite-so-young content. ‘Bae’ and ‘mommy’ are used, and I got distracted wondering if they were being used ironically because they stuck out so much in the dialogue. At one point, a snail used the last of his rations… Rations which were never packed in the first place.

I can be forgiving of editing errors and the like in zines because I make them myself, and there aren’t a lot of zine makers who can hire an editor. But a script is still a script, and if that’s the main aspect of what you’ve created, I’m going to look at it as such.

There are limitations with a script that make it harder to engage readers, and I feel like the team who created this made up for some of those limitations with the cut and paste aspects. It also remains true to the script form by listing the characters and setting the stage, so to say, for the setting. However, I feel like the play itself could have done with some workshopping (or more workshopping, if that’s the case).

*I’m not saying this is the only script zine out there. Merely that this is the first I’ve seen.

Wiseblood 67
Fishspit
fuzzybunnyflatbunny@gmail.com

In Wiseblood 67, Fishspit talks about his experiences with depression and using ECT – electroconvulsive therapy – for treatment.

Fishspit has a writing style that isn’t for the easily offended, but he takes a different tone in this issue. I can’t help but feel for him for a number of reasons as he talks about his experiences. Right from the start, you really get a sense of the desperation to get past the depression no matter what the cost.

I find it interesting to read people’s stories about depression and how they describe it. Fishspit describes how, for him:

…sometimes it’s a mosquito…a small pestering depression…a tiny dark spot on the soul, but then! Oh my! It can become a gorilla! Consuming me absolutely.

I was incredibly angry while reading one part of this, as the idiocies and aggravations of insurance companies run far and wide. What he had to go through just to get the ECT treatment gets me all kinds of frustrated with the US medical system. (I grew up in it and know what it’s like in a better system.)

There were bright spots to be found in this zine, however, with the kind treatment from some of the nurses and doctors involved.

Also this is different to Fishspit’s usual style, both somewhat in content but also in being one overarching piece rather than smaller pieces. I like it when people who have a series switch it up every now and again. I quite liked the change in this zine, though I will also welcome a return to the usual in the next zine (if that’s how Fishspit does things).

the reverse side #1
ro grimes
barcadia@gmail.com

As we get to the last day of March and the last day of mini-zines-only reviewing, I want to end things with a zine that’s a little bit different than anything else I’ve seen…

the reverse side #1 is an origami folded zine within a zine zine. (How many times can you say zine on one sentence.) In it, Ro writes perzine-style about winter, what to do in winter, and

I imagine the big question on your mind is: What do you mean by zine within a zine?

Well, check out how you open this up…

Isn’t that cool? A small zine – Winter 2010 – lies nestled within the double-sided single page zine folded around it. As you can imagine, I really love this idea. It makes opening up the zine like unwrapping a present, which it kind of is because there was a little pin inside along with the smaller zine! That’s so cool.

The writing in the zine as well as on the outside ‘wrapper’ is, as I mentioned, perzine style with small snippets of this and that around the theme of winter. I must admit that I was happy to see that I’m not the only adult out there who reads “lighter” fiction at times because I’m such a slow reader.

I must admit that the presentation of the zine grabbed me more than the content itself, but those sorts of things can always be influenced by mood, day, etc. That being said, it’s a first zine, and I’ve unfolded and folded the zine so much that I am more than happy to check out future issues of this zine.

Stories About Returning (Where are you from? number 3)
gutwrench press
http://www.gutwrenchpress.com/

Stories About Returning is a haunting yet beautiful mini-zine filled with snippets from various times and places of returning. Rather than short and sweet, they have an air of short and bittersweet. As someone who is far away from where I was born, it made me feel a little strange and wistful.

I do like ‘snippet of life’ things like this, but I also admit that they have to be done right to hold any interest. For me, this zine does them right. There’s enough to make me curious but to leave me sitting amongst my own feelings as well.

There were some beautiful lines in there as well, this one being my favourite:

“…and I was home and a stranger at once.”

This zine came with an unexpected bonus that I nearly missed. The funny thing is that I’ve taken a peek inside so many one-page folded mini-zines to see if there is anything hidden inside, and the time I don’t think to do that is the time I almost miss the note to take a peek inside…

Yes, that’s right. When you unfold this zine, you can fold it the opposite way and get a whole new zine out of it – Stories About Leaving. While a neat touch in and of itself, the stories about leaving relate at times to stories about returning. I think that’s a clever way to do things.

I think you’ll know if this sort of zine will strike a chord with you.

promiscuous agriculture: a gardening experiment
@celuran
celuran@gmail.com

That title! You have to be curious when you read that title.

Promiscuous Agriculture is a zine about gardening by the very generous Celuran who stopped by to say hello at the Melbourne Art Book Fair. It’s filled with notes on various veggies Celuran planted along with garden bed sketches and pictures of the plants.

To be frank, I really didn’t know if this zine was going to be for me considering my complete lack of a green thumb. As it turned out, I quite enjoyed it. I liked the feel of it being like a gardener’s journal. I like how she encouraged you to create your own garden but didn’t push it on you or make you feel guilty for not producing your own food.

If you’re wondering what ‘promiscuous agriculture’ is, then don’t worry. The middle spread tells you what it is as well as giving you a few tips if you’d like to start a garden bed (or more) of your own.

I know I probably mention this a lot, but colour printing suited this zine well. When you’re talking about plants and gardening (especially to a black thumb non-gardener like me), colour pictures are helpful. (Colour-coded garden bed diagrams are also appreciated.) Another nice touch (again, especially for people like me) is the recommendation of her favourite gardening book at the end.

Something that truly made me smile is how she used green staples to bind it. Green staples for a gardening zine. I love it!

All up, I think I may need more copies of this because I have some gardening friends who will enjoy it, too.

Opinionated Nobody #8
Rebecca McCormick
http://zinewiki.com/Opinionated_nobody

Opinionated Nobody 8 is a perzine by Rebecca and covers topics like making a new zine while needing to write a novel for an MA, mental health/illness and medication, counselling, Christmas, and Star Wars.

Rebecca’s writing style is very much like that of catching up with an old friend. I could just imagine her dropping onto a seat across from me with her cuppa and saying the first lines of her zine – “I’ve been wanting to write a new zine for ages…” – in easy conversation instead of writing them. Her writing makes me feel comfortable and welcome in her world, even while she’s sharing some vulnerable things.

In that way, it reminded me of Pieces. While I try to avoid comparisons, I think this is a good thing to have in common with another perzine.

In the inside front cover, Rebecca includes a note (no spoilers here) that is an update to things mentioned in the zine. I really like the added touch and it made me smile. It’s something so small, and yet it reminded me that zines, by their handmade nature, can grow and change even as we create them.

This is another one of those zines that I’ve had for a little while but feel like I’ve opened up to read it at just the right time. As I’ve recently had to go back on anti-anxiety medication, I appreciate Rebecca writing about her own experiences doing that as well as writing about her counsellor as well.

If you like perzines – especially ones that touch on mental health/illness, reading, tattoos, and Star Wars – then I think you should check this one out.

Curse On a Zinester
ET
http://et-maispourquoi.blogspot.com.au/

Continuing on with the theme of zines that made me laugh, today we have a most excellent zine.

Curse on a Zinester is a mini-zine filled with horrible curses to wish upon your zinester enemies. Each page contains a single curse, though some curses have multiple parts, making an already bad possibility even worse…

Not sure what I’m on about? Think cursing an author with “may you’re their, there, and they’re forever be used incorrectly”. They make me shudder in horror, but I can’t stop myself from giggling a little.

I can’t possibly pick a favourite curse out of the bunch, but the one that really made me laugh on a ‘only zinesters get this’ sort of level was:

May your first customer pay with a $50 note.

I may have let out a little squeal of delight when I read the about page of ET’s blog and found out that they are the very same person who created Instructions for surviving the ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE: In rhyming couplets! I reviewed that zine four years ago – almost to the day.

I’m not sure exactly what the word for it is (though there must be a word for it), but this zine brings out the same pleasure you get from identifying with those “Things only an ____ would understand” type articles. Even though you’re reading about situations you would never want to happen to you, you know that part of the reason you’re horrified is because you’re part of the group who understands.

The best part? There is a space at the back to write down your own curse.

my dads ugly clock-wall
Poesveryattractivecousin.wordpress.com

I picked this little zine up last Friday at the Melbourne Art Book Fair because it made me laugh. I do so appreciate a smile or a laugh…

There’s something about not just thinking that one’s dad’s clock wall is ugly but thinking it’s so ugly that you need to make a zine out of its magnificent ugliness that makes me literally laugh out loud. It’s probably one of the best demonstrations of ‘zines can be about anything you want’ that I’ve ever seen.

This zine is exactly what it says it is. Its entire contents are small colour pictures of this wall of clocks. I’m a big fan of the absurdist branch of exitentialism, so the absurdity of this little zine. It’s ridiculously funny (to me).

Just so you can get a better view of the size…

The editor side of me does feel a little riled up about the lack of apostrophe in ‘dads’, unnecessary hypenation with ‘clock-wall’, and the misspelling of one’s own URL (I have spelled it correctly above so the link works), so that does take away a little bit from it. While on one side it is a bit nit picky of me, when your zine only has five words and a URL, these sorts of things are going to stand out.

That being said, I was thinking about how I may have to forgive no contact details on a zine this small. Lo and behold, there are details on the back. No excuses, everyone!

So if you like the strange and odd, and you think you may have a similar sense of humour to mine, then you might want to grab this one.

Nora’s New Home
Heidi M
heidimmcdonald.blogspot.com

Nora’s New Home is a very cute mini-zine about Heidi’s new cat, Nora.

I have a soft spot for zines about cats – especially ones with cute illustrations. Taking a peek inside after unfolding it, I think the ink bleedthrough means that these are hand-coloured, too! The art style is very cute.

This zine is very short and sweet, but it did pluck at my heart strings – especially when Nora turned out to be a shy cat. (Definite ‘awww’ moment.)

This is a feel good zine that made me smile, and that’s something I greatly appreciate.