Category: Zine Reviews

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.

The 125th Street Demon
Robert Walton
www.moreverbs.com

The 125th Street Demon is a short fiction zine featuring a short story about a man on a train…

I quite like the formatting for this zine. I know this is going to get me in hot water for some crowds saying this, but it’s formatted like a book. Not to the extent of title pages and dedications, but the font, the drop cap… Book layout and styling is something I love doing, so I can’t help but noticing the qualities. (Admittedly the drop cap doesn’t quite make sense in all its uses, but I still like the look of it.)

The one thing I didn’t like – and I know I’m being a bit picky here – is the way it’s stapled. The staple ‘teeth’ face outward instead of into the halfway mark. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but I did get poked. Something to consider if you staple your zines.

The story itself is an interesting one. You start questioning whether you should be trusting the protagonist at all and whether the man is unhinged. The ending leaves you satisfied but with a few questions – questions I’m happy to leave unanswered.

If you like fiction zines and slightly weird/unnerving stories, then I think you’ll like this zine.

ADL —> MEL
Rebecca Sheedy
http://mildscribblings.tumblr.com
https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/rebeccasaurusrex

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Rebecca Sheedy’s art style? No? Well here we go…

ADL —> MEL is a short zine about flying from Adelaide to Melbourne for a short stay during Festival of the Photocopier 2016. I almost hesitate to say ‘during the Festival of the Photocopier 2016’ because while that may be the reason for the trek, it’s only a part of things.

You follow Rebecca’s journey with brief commentary from Thursday the 11th to Tuesday the 16th. As I mentioned, Festival of the Photocopier is a part of the events, with various zine launches as well as the main event zine fest itself. But no one thing gets too much attention. It’s all like cliff notes, and you follow along with what is shared both in words and images.

Taking it back out for a moment, I really like the cover. It’s a really nice touch in that it’s a copies plane ticket cut out and pasted to tan cardstock. It’s very unassuming and simple, which makes the colour and detail of everything inside pop all the more.

Rebecca’s art style is so simple on first glance, but then you realise just how detailed it is. From polka dots on pants to the tiny zine covers. It’s so fun. There are times when things are perfectly enjoyable whether they are in colour or in black and white, but I feel like Rebecca made absolutely the right choice by going full colour because it only adds to the awesomeness that is the Sheedy style.

This zine is a ‘slice of life’ zine in its truest form. I think based on that alone, you should have a good feeling of whether or not you’ll enjoy this zine. If you’re at all unsure, then definitely check out Rebecca’s zines. (My favourite is ‘X‘ about growing up with The X-Files.)

Rebecca’s zines have always been and will always be zines that reside in my forever collection in the ‘not for borrows because you might lose them’ section.

The Zines on Toast Tour
Alex Wrekk, Steve Larder, Natalie, Edd Baldry, Tom Fiction, and Isy (thank you comments!) (as drawn by Steve)
?

The Zines on Toast Tour is a road trip travel comic zinester style. The story follows the ‘fun idea made into reality’ of these six zine friends as they drive across the US seeing the sights and giving zine readings along the way.

This zine really caught my attention from the get go. I do so love crisp, clear handwriting and this art style. However, even more than that, I love the different style of the cover. I’ve never seen an ‘the cast’ style of introducing everyone involved, and it gives a feeling of the ‘fun’ vibe that continues inside.

I really love the art for this zine. The panels are small but they are detailed without being too busy. While I couldn’t exactly say, “Oh, that’s Alex, and there’s Steve” in every panel, I didn’t find that as confusing or a negative.

I was a little worried that a zine like this might have inside jokes and references I didn’t understand. I didn’t have to worry, though. Funnily enough, the references that were made had asterisks and notes to what was being referenced.

As far as attribution for this zine goes, I must admit that I’m a little confused. I’ve listed everyone on the cover (and by the cover you can see where to start finding these people if you want to know more), but I have no idea who the ‘Me’ is of this group. I’d have to scan through it again to see if any of the speech bubbles refer to ‘Me’ by name…

This is a zine that I like looking at, and I will do so again many times in the future.

Bio-graphy/logy
?
tl2gzine@gmail.com

Today we have a very short and small accordion fold mini-zine that fits right into the palm of my hand.

Bio-graphy/logy is a short story about you, taking on the rarely use ‘second person’ writing style. You are Michelle, and you love the ocean. Your story is a very sweet one with pencilled illustrations to go along with it. (I must say the I’m very impressed with the printing because it looks drawn by pencil rather than printed.)

Your story is a simple and sweet one on the surface but has hidden depths if you care to think about them.

All up, this is quite a lovely little zine.