Bus Driver Blues
Kathy Sarpi
www.kathyaudrey.storenvy.com
kathy-audrey.tumblr.com

Another lovely mini-comic zine by Kathy Sarpi, and another one for Nyx’s forever collection.

I reviewed On Motivation a few weeks ago and absolutely fell in love with Kathy’s style.

This zine continues on with that gorgeous, liquidy type of art that serves the black and white oh-so-well. Her art is like a romance between ink and paper, and nothing will spoil it. A little heavy? Probably, but I am both adoring and a smidge envious of Kathy’s talent.

The way she uses the combination of thick and thin lines along with the flow creates something that I really want to see happening in a graphic novel. I want to write a story just to have her bring it to life with her art.

The story held inside is a beautiful slice of life that also serves as a reminder that you can never truly know what someone else’s live experience is. What they’ve been through. How they’ve survived up until the moment you meet them. All within the context of a short, sweet story of taking a moment to think.

<3

Wanderluster Volume #1
Wanderluster
https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/WanderlusterZine

I love zines. I love mail. You know I had to check this one out.

Wanderluster Volume #1 is a full-colour zine featuring a variety of postcards from around the world. Wanderluster is a member of the worldwide postcard exchange site PostCrossing. The bias for me comes in the form that I was a member of PostCrossing, so I think there is a level of enjoyment I would have reached had I not been familiar with the site or concept.

The cover is a little plain, but the red and blue striped washi on the bottom and air mail sticker at the top leave you with no doubts as to what this zine is about. Kudos to Wanderluster for going full colour with this. While the theme – introductions – enjoyment isn’t reliant on there being colour, the visual (postcards) enjoyment is much more in colour than it would have been in black and white. I enjoyed looking at all the different postcards and the stamps as well.

Admittedly, I couldn’t read some of the handwriting on a couple of the postcards, but that wasn’t a huge hold up by any means (and isn’t really something Wanderluster could have done anything about anyway). I liked seeing how people around the world chose to introduce themselves when given such limited space to write in.

The fact that Wanderluster’s address changes a couple times gave a little scope on the time it must have taken to put this all together – a small detail Wanderluster probably didn’t even think about.

The next editions in the series have themes (so far: #2 Exciting Moments and #3 Food), which I think will make the zines even more fun.

How to Talk to Your Cat About Abstinence
The American Association of Patriots
https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/artist/the_american_association_of_patriots

I received this in an awesome package from my US friend, Black Wolf, but I can’t for the life of me find the post… Anyway.

I think this is one of the few zines that I have heard so much about that it risked not living up to how much it had been built up in my mind. Turns out I had nothing to worry about.

It’s hard to know where to start with this one because I want to write about everything at once. There’s just so much going on here.

How to Talk to Your Cat About Abstinence is a guide for parents of cats to help them talk to their cats about the importance of abstinence. On the surface, anyway. In reality, it is a very cheeky poke at the view that ‘no sex’ is the only way to keep the youth of today safe. It addresses questions like:

*Do I really need to talk to my cat about abstinence?
*What difficulties do kittens born from premarital sex face?
*What are other things I can do to safeguard the purity of my cat?

I like how this zine is printed on glossy paper – just like the information pamphlets you’d find in the doctor’s office (or other professional offices). Is it possible to have an ironic use of paper? I think so. It’s even full colour, sparing no expense over getting the word out about your cat.

Okay, so the obvious thing that I haven’t touched yet in this review is the actual content behind the content. Taking the topic of ‘abstinence only’ teaching with religious leanings is bound to get some people up in arms, and it’s not going to be nearly as funny to some as it is to me.

I’m not going to get into the issue itself, but I do think that putting the issue in this form this way is an excellent idea. It’s accessible, non-threatening…

And, if you want, you don’t have to think too hard, and you can get a good laugh.

I so very much want to read ‘How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety’ and ‘How To Talk To Your Cat About Evolution’.

Hello My Name Is: A Zine About Living With Mental Illness
Kendy (MissMuffCake)
www.missmuffcake.com

Full disclosure: I contributed to this zine. 🙂

I wasn’t sure if I should review it given that fact, but I think I’m not too biased to give an opinion that’s not influenced by my participation.

If anything, the content itself – mental illness – makes me more biased than my participation. Hehe.

Hello My Name Is: A Zine About Living With Mental Illness is just that. It features a collection of people who introduce themselves, their mental illnesses, and how they don’t let those mental illnesses define them.

I feel like I am doing a disservice to the zine by summing it up like that because I know, not just from contributing or personal experience, how huge and import it can be to stand up and talk about your mental illness. That it is on paper makes no difference to the impact it has for the person sharing.

It was lovely to read people sharing the ways they perverse. There were also differences in the way people responded to the prompt, which I found interesting. (Tell five people to do the exact same thing and you’ll still likely get variations.) I loved reading about how people ‘beat the stereotypes’ and yet there was no anger or resentment in their words.

Aesthetically, this is a simple (no negative connotations attached to the word) with a picture and a paragraph per person. I think, however, that this is perfect for the content. The whole point of this zine (I think) is to show that people with mental illness are still people. They don’t need to be dressed up or changed for the sake of being appealing to the masses.

Neither does this zine.

I hope to see more of this. The shortness of responses appeals, the content appeals, that you can see the faces of the people who are introducing themselves only adds to it.

More please. 🙂