“Personals”
JMAH + Contributors
personals.zine@gmail.com

After reviewing Zine Crush 3 and Dear Crush, I have to admit that I went into this assuming that ‘personals’ was going to be about dating.

Sometimes it’s nice to be wrong.

Rather than searching for love out in the wide world, “Personals” is about finding the love of one’s body. From wrists and necks to armpits and power pooches, it’s about love and appreciation for those body parts that give us (and sometimes others) pleasure in one way or another. Each piece is accompanied by art, and each piece of art is like a tribute to the body part the person is writing to.

They are sort of personals in the sense that some end with phone numbers. But they tend to be a sort of throwaway note. ‘Oh, yeah. By the way…’ I wonder if the numbers and emails are real, but I’m not game enough to have a go.

I like the lines that turn not only the interior but the cover as well into a notebook of sorts. It seems like such a small thing on the surface, but it’s sort of a subconscious suggestion that this is a notebook, making the content within more personal. (No pun intended.)

I do have to admit that I sometimes had to hold the zine a bit close to my face to read some of the pieces, but so runs the risk of using handwriting. Given the kind of zine this turned out to be, typing wouldn’t have worked as well. So I’ll take holding it close to my face for the sake of the art.

I have to mention the last piece. It was sad and beautiful, and it reminded me entirely too much of my own life. It was Clair de Lune, haunting me. I’m glad it was left until last.

“Personals” is a slightly different take on body acceptance, but what it does, it does well.

Every Morning
Mel Stringer
https://www.instagram.com/melstringer/
https://www.facebook.com/melstringerart

Sometimes, it’s better to let the zine creator to describe the zine:

Every Morning, as a zine, is an intimate collection of portraits of real and rad women who were willing to have their portrait drawn whilst sharing the simple notion of what their everyday morning looks like.

Every now and then, I fall hard for a zine because it’s so nice in so many ways, and I can’t find a single thing that I don’t like about it. This is one of those zines.

As mentioned above, Every Morning features the self-described morning routines of fascinating women I’ve never met. I love reading about the small, ‘normal’ moments in a life, and I have never before seen someone take on ‘the morning routine’.

It’s one of those ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ moments for me, but I’m glad I didn’t because I couldn’t have done such a wonderful job. I love everything about ‘Every Morning’, from the subject matter to the layout to the paper. (The paper. OMG. The paper. I love ‘petting’ this zine. Is that weird?) It pleases every part of my personality (writer, zine maker, graphic communications student).

I am, however, beginning to wonder if I’m one of the few left in the universe who doesn’t wear makeup… Anyway.

Peeking into lives is one of my guilty pleasures (I’m not weird…), and Every Morning executes that guilty pleasure in superb fashion.

Quote to remember: ‘Plus it’s good to say ‘fuck you!’ to something at least once a day.’

Every Morning definitely one for the permanent collection.

‘Bots is ‘Bots: Issue Two
Gregg
http://botsisbots.blogspot.com.au/

I’ve read the first one, too! Check out my review of ‘Bots Is ‘Bots 1

Where issue one of ‘Bots Is ‘Bots was of a more of an introductory collection of strips, I feel like issue two is more about taking a poke at human nature. Fishing, optimism, pessimism, being overworked… It’s a quirky mix of robots discussing humans while also taking on human behaviour.

While it is having fun and poking fun, he does put in things about the darker sides of life. I appreciated the ‘keeping it real’ aspect to those strips.

I really like the humour in the comic strips, but Gregg proves himself a funny guy in a subtle way as well. You can read the strips and enjoy them, but if you make sure to note the strip titles, they can sometimes make the strip joke all that more funny. I love little touches, and the comic titles could be little somethings that are easy to miss.

All up, I’m looking forward to reading the next issues.

Dear Crush
Lydia Martin
lydiamartin976@gmail.com

I didn’t intend for it to be ‘crush week’ in the review section of the blog, but here we are! I do love a good crush story (my first paid publication was about my crush), and Dear Crush presents notes the many crushes from her life – be them good and bad.

Colour! Unless you’re printing at home (and sometimes even if you are printing at home), colour printing can get expensive, so I suppose it’s no surprise that one might be attracted to the colour zine covers in amongst the treasure trove that is Sticky Institute. Colour combined with subject matter landed this zine in my stack of zine purchases.

Dear Crush features small pieces of art along with colour-copied sticky notes written out to crushes over Lydia’s life. Some where innocent. Some were quite obviously less so. I found myself wondering if the notes were in chronological order, as the seriousness of the ‘feels’ increased as the reading went on.

They are all short reads, so I had to remind myself to slow down and really take in the words as well as the drawings that went alongside them.

Art is like poetry to me – I often get the interpretations wrong. I couldn’t help my brain from being tickled by the presentation of the notes. They are, after all, on sticky notes. Reminders easily thrown away. I felt like Lydia might have been trying to say something about the nature of crushes by using sticky notes. In the end, though, I found myself feeling like there was a depth of feeling missing because of it. Maybe I’m supposed to feel that way? Perhaps that is the nature of crushes, the unrequited.

Either way, I’m not sure. It made me feel something, which is the goal of most art, but the feeling was of that of a shared secret that ended up not being as important as I thought it would be.

But hey, it made me think. It made me look at the presentation and content as one presentation instead of things that happen at the same time on the same page. Very curious, and an enjoyed intellectual dance.

There is something that I feel I must add into this review that isn’t about the content. I confess that if I’d been less anxious and paying more attention to the price of this zine, I wouldn’t have bought it because of the price tag. I have no authority to say what a zine should be priced at or how a creator should value their work. Colour print can get bloody expensive, I know first hand, but one of the reasons I love zines is because I can afford them. At $10, this zine is out of my range. It’s only by the levels of my anxiety and the fact I ended up having enough cash that I was able to buy Dear Crush.