Ravenswing Zines

still the best

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 20:56:00 -0400

The Worst: A Compilation Zine on Grief and Loss

Issue 3, summer 2013

Various contributors, ed. Kathleen McIntyre

$5 from the editor, or from Mend My Dress Press

76 pg. at half-legal size

This is not a zine review— I never pretend at objectivity, and I try to be pretty clear about the ways that my experiences, values, and preferences colour how I feel about the zines I write about here— but I’m still totally not gonna review a zine I contributed to. Also, I haven’t read it yet.

I was, and am, a huge fan of the first two issues of The Worst, which I wrote about here. I really admire the work Kathleen McIntyre has done in compiling these experiences, which must be profoundly emotionally difficult work. I know this because I got my contributor copy in the mail, was excited, flipped through it, and went AAAGHHH and put it down. Reading about grief and loss is hard. Reading about it in quantity is super fucking duper hard, especially if it’s something you have particular experience with.

So, I can’t recommend this zine enough, because it is incredibly moving, helpful, and well curated. I also can’t stress enough that you should watch yourself, and only read it when you’re feeling really sturdy. Accordingly, I look forward to reading my copy at some point.

- Lily Pepper

bite back

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 06:15:00 -0400

Lady Teeth #2

by Taryn Hipp

37 pg. at 4” x 7”

$3 from the author on etsy

I apologize for being remiss in my zine reviews, I was enjoying some stressful times and decided to shirk a couple of obligations here and there. But my stack of zines to review has been staring me down, and I just heard today that Lady Teeth #3 will be out shortly (and that it will be a split with Your Secretary, which will be awesome), so I wanted to write about Lady Teeth #2, and how it is great.

Hipp previously wrote the zine Sub Rosa, which I wrote about here. Sub Rosa chronicles some rough times in her life, and she wanted a new imprimateur to tell us about her hard-won happiness, hence

“starting over with this zine, this amazing wonderful zine that I am already in love with because it reflects an honest life I have worked (& continue to work) so fucking hard at.”

There is nothing in this big world that will win my heart faster than a tale of hard-won happiness. I think it is the coolest fucking thing anyone can do to be miserable and scared and messed up and to fight tooth and nail, day to day, for contentment.

It’s not a battle you win and have done with, as Hipp makes clear in Lady Teeth. She writes candidly about having been shaped by bad times, about feeling out of control, about panic attacks, about doubting herself. I needed to read all this so bad, and reading Lady Teeth reminded me again why zines mean a lot to me.

The zine is also a travelogue about visiting the West Coast: Portland Button Works, Portland Zine Symposium, Seattle, and Kurt Cobain’s house,

Hipp also writes about the sometimes awkwardness of traveling as a person who doesn’t drink, and about apologizing to her partner,

“I’m sorry if my anxiety and mood swings ruined this trip. I tried so hard to have the best time and I think I did”

Lady Teeth is candid, moving, and well told. This should be no surprise; Hipp offhandedly mentions that it’s “the 43rd zine I have made (I think) in the last 17 years”. It is full of encouraging words and tips for leading a good life. I can’t recommend it or Taryn Hipp’s other zines highly enough, and I can’t wait for her split with Your Secretary.

- Lily Pepper

Getting ready to table at Ravenswing Arts & Music Fair...

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:38 -0400

Getting ready to table at Ravenswing Arts & Music Fair (Sunday, May 26th, 10 AM to 5 PM, Minto Park, Ottawa). I’m gonna have a silly amount of great zines with me, starting at $2, so come say hi!

under the radar, there's a mushroom

Mon, 06 May 2013 18:43:00 -0400

Under the Radar: Notes from the Wild Mushroom Trade

by Olivier Matthon, Spring 2013

40 pg. at half-letter size

$5 from Pioneers Press

Here in Ottawa, the last of the snow is now gone, and this past Sunday I had my first picnic, eating bread and cheese in a city park with some friends, listening to a teenage band cover classic rock songs from a rooftop, and getting my first sunburn of the year.

For me, though, the thing I anticipate most about the change in seasons is food, and I’m looking forward to ramps, morels, and other exciting springtime treats to start turning up at the market. So I was excited to hear that Pioneers Press is now accepting pre-orders for their latest publication, a zine about West Coast foraging culture. I reviewed an electronic copy, but the printed version will have the handsome cover pictured below:

Under the Radar is a tremendously interesting piece of investigative journalism by Olivier Matthon, a Québécois writer, student of anthropology, natural resources management, and creative writing, and itinerant worker in such diverse enterprises as Christmas tree farms, clam digging, and commercial fishing. In this publication, he looks into the wild mushroom trade in Mendocino County, California, spending time with pickers, and with the brokers and intermediaries who get the mushrooms out to chefs.

Written like a novel, Under the Radar was inspired by a book called Voices from the Woods, which collects oral histories of non-timber forest workers: treeplanters, gatherers of medicinal herbs, and, Matthon’s focus, mushroom foragers. It turns out you can actually read Voices from the Woods online in English or Spanish here.

I’d heard that the foraging world can be dangerously territorial, but Matthon exposes another side of the business, where buyers mentor pickers and point them in the right direction, hoping to pass their skills along to a new generation. Matthon shadows Alvin, a buyer who “lent money to people in need, taught new skills, shared knowledge with less experienced pickers, and listened to lonely people’s stories”.

Alvin also acts as a security net for the pickers who make a marginal living in the foraging economy: working sick, dealing with addictions and traumas, living out of their cars or in cheap motels or tents in the woods.

Matthon describes mushroom picking as “one of the last cash economies”, attracting those who haven’t been able to make it in the capitalist economy, and those whose libertarian views make them disinclined to try. Frequently, and sometimes dangerously, pickers run across people involved in the cultivation and harvest of Northern California’s other great cash crop, marijuana.

While Matthon doesn’t romanticize his subjects, when he writes that “They are not torn each morning between the desire to change the world and the desire to enjoy it,” it’s hard not to want to follow them out into the woods. Under the Radar is an engaging, well-researched, and compassionate look into a world hidden from most of us, and I’d highly recommend it.

- Lily Pepper

bodies and how to deal with them

Sat, 04 May 2013 17:00:00 -0400

With the weather warming up and summer ahead, it’s the season for people and dumb magazines and stuff to be making you feel like your body or the things you do with it are wrong, and suggesting that a “bikini body” is anything other than a body that’s wearing a bikini. Give ‘em all a hearty fuck-all-y’all with these two great zines about bodies, body image, and how to enjoy being embodied.

Get Fit for the Pit, Issue #1

Various contributors, ed. Nicole Harris

20 pg. at half-letter size

$2 from Fight Boredom Distro

This is an older (spring 2011) zine, but one that I’m glad is still around. Nicole Harris, who ran the now-defunct Click Clack Distro, compiled this zine, after realizing that punks and activists like herself often neglect their health. She wanted a place for people from her communities to write about getting and staying fit and healthy, and to combat punk’s “romantic emphasis… on late, sleepless nights and drunken adventures”.Get Fit for the Pit was the result.

Contributors include a number of noted zine folks, like Ramsey Everydaypants of List zine, and Chris Landry of Kiss Off zine. Korrina Irwin argues that you can still be a punk even if you do yoga, C.A. Eaves contends that there are parallels between moshing and rugby, and Ele contends that “there’s nothing more punk than taking control of your own body, discovering what you’re capable of. Harris, who compiled the zine, contributes a great piece about reconciling the conflict in her life between sports and counterculture.

I especially like Ramsey’s comic about how jock-type people at the gym are a lot more understanding of her listeing to punk rock and making zines than her punk friends are about her going to the gym. I’ve been surprised to find that most of the people at the gym I go to (it’s a YMCA, which helps) aren’t folks I’d identify as jocks, and that nobody has ever so much as looked at me askance for my leg hair or numerous stick-and-pokes.

James Russell Pyle’s piece also echoes my experiences, when he describes his teenage point of view: “I am not a fucking jock so I do not exercise”. Like a lot of people— most people?— I had shitty experiences in gym class, getting picked on and doing a lot of ducking and covering whenever a ball came my way. When I started thinking about going to a gym, I couldn’t separate out the concepts of “going to the gym” from my memories of gym class, something I had no desire to relive.

However, I was happy to find that the two have nothing in common, and that, as lots of people promised, working out is something that consistently makes me happy, makes me feel strong and confident in my body, and helps to tamp down the omnipresent anxiety to which I’m prone. Get Fit For The Pit is a great collection of perspectives if you’re thinking about making a change in your life and feel like you need to justify it to yourself or anyone else.

Fat-Tastic!, Issue #2

Various contributors, ed. Sage Adderley

16 pg. at half-letter size

$1.50 from the author

Fat-Tastic! was compiled by the tattooist, writer, and parent Sage Adderley, who runs Sweet Candy Distro. This, the second issue, was published in April 2012, and it collects a variety of contributions (non-fiction, poetry, photographs, drawings, and an interview) about being fat, from a body-positive perspective. Jennafur Lee Parks contributes an ode to the Gossip frontwoman Beth Ditto, in her capacity as a talented, hot, and powerful fat woman.

I especially enjoyed the interview with Anna Guest-Jelley, who runs Curvy Yoga, a website whose mandate is to be “a training & inspiration portal for curvy yogis and their allies & teachers”. She got into yoga because it allowed her to enjoy her body and feel strong and complete in herself, something that, having grown up fat, was a novel experience for her. As is affirmed in Get Fit For the Pit, enjoying your body and being healthy isn’t the exclusive providence of any one subculture or body type.

- Lily Pepper

a curious life

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 17:55:45 -0400

What a Beautiful Face: A Neutral Milk Hotel Fanzine

Various contributors, ed. Katie Johnson

20 pg. at half-letter size

$3 from Pioneers Press

I feel fortunate that Neutral Milk Hotel’s two records were around, and that I was privy to them, when I was a teenager. I don’t know if I would have been able to love them so thoroughly if I hadn’t found out about them til I was grown. Their music is earnest and raw like the feelings you have before you know anything of moderation and nuance.

Because the band’s songs are both confessional and impressionistic, they’ve been able to make a whole lot of people feel like they’re speaking directly to them and to their own sorrows and joys and crushes on long-dead teenagers. I’ve listened to and sung along with their songs driving alone out on rural roads, in dorm rooms, on Greyhound buses, around drunk campfires with friends.

Published by Punch Drunk Press, What a Beautiful Face collects writing about Neutral Milk Hotel. It’s a pretty quick read, but full of a good variety of stuff. Mostly, people write about their experiences of discovering, and being moved by, their music. Adam Gnade also contributes fiction inspired by the band, and several people write about the experience of seeing Jeff Mangum play on his recent tour.

As someone with longstanding warm feelings for Neutral Milk Hotel, I really enjoyed What a Beautiful Face, and would recommend it to anyone else for whose coming-of-age was made weirder and funner and noisier by their music.

- Lily Pepper

letters from ottawa

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:07:00 -0400

Les Carnets de Rastapopoulos, Issues #8 & 9

by Robert Gauvinov

both 16pg. at 1/2 legal size

Available at the Pressed zine rack or from the author (email link)

One of the reasons I started the zine rack I run is because I was having the damndest time finding any local zines to read, and I was hoping that if I made a home for them, they’d come out of the woodwork. Happily, this has totally actually been happening!

One Ottawa zine that came my way recently is Les Carnets de Rastapopoulos, by a writer who lives about a 15 minute walk from me. For any non-Francophones, the title translates as “Rastapopoulos’ Notebooks”, Rastapopoulos (I had to look it up) being a “sinister magnate” from the Tintin comics.

Issues 8 and 9 of Les Carnets de Rastapopoulos chronicle the author’s efforts to get back in touch with some of his penpals from the eighties, especially those from what was then behind the Iron Curtain. In so doing, he reflects on how the fall of the Berlin Wall, combined with the rise of the Internet, has changed how we in North America communicate with that part of the world.

As a teenager, Gauvinov first longed for a penpal from the other side of the Cold War, then, after taking out an ad in a Yugoslavian youth magazine, he was inundated with over 500 poignant letters from would-be correspondants. Issue 8 describes how he came to write back and forth with some of these folks.

In Issue 9, Gauvinov writes about his efforts to reconnect with some of his penpals, twenty-five years later. You get a great sense of how exciting that connection is, and how different from recieving a constant Facebook flow of mundane details from the lives of people you once knew.

As a kid, I, too, succumbed to the allure of a penpal agency, and paid to have my address shared with some other bookish kids worldwide. The two I remember were a blond girl from the Midwest who claimed to have psychic powers, and a girl from Japan who wooed me with elaborate stationery and lovely hiragana-inflected penmanship.

I really hope penpalism isn’t extinct in the modern world, because it was a hell of a lot of fun. But if the internet didn’t sound a death knell for zines, as some had thought it might, here’s hoping that penpallery too is alive and well. Les Carnets de Rastapopoulos is a really fun read, and it made me wish I had some penpals. Check it out!

- Lily Pepper

care and feeding of zinesters

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 11:49:20 -0400

Self-Care for Zinesters
by Maranda Elizabeth
14 pg. at 1/4 letter size

$2 from the author, on etsy

I really like, and need, advice, lord knows.

I’ve been going for massages (thanks, health insurance), and so I was told this week that the cause of all my problems is that I breathe “about 10% as much as I should”. I had no idea it was possible to be bad at breathing, but now I know that it is, and I am. Bring on the life-skills training.

So, it is fitting that I received some copies in the mail this week of Maranda Elizabeth’s latest zine, Self-Care for Zinesters. I am fully willing to follow Maranda’s advice, as all signs point to them being a capable, talented, and thoughtful person.

Maranda, who lives in Guelph, Ontario, is the author of Telegram zine, which was recently compiled by Mend My Dress Press into a book, and the co-author, with Dave Cave, of Real Life: A Magical Guide to Getting Off the Internet (links go to my reviews). They also just announced that they will soon be self-publishing their first novel, Ragdoll House.

In other words, they accomplish really amazing things, which impress me all the more because they also write courageously about their experiences with depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder, PTSD, and about generally being a self-proclaimed weirdo, for whom many things don’t come easily.

Despite the title, Maranda’s advice is useful to all sorts of folks, not only those in the zine community. While some of the advice is specific to tabling at zine fairs, and such, much of it is just good practice for life.

Essentially, Maranda’s advice is to pay attention to what you actually want and need (rather than, for instance, what your friends want, or what you think you should be doing to make the most of your time).

Reading Maranda’s eminently level-headed advice for self-aware, non-debaucherous fun really made me wish that they would come to my city and hang out! I am grateful that they took the time to share their wisdom in Self-Care for Zinesters, and I’d recommend it highly.

- Lily Pepper

magic, every day and in every way

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 20:24:00 -0400

Everyday Magic, Issue #1: Here
By Finn, July 2012
12 pg. at half-letter size
$4.45 from Doris Distro

It’s hard for a mind not to go to all the worst places when the term “magic” is thrown around. Whether it’s Sigfried and Roy, or avaricious new-age gurus hawking enlightenment on an installment plan, a lot of unseemly things get described as “magic”.

Finn, the author of Everyday Magic, proposes a radical, anti-capitalist type of magic, and proposes thinking about the way we love our friends and communities as magical. They suggest that it’s necessary for our belief systems to be “constructed from landscape, the particulars of place”. They recount their experiences with magic and ritual, like rebaptizing themselves in the Pacific Ocean with a new name that better suits their gender.

Finn writes about being influenced by Derrick Jensen, and positions magic as a way of thinking that’s opposed to the rapacious individualism of capitalism, and the rationalism that underlies it. We have to trust, it turns out, in the ways things other than ourselves matter.

I was raised by one New-Agey parent and one fervent skeptic, so I find myself both drawn to and repelled by talk of magic. I totally, totally agree that we need a cosmology where the individual’s drive to win at all costs isn’t the be-all and end-all. I think that that concept is so deeply entrenched in our ways of life that you have to talk about the world in radically different ways in order to even see that it’s an ideology, rather than just the way things are. I like the idea of magic as being that other perspective, that other way of being in the world.

Finn writes,

“if we were truly here, what relief would we know? and what responsibilities would we hold? how much harder would we fight? what would we risk for change?”

and proposes magic as the way of being here and the way of shouldering those responsibilities. And why the hell not? It’s not like our current way of thinking about the world is getting us anywhere we wanna be. This is a really cool, genuinely thought-provoking zine.

- Lily Pepper

pioneers press

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 18:50:00 -0400

Last summer, I signed an open letter to Microcosm Publishing, about Microcosm’s lack of accountability in dealing with the shitty abusive behaviour of its founder, Joe Biel. Like many people, I’d stopped buying zines from Microcosm when I heard, by reading Alex Wrekk’s zine Brainscan, about Biel’s creepy behaviour. As Wrekk wrote:

So, the question is do I think people should support Joe Biel and Microcosm? If you think survivors of abuse should be believed, supported and respected and you believe abusers should be held accountable to their community and those they have hurt then I think you know my answer.

A couple of months ago, out of the blue, I got an email from Heavy Mental Distro, who had written the letter I signed. They wanted to let the signatories know about the following message, which had popped up on the Microcosm Distribution homepage:

Pioneers Press is owned by Jessie Duke and was started by former Microcosm Publishing collective members. We operated temporarily under the name “Microcosm Distribution” but dropped the name as it gave the false impression that we were still associated in some way with Microcosm Publishing. We no longer carry any Microcosm Publishing titles or support the company or its owner in any way…. This is a really healing and restorative move for us. (And we’re super tempted to include a link here to Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor” or Christina Aguilera’s “Fighter.”) On to bigger and better things. Thanks for your ongoing support!

Pioneers Press, as did Microcosm, carries a HUGE number of zines and comics, so I was pretty excited that I could order from them without supporting anyone creepy. I put in a huge order and found them super friendly and helpful, and the zines arrived quickly and were awesome. I know that some people might be wary of dealing with them because of their former affiliation with Microcosm— if this is so, please drop me a line and let me know why.

One of the zines I ordered is by Jessie Duke and Adam Gnade, who run Pioneers Press:

The Hard Fifty Farm
by Jessie Duke and Adam Gnade
28 pg. at half-letter size
$4 from Pioneers Press

The Hard Fifty Farm is a split zine by two formerly urban folks who live in rural Kansas. It’s about adjusting to the aspects of country life that aren’t necessarily or immediately scenic or adorable or heartwarming. Duke writes about the sad loss of a one-legged duck, about comforting a sick baby, and about trying to fit in in a place where your family hails from. Gnade relates a story about hearing older friends tell stories, and not necessarily quaint ones, but stories about all the heartbreak that can accrue in a life, the good people you know and lose, and the bad things you see and how they change you.

The Hard Fifty Farm is a pensive, slow-paced, quiet zine, with a writing style well suited to its content. Having grown up rurally, I think I’m less inclined to romanticize country living, and more attuned to the way it puts you right up on the raggedy edges of things, with all the newborn stuff struggling for life and the dead stuff frozen in the ditches. If that’s your background, too, this speaks to it eloquently. If it’s not, but you’ve thought about starting a new, pastoral phase to your life, maybe check this zine out.

- Lily Pepper

how to not be the worst

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 21:49:00 -0400

The Philly Dudes Collective, Year One (and a Half)
by the Philly Dudes Collective
28 pg. at half-letter size
$3.25 from Doris Distro. Also available in Ottawa at the Pressed zine rack

I’m writing this on St. Patrick’s Day, which, along with New Years and Canada Day, is one of my most hated days. I hate not feeling safe anywhere in my city on account of the roving packs of blind-drunk dudes in novelty hats, and as far as I can tell, that is what those three days are all about.

I wish I saw it reflected in my culture how fucking scary this can all be, how lots of folks have good reason to be be scared of men in groups, and men full of beer and swagger. I wish that more men would be aware of the privilege it is to walk around like that, feeling big and loud and safe, and spare a thought for people who don’t always feel that way when they’re out and about.

The Philly Dudes Collective is, or was, an attempt to generate that kind of discussion and, for lack of a better word, consciousness-raising. Their website hasn’t been updated since 2009, so I’m not sure if they’re still active, but fortunately, this zine is still in print. Their mission statement, as cited in the zine, is/was as follows:

“The Philly Dudes Collective aspires to create safe spaces for OPEN, CRITICAL, and HONEST discussion on the topic of masculinity (and privilege and oppression more broadly). We do not seek to create a consensus of ideas, but rather to open a dialogue. We want to acknowledge that patriarchy hurts men in ways that we cannot often put into words, but we also want to emphasize that while struggling to reshape masculinity, it is essential that we constantly stay aware of our privileges and remain accountable to those whose lives our privilege affects.”

This zine isn’t all that cohesive, or all that elegantly written: its purpose is to document the activities that the Philly Dudes Collective organized, and to be a resource for people who’d like to make similar stuff happen elsewhere. The organizers share their reflections on workshops and discussions they organize, and reprint posters for some of their events, which really gives you a good sense of how their organizing played out.

The resources are pretty specific to working within the punk scene, which is neat. I also like that they address sexual assault of men, and sexual violence and coercion in queer relationships, topics that don’t usually get the attention they deserve. They describe a number of hypothetical scenarios related to sex and consent which could be used for discussion or for individual reflection.

I found this zine really pragmatic and not just a lot of self-congratulation, which, sorry, can totally be the case with male feminism. I think that the types of discussion that they advocate would really make a difference for people, and I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to see it happen elsewhere, especially where I am.

I have definitely seen dudes struggling, and doing an amazing or a mediocre or a counterproductive job at, for example, being an ally to people who have been through sexual assault. I know it’s not necessarily intuitive— being a good person or having good intentions isn’t enough to carry you through. I think it is super, super important for people to have thoughtful discussions about this stuff, and I think that this zine is a great resource for it. Ok, go!

- Lily Pepper

the ottawa zine-off

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 20:13:00 -0400

Last week, Pressed Cafe (home of my zine rack) hosted the Ottawa Zine-Off. I was only there momentarily, owing to I Am Shy, but they had an excellent turnout, and I was delighted to see Ottawa folks making and swapping zines.

The Reverse Cougar Years
Issue 3, July 2012, and Issue 4, March 2013
by Maxx Critical
Both issues 20 pg. at 1/4 letter size
Contact the author for more information

Maxx Critical was one of the organizers, with Neil Johnston, of the Ottawa Zine-Off. She gave me two issues of her zine, The Reverse Cougar Years, which I hope to soon be stocking in my zine rack. The Reverse Cougar Years is a resurrection, after a long hiatus of a zine Maxx wrote in her early teens. As she writes in the introduction,

“I stopped writing zines because I was told it was selfish to want to share my thoughts, for no other reason than the fact that I enjoyed telling stories.”

For starters, I’d like to find the person who told her that, and get him. Fortunately, Maxx is now writing again. Issue #3 covers two main topics: the author’s work as a sound tech, and her experiences with anxiety. She describes how she got into mixing via working at a radio station, what it’s like to be a woman in a male-dominated field, which latter topic she goes into more detail on in Issue #4. She also gives some hints for musicians on how to play nicely with sound techs, which seem drawn from bitter experience.

Issue #3 also describes Maxx’s history with anxiety, and the stigma in the punk community against using psychiatric medications, and the importance of therapy and self-care. She also gives shout outs to some good zines about anxiety, including Nailbiter, one of the first zines I ever reviewed here. In #4, she also tells the tale of how she broke her foot.

Maxx’s writing is clear and down-to-earth, and she has interesting things to say, so I enjoyed reading her zine. I hope to help make it available to more people!

One of my favourite pages from Finale 95.

Finale 95
Issue #1,February 2013

by Alanna Why
28 pg. at 1/4 letter size
Contact the author for more information

I wrote here about some previous zines of Alanna’s, so I was stoked to receive a copy of her new zine, Finale 95, at the Zine-Off. Alanna is a high school student in suburban Ottawa, who writes with immense verve and enthusiasm about music, Catholic school, thrift shopping, among other notable topics. She interviews her mom about online Scrabble and relates some of her favourite Hallowe’en costumes. I fucking love this damn zine. Thank you Alanna.

- Lily Pepper

twenty five

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 20:45:00 -0500

XXV
by Hari, August 2011
32 pg. at 1/4 letter size
$1 from Fight Boredom distro

I like zines where people describe their values and how they came to be what they are— I think it’s a topic that is well served by zines, which tend towards the individualistic, opinionated, and idiosyncratic. XXV reads like a statement of values— not a manifesto, but a thoughtful explanation of how Hari came to hold the values that he does.

The priorities espoused in XXV include doing fun things while you are young and able, not caring about money, and living a life where you have the ability to try things out without being shackled to your ambitions. Hari writes about these things by explaining why he likes zines (because they are a labour of love, because you can’t make a zine good by throwing money at it), the allure of cassette tapes, and the joys of funemployment.

He also writes about growing up in a small town and dreaming of living in a big city, but being ambivalent about city life when that dream is realized. This is a topic close to my heart, since that has certainly been my story as well. I grew up longing to live in Toronto, because it was the biggest city I’d been to, with the most weirdos and bookstores and exciting foods. When I moved to Montreal as a teen, I found it hard to adapt to the nonstop overstimulation of city life, and being expected to ignore people you didn’t know, pretend not to see them. It still seems like a weird thing to do.

XXV also includes another piece on the “country mouse, city mouse” theme. Steve, of Broke Ass zine, who grew up in Newfoundland, recounts being jealous as a kid of a friend who dropped out of high school to See The World. Both writers evoke convincingly and poignantly the dreamy misconceptions of young, isolated punks. I would certainly recommend getting this zine from Fight Boredom.

- Lily Pepper

witches living as they like

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 17:25:00 -0500

Off the Map
by Hibickina Chickena and Kika Kat
142 pg. at 5” x 7”
$4 from CrimethInc

Off the Map is a story of two women travelling through Europe. Having, as they put it, “all these ideas about reclaimed space and making community”, which can only take them so far without the opportunity to see these put into practice, the zine’s two authors undertake a voyage of WWOOfing, squatting, hitchhiking, sleeping in abandoned houses, and depending on the kindness of strangers.

Off the Map was first self-published as a zine by its authors. It was then printed and distributed as a “blurry, second-generation scammed photocopy” zine by the anarchist collective CrimethInc. That second incarnation proved so successful that distributing it became a drain on Crimethinc’s resources. That being so, they decided to publish it as a (handsome and affordable) book, with a Nikki McClure cover. The book is now in its seventh printing.

The telling is relentlessly earnest, the authors write in their preamble that:

“When we first decided to write a zine about that summer of travel, we wanted to tell the stories that had shaped us so definitively, to give thanks to all the hands that had guided us along the way, to lend a taste of the wings we’d borrowed to anyone who might still be waiting on the ground for an extra push”

The aim is to move beyond protest and dissent and tearing down, to affirming and building lives that are rooted in community and care for others, sensual (“I hadn’t tasted summer like this for years”), and attuned to magic and chance. As they explain to one man who picked them up hitchhiking, they had read the story of Huck Finn as girls and wanted to live a punk, female version of it.

Indeed, Off the Map sometimes comes across a bit like an anarchist fairy tale, like a grimier European Weetzie Bat, as in the opening sequence where the authors are welcomed at an all-woman squat in Amsterdam:

“‘Witches”, Hibickina and I whispered happily to each other, looking around while Annet was in her room throwing on her fishnets and lacing up her combat boots, ‘Witches living as they like’”.

Despite their rosy optimism, the authors are also relentlessly critical of rigid subcultural codes and gender roles in punk, of mean punks, of punks who just drink the day away. They write that they’re looking for a place where “a scene had turned into a movement”, where travelling isn’t just a reprieve from school or work, and where living radical values isn’t just a youthful phase. I’d love to hear what they’ve found in the years since this was written.

- Lily Pepper

a-dick-tion? (so sorry)

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 18:38:00 -0500

How Many Pictures of Dicks Do I Have To Look At Before I Stop Wanting To Look At Pictures Of Dicks?: A Diary of Gay Porn Addiction
by Dave Cave, May 2012
32 pg. at half-letter size
$1 from Fight Boredom Distro

I don’t know if I’ve ever felt less need to summarize the content of a zine; the title of this zine pretty much does the job for me. This zine is a diary of Dave Cave’s efforts to quell his addiction to online porn, over the span of his first month quitting porn. He lives in rural Ontario with his family, a couple hours from the small town in Ontario where I grew up, which would endear him to me even if this weren’t a very endearing zine on its own merits.

In the way of diaries, it’s very raw: Cave isn’t trying to make himself look cool or erudite. There’s a way of writing about challenges you’ve faced that just makes you look tougher, wiser, more worldly, and this isn’t it. This zine is vulnerable and plaintive, because Cave is writing about things that he is still struggling with moment to moment, rather than trials overcome.

This zine is handwritten, but very legible. Like you, I am sometimes dismayed when I open a zine and find out I have to read a ton of someone’s squiggly-ass handwriting. But in this case, the handmade aesthetic of the zine concords with its confessional style, like a letter from a pal who trusts you completely.

Everybody Moon Jump
Issue #12, November 2011
by Dave Cave
28 pg. at 1/4 letter size
$1 from Fight Boredom Distro

This zine is pretty similar in tone to How Many Dicks, above: it’s earnest and despairing and hopeful. It’s about being in a rough place and dreaming of a better one. It will whiplash you around a bit by being funny, then abruptly invoking suicidal thoughts. (This is your fair warning). Cave writes more here about his porn addiction, its effects on the way he feels about sex, and his efforts to get out from under it. If you’ve ever been lonesome in a small town, you’ll understand some of the feelings he writes about— and even if you haven’t, he describes them well enough to tug on the heartstrings.

- Lily Pepper

first world problems

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 20:15:00 -0500

The Off-Season
by Drew Nelles
16 pg. at 5” x 7”
$7 from Ribbon Pig

When I started this thing, I was intending on writing about small-press publications as well as zines. (There’s a grey area there, since while most people who care to have an opinion on such things would probably contend that being self-published is a necessary condition of being a zine, there’s plenty of rule-proving and rule-bending exceptions).

One of the first things I reviewed was the small-press-published poetry collections of a local writer I know and like, but since then, I’ve written mainly about things that were photocopied by their own authors. Zines are cheap and fun and available through channels with which I am familiar, but I’d like to read, and write about, more small-press offerings.

The Off-Season is a handsomely printed short story published by Ribbon Pig, a Montreal imprint. It is written by someone I went to school with, and knew slightly, who has gone on to fine writerly things: he is the editor-in-chief of Maisonneuve magazine and a writer for many notable periodicals, up to and including Readers Digest.

He has noted online that he is not usually a writer of fiction, and that while The Off-Season is a short story set in the future, it is “not really science fiction”.

The Off-Season takes place in a futuristic North America which, following economic and ecological collapse, is now grovelling after tourist dollars. The story takes place in a coastal city where the ocean has overtaken the seaside skyscrapers, and centres around the collision between a broke, lonely innkeeper and a privileged Mandarin-speaking backpacker.

The story is, conceptually, a simple reversal of the current relationship between East and West (broadly construed), and it is effective in its understated telling. It works well as a pointed rebuke at people who sit on the beach reading about postcolonialism while reaping its rewards, who go someplace exotic to get sloppy drunk and homesick. In this story, while a tourist’s desire to learn about the world isn’t in itself exploitative, in the world we live in, its consequences are.

As an allegory, it probably sounds heavy-handed, the way I’m describing it. While there is a “gotcha” element to it, in practice, it’s quietly effective. The story unfolds discreetly, and is written in a sparse, lonely style that suits its content well (“Very few people swim in the ocean, although it is clean and empty”).

In an interview, Nelles confirms that he wrote this story after travelling in India, where he “began to think about how strange it would be to have wealthy foreigners arrive in your country not to see the place itself but to see what the place used to be, all while taking advantage of cheap hotels and cheap food”.

I don’t know how to navigate this conundrum, and it’s a big part of why I’ve never traveled anywhere outside of North America, though I don’t think that’s a tenable moral high ground, by any means. The Off-Season is a fine, queasy, unsettling look at this— it doesn’t offer any answers or pull any punches or make you feel comfortable about anything that you oughtn’t feel comfortable about. I really liked it.

- Lily Pepper

ottawastories

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:59:00 -0500

The Last Thumbnail Picture Show
by Adam Thomlinson
Available through 40 Watt Spotlight Press, or at the Pressed Cafe zine rack
Various issues, 24 to 48 pages at 4” by 3”

I’m writing an article for a local magazine on the history of zines in my city (Ottawa, Canada). Basically, the intent was to gripe about the lack of local zines and to implore people to make some. However, asking around, I’ve found that Ottawa used to have a lot of great zines, in such times as it was also a great city for punk and hardcore, namely, the early eighties. So that’s ended up being the gist of the article.

In doing this “research”, I’ve been happy to have an excuse to talk to a variety of Ottawa punks and past and current zine writers. I asked around, and my friend Sean Zio in particular, graciously talked a number of his writer friends into talking to me. One was Adam Thomlinson, who writes The Last Thumbnail Picture Show, which is now in its fifth issue. He is a journalist and photographer, and the covers of his tiny zines are the index prints you get when you have a roll of film printed, which Thomlinson had found himself accumulating before he found an outlet for them. He started making his zine after finding he was accumulating short stories “too short to submit to magazines or to stand on their own as zines”.

The stories, accordingly, are not grand in scale or scope: they just describe moments in a life, like walking by a restaurant at night and seeing a lonesome scene through the window, or drinking green Kool-Aid with a girl who doesn’t want to kiss you. They are small and winsome and poignant. They will ride handily in your purse or pocket and give you a concentrated burst of humor and melancholy.

When I spoke to Adam, I also bought a stack of current and past issues of The Last Thumbnail Picture Show to stock at my zine rack. I was really excited about this, since I’d been hankering to have more local content represented. If you’re in Ottawa, you can pick up a copy of The Last Thumbnail Picture Show along with your next sandwich, otherwise, it’s available through 40 Watt Spotlight Press. Either way, I recommend it.

- Lily Pepper

tiny science gang

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:09:00 -0500

As someone without scientific training who works in a medical-scientific field, I’ve spent a lot of time picking through dense, highly specialized Wikipedia articles on topics related to my work, trying to get a basic understanding of the principles, and getting forever bogged down in jargon and obfuscation. And I appreciate that, even if your intentions are good, it’s challenging to explain the niceties of your field to an unwashed layman such as myself. But a lot of the time it seems like nobody’s even trying.

Enter the Small Science Collective, “a collaboration of scientists, artists, students, and anyone else interested in science”. As a gentle rebuke to the privatization and increasing specialization of the sciences, they produce and distribute mini-comics on scientific topics .

What counts as science? A lot of things. Part of the Collective’s point seems to be that things scientific aren’t mutually exclusive with things that are intelligible, or relevant, or exciting, or funny, to non-scientists. Topics covered in the Small Science Collective’s zines include more conventionally scientific topics like evolution, stem cells, and protein structure, but also purple martins, entomophagy (eating insects), and Snuppy the Cloned Puppy.

I printed, folded, and enjoyed their zines on pigeons, language, water bears, and human symbiosis with bacteria. They feature lively drawings, entertaining facts, and a good very basic introduction to the topic at hand, which does not presuppose experience or advanced education.

In the collective’s mission statement, “Whose Knowledge Is Scientific Knowledge?” (spoiler warning: not just scientists’!), Small Science svengali Andrew Yang writes,

“As easy as it is to feel like science is obscure, too difficult, and perhaps even a little boring, shrugging off its importance in our daily lives means letting others do all the thinking, leaving everyone else to simply be consumers of the knowledge scientists and engineers produce – as education, entertainment, and technological tools & toys. What personal role can each of us play in sharing curiosity about the natural world and the ways we come to know it?”

The role Yang suggests consists of creating mini-comics about science and sharing them online on the Collective’s website, and by printing the comics and leaving them hither and yon for people to find, “perhaps catching the attention of strangers who didn’t know they wanted to know more about ants, galaxies, or genes, but are glad they got the unexpected chance”.

In my Wikipedia reading, trying to cobble together a working understanding of immunology or genetics or somesuch, I often came across amazing facts that could stand on their own, that I was excited to share with friends. I’m glad there are others out there who are doing this. Small Science Collective is a great project, and I would enthusiastically recommend that you visit them and get a snack-sized science education.

- Lily Pepper

all the single zinesters

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:15:00 -0500

My Every Single Thought: What I Think About Being Single

by Corinne Mucha, June 2009

44 pg. at half-letter size

$5 from the author or from Buyolympia

o o o o

So, I know we’ve had the winter solstice and all that already, but you could be forgiven for thinking that we, us here now, are in the coldest and darkest part of the year. Christmas lights have come down, trees are out on the sidewalk for pickup, and it’s just slushy and stupid out there. It’s a pretty great time of year to have someone around to cuddle up on and make dinner with and stuff. OR IS IT?

In My Every Single Thought, Corinne Mucha makes a funny, insightful, and compelling case for being single. The back cover describes the zine as follows: “This comic chronicles the author’s attempts to get over an old relationship and come to terms with a saucy new label - SINGLE.” It consists of funny, associative vignettes, in which Mucha investigates the associations we have around single folks (“cat lady”).

Her art is confident, simple, economical, and funny: it’s very effective for illustrating the absurdity of the concepts she’s describing. Mucha writes about the cliches of love and finds that, under scrutiny, they don’t really sound that appealing.For instance, there’s a comic about the cliché of having your heart belong to someone (other than yourself). She finds herself pleased that her heart belongs to herself, and concerned for those for whom that is not the case.

On the topic of social pressures to shack up with someone, much has been said: it’s widely assumed that doing the heteronormative love thing is integral to Success At Life (incidentally, this is why I wasn’t allowed to play the board game Life, having had a queer feminist parent). However, Mucha’s writing and art on this topic didn’t seem redundant: it was sharp and funny and thoughtful: indeed, why is it that “Hollywood’s favorite way to show that a character has grown, changed, or is generally victorious is by having them fall in love”?

She writes about being asked why she is single, and speculates on what answers are expected: “An enumeration of my flaws? A lame-o excuse?”. Essentially, she’s pointing out that being happily single is something that elicits confused questioning in a way that being contentedly in love would not.

The concept of this comic could well have seemed overly self-deprecating cutesy, but Mucha pulls it off with aplomb: she comes across as so self-assured and thoughtful that one could well feel chagrined for being settled in with someone.

Whether you’re single or not, I think it’s a good idea to reflect on the constellation of values and associations we ascribe to singleness and coupledom. This comic is fun on the eyes, but packs a punch of sharp cultural criticism. I certainly recommend curling up with it in these cold, lonesome winter months.

- Lily Pepper

christian zine roundup

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 20:44:00 -0500

This week, it happened that the three zines that had drifted to the top of my to-review stack are about youthful experiences with some of the more intense forms of Christianity. I’ll be writing about two issues about Jesus Christ Superzine, which is about coming of age as an Evangelical kid in the Pacific Northwest, and An Errant Truth, which is an account of growing up in a small, insular sect of Christianity.

Jesus Christ Superzine

by Ariel Birks

Issue #1, 40 pg, Issue #2, 32 pg., both half-letter size

I bought these from Ms. Valerie Park Distro, but then waited so long to review it they don’t have copies any more. Maybe later?

o o o o

Ariel Birks doesn’t go into too much detail in Jesus Christ Superzine about what group she belonged to, identifying it just as evangelical Christianity. Of these two issues, Issue 1 focuses more on her experiences as a young believer, and Issue 2 deals more with how she came to question those beliefs.

I liked how earnest Birks is about her younger self, how thoroughly she can inhabit that person and explain her to us, without eye-rolling or ironically distancing herself from things she no longer feels or believes. I think it’s hard enough for anyone, as an adult, to identify with their own cringing, half-formed adolescent self (or is that just me?). Since, in addition to all the usual coming-of-age changes, Birks also underwent a major ideological shift, it’s especially impressive to me that she’s able to write with such clarity and empathy about her younger, believing self.

For example, she has an interesting piece in Issue 1 about how much she loved church camp. A lot of writers would describe this with some eye-rolling, so the reader could laugh with them about their credulous younger self. Birks manages to draw a continuity between herself then and herself now when she writes about how she relished camp as an opportunity for ecstatic communion with God:

“I’ve often felt an urgency to get to the most ‘important’ parts where all my affection for the profound (if not melodramatic, then neurotically over-thought) can be appreciated. Like I tend to feel most true when I’m newly in love, freshly meditated, talkin’ bout feelings, and otherwise being completely saturated in the emotional tide pools or having mind altering experiences… And worship camp was the perfect setting for these pursuits. We were exciteable people and our enthusiasm and our collective endorphin levels made camp something completely trance-like, extreme and crave-able”.

She draws an interesting example, for those readers who had The Other Kind of Adolescence, to the way one would set a scene for taking psychedelic drugs: by ensuring that the mood and the time and place are right, one can increase one’s chance of having an enlightening, rather than hellish, trip. Birks describes all the ways that church camp set participants up to experience thorough surrender to God.

Birks also writes about her confusing first crush, and about her friend’s families’ struggles with poverty and addition that give context to their beliefs and hopes. Her writing is creative and evocative, as when she describes one of her family’s traditions as “a dalmation of apathy only speckled with moments of true devotion”.

o o o o

An Errant Truth

by Calhan, November 2008

52 pg. at 5 1/2” x 7 1/2”

$3 from Parcell Press

o o o o

The sect that Calhan grew up in is substantially more obscure than the one that Birks writes about, to the extent that he felt the need to include a glossary with this zine. The sect has no official name, but goes by monikers including the Two-By-Twos. He tells his story with a mix of comics and short blocks of writing, so it can feel a little disjointed. I liked how he, like Birks, doesn’t stoop to making fun of or being ironic about the faith he grew up in. He emphasizes that debate was welcomed, and describes the pride he felt in his father, who would challenge the group on their interpretation of scripture. An Errant Truth focuses on the tension he experienced when he went to university, between his faith and his desire for theoretical rigour.

My own religious upbringing was pretty half-assed (in a good way), but if you have had experience with losing and gaining faith, these zines would surely mean much more to you than they did to me— but either way, they’re an interesting read.

- Lily Pepper