Zine Reviews

El Cielo Sin Estrellas

Risograph print in blue, white, and red. The text is pretty small, but it probably had to be in order to fit an entire Bildungsroman inside its pages. Simone Bailey is a crazy-good artist from the San Francisco Bay Area, who, in her wide-range exploration of the world, uses her genius to grasp the intangible from her quite significant viewpoint as a Black person.

In this packed zine, Simone manages to turn inside out concepts of race and class as she visits Cuba while in undergrad. She breaks through some constraints normally placed on visitors to the island because of her Blackness, but then is slapped right in the face with others because of, you guessed it, her Blackness. 

This zine is a must-read, very worth sticking actual cash in an envelope and finding two stamps.

  • Contact PO Box 40474 San Francisco, CA 94140

An Interview With Some Draculas

Don’t let the blood-red cover and gothic font fool you into a false sense of impending terror—this is a very cute and fun romp from MRR columnist N.L. Reynolds. Charting Nicky’s attempt to finally face up to their long-term fear of Dracula, it’s an illustrated story of run-ins with various “Draculas” a.k.a. bats, actually existing vampires, Grandpa Munster, etc.

  • Contact Nicky Reynolds, 145 Grimes St., Buffalo, NY 14212

Background Paper #1 / #2 / #3

As far as I can tell, this zine is a collection of notes on various songs the author may or may not be listening to on YouTube. Instead of posting comments below the video, the author has done it on unlined paper. Yes. It is exactly as coherent as it sounds. Nevertheless, buried inside are some marginally coherent notes on songs/bands/videos/Wikipedia pages. For instance: “If Ghouls Night Out’ is your favorite Misfits song, that seems weird.” It does. But so does this zine.

Baited Area

This is chiefly a collection of interviews with multidisciplinary artists, musicians, and writers, touching on a laudably broad range of topics from vaporwave to Liberace. The interviews are lengthy without feeling rambling or unfocused, punctuated with large illustrations and quotations from influential writers and artists of the past. The production values of this publication are definitely higher than your standard stapled-B&W-copies-on-bottom-shelf-printer-paper zine. The pages have a certain heft that can make them a bit awkward to turn and the type is very small, much easier to read in bright light, but these are minor complaints about an otherwise beautiful, thoughtful mag.

Boothaeven’s Magazine #5

Boothaeven’s has that very specific cut and paste layout. Now don’t go categorizing—Lowie is the best at this style, he mastered the cut and paste! So you get a full sized zine, black and white (and I really mean high-contrast black and white, there’s no grey in here) cut and paste. It’s great! Content-wise you get interviews with Vanguard, Invunche, Raw Brigade, Crucified, Phantom Lure and Headsplit Records. So the content ranges from black metal to dungeon synth to NYHC in a Belgian way and militant vegan HC. It’s safe to say the content is as eclectic as the zine looks and I mean that in every positive way!! All interviews make for a good read (Lowie’s questions go deeper than just “introduce yourself,” it’s about the persona and his/her personal beliefs, plus Lowie is not afraid to question certain answers!), the reviews are hilarious (that intro alone: “I reviewed eleven albums and then I got tired of reviewing albums and went to sleep” come on people, there can be a joke, right?) and the writing… The writing is essential, buddy—something about compilation CD/tape/LPs, another about how someone bought his first comp based on an ad in the late ’90s, and another is a nicely written top five of best comps around. Damn, I love this zine in every way! I buy this one without even checking the content.

Chasing the Night #7

I should disclaim at the outset that the compiler of this zine and some of its contributors are pals and I received a copy hot off the Xerox. It’s a great document of Portland in early quarantine, back when the government was trying to kill us passively rather than actively. Contributors describe their lockdown routines, including humorous and useful tips for sheltering alone if you live with roommates, photos of pandemic facial hair experiments, and safety protocol notices from various local businesses, at least one of which has sadly since closed. Mike Antipathy wrote a wonderful micro-memoir about previous experiences with apocalyptic conditions, getting into punk, and the movie Red Dawn that is particularly enjoyable. A solid and interesting read.

DisturbancE Oct. 2019

DisturbancE. With a capital D and E for Delaware. A local scene zine, with a classic off-center cover and the photos, interview and reviews you’d expect. Well done and essentially perfect for what it is. DIY till I die production value. Good fun photo layout inside, and well balanced with a decent interview with Erin Silva of Eyebawl and a couple good reviews, including Eyebawl and Merger. Throw in a “know your rights” page, and a few ads for local record shops and labels and you’re set! Good to see what’s up in Delaware though, a solid scene report. Checked in on DisturbancE now and they’ve put out their last issue in February, contributors are still active in zines in Delaware, developing zine libraries and distros. Look forward to seeing more zines and music from them!

Drivel #1

It’s about new things, new treats, new romances, new friends, new homes, all kinds of new stuff. This is a sweet little zine that covers quite a lot of ground. I actually read this whole thing in one sitting (which is unlike me) and there were times when I thought I was getting bored… but I realized that it was just my horrendously short attention span being taxed by something of substance. Gina Sarti has created something here that you have to down to appreciate, and I particularly enjoyed the new friend interview which felt like I had been invited to share in something really intimate and honest. It’s gentle but it’s not twee, it’s funny and it’s full of beautiful, simple line illustrations and patterns. This zine has that “Hey I want to show you something” vibe about it, which I really dig. It made me think of my friends. Plus, I don’t know about you, but I will always want to hear stories about punk houses that you’ve lived in. And if you do now or have ever worked in the voluntary/charity/support sector then you might find some solidarity here, too. Available through Antiquated Future Distro.

Getting Get in the Van

A clever concept for a project: the author lost a friend’s copy of Henry Rollins’s now out-of-print memoir, Get in the Van, and is selling these zines to raise money to purchase another. The text of the zine recreates conversations with the author’s friends about this endeavor, imagined emails to and from Henry Rollins, reviews of Rollins’s Wikipedia page, digressions on YouTube comments, and an interview with musician Dan Brenner about the difficulty of finding a copy of Get in the Van. The writing is chatty and funny and the assembly of the zine is homemade and unpretentious.

Magical Spaces #1

This issue, “an incomplete history of long-gone illegal punk venues in Boston from 2000-2015 or somewhere around there” is designed for three types of people. 1. Someone who went to illegal punk shows in Boston from 2000-2015 or somewhere around there. 2. Someone who is interested in documenting their own local scene and needs an example of how that can be done. 3. Someone interested in looking at a microhistory of US punk in order to understand larger patterns. If you happen to be any of those three people, this is indispensable. The author, Chris Strunk, opens with some historical musings on punk in the US before delving into a very specific accounting of his experiences at various illegal venues (43 if I can count). Both encyclopedic and humorously subjective, Magical Spaces #1 would fit in nicely with an archive of show flyers and other ephemera to create a lively and robust picture of Boston punk. I rather think that is by design. Chris tells us he is a librarian, after all.

  • Contact Free the Future Press Somerville, MA

Not Like You photo issue #2 / photo issue #3 / issue #8

  • Price $4 (#2), $3 (#3), $10 (#8)
  • Pages 40 pgs (#2 & #3), 52 pgs (#8)
  • Reviewer Kristof Mondy

So, you have the photo issues 2 and 3—those are spin-off zines from the regular Not Like You zine. Let me start with the photo issues. Both the covers are full color, the inside is black and white. Issue 2 is full-sized while issue 3 is half-sized. I don’t like the different formats. My collecting self wants these on the shelf, next to each other, same size… Now I’m definitely a fan of photo zines but this one just doesn’t do the trick. Pictures are static and don’t really capture the atmosphere. I miss the energy of a live show. There are a couple of cool shots of Agnostic Front, Fugazi, Avail, DOA and Night Birds but these just drown in a basic lay-out or are covered with a pixilated logo of the band. I really want to support these kind of zines but then please look at other great publications like Inferno Photozine. As for the regular zine, this is a full-sized, properly printed magazine. I really like this format, I like the way Not Like You combines (old school) skateboarding with hardcore punk music and art. What I don’t really understand is the outcome. I found myself flipping through this one multiple times, just to find the beginning and the end of the different interviews. There’s no header to each separate interview, there’s no difference between question and answer and there’s no whitespace before a new question… My autistic brain can’t really handle this. But, I did like the piece on Todd Youth (RIP). And I did like a lot of the pictures in this issue!

Out From the Void #2 / Encyclopedia of the Missing

This issue is kind of a split zine. One half is the second part of mental health nurse and journalist Brenton Gicker’s ongoing series on Eugene, Oregon’s dead, missing, and unidentified people. The second is a profile piece by Jeremy Lybarger on Meaghan Good, the singular figure behind the Charley Project, a community database that helps to solve missing persons cases. The two are interrelated and both have a journalistic style, so it works that they sit in tandem. Gicker’s focus on the disappearance of Eryn Beth McClary hones in on just one of the thousands of cases that Good’s project shares information on, giving an insight into the personal horror behind the abstracted statistics and single-line calls for information.

Punk Life vol. 26 issue #50

Punk Life is a zine dedicated to DC hardcore, founded in 1992. 26 years is a pretty good run, and this was the Anniversary issue. It is almost wrong to say this issue is a DC hardcore zine though; the author brings up the Stone Roses, Lamb of God and the Beach Boys, and just muses on politics and record shopping before going in on the thought of celebrating a birthday in Vegas on the anniversary of the 2017 shooting. I didn’t walk away with an expended knowledge of DC hardcore, but after 26 years I guess you can do whatever you want. It is concise and stays entertaining by not lingering on one thing too much, with a blend of personal insights and musical hot-takes that are relatable in an over-the-top punk way. Couldn’t find what they’re up to now, but they were a part of this now-defunct radio project Dissonance (dissonance.libsyn.com) that’s worth searching up.

  • Contact 2240 Montevideo Dr, Pittsburg, CA 94565

Sluice #6

High production value on this one, but with a pure DIY spirit! You can tell the author has thought thoroughly about their work. They explain at the end that they have tendonitis from the meticulous (and aesthetically excellent) handwriting, and unfortunately the next issue will be typed. Sluice is an in-depth guide to the Huntsville, Alabama scene and beyond. They squeeze in five brief but fun and well-done interviews, a nice travelogue, a show review, a sort of humorous political thing, and a page of bite-sized scene report news. Apparently, someone got punched at an X show. This is equal parts hyper-local with bits of in jokes, and still accessible to a complete outsider. The interview with Matthew Thompson of @fluke_fanzine contained some good punk history, for instance. The color cardstock cover is nice, there is a page of OK photos and some absurd drawing on the back. This came out right after they hosted their first Sluice Fest, which is great.

$pare ¢hange #38

The subtitle to this edition of Tom Foote’s long-running Chattanooga punk zine is the very apt “Self publishing during wartime.” Bristling with rage and merging personal reflection with a wider politics, the zine compiles three texts, two from 2016 and one reflecting on the first half of 2020. This is my kind of zine—meandering through reflections on ignorance from the Gulf War to post-9/11 to Trump, social media, Nostradamus and his predictions on the third Antichrist, and a report on the beginnings of COVID, anti-lockdown protests and the BLM uprisings after the murder of George Floyd. Peppered with lyrics and collage throughout.

  • Contact P.O. Box 6023, Chattanooga, TN 37401

SportsbÁ¤r New York Part 1

This comic is really fuckin silly. It’s like if a bunch of background characters from Futurama had someone follow them for a week and diarize their lives as they descend into this kind of angry paranoid mania. There’s a couple of rabbits, who I think may be the unwitting stars of an alien reality TV show. A pair of morbid pigeons, a dog with an AK and these stripy guys that show up from time to time… are they pulling the strings here? What is their agenda?!!. Nice big A4-sized pages with an illustration style which is imperfect in this kind of energetic way, where the lines make everything seem like it’s vibrating and moving… Like a first take. I laughed a number of times and I would like to read Part 2 when it’s ready, please.

Star 67 #1

I have a preview copy of this nicely put together poetry chapbook, and the blurb reads.. “Crank calls, cat calls, call-outs and close calls are just part of the make-up of this brave and surreal collection that examines the enactment and denial of American violence. Gina will drag you through the dirt and you’ll thank her for the enlightenment.” (Freddy La Force, editor-in-chief, Vegetarian Alcoholic Press.) This is indeed a powerful and beautiful collection of poetry. Beginning with echoes of the classic ’90s horror movie Scream, we are led down dial up corridors, through high school halls, locker room lust, intimacies (both sought-after and forced upon), under flying bullets and out onto the boardwalk “standing in the rain, gripping a busted umbrella, getting ready for the Tsunami to hit.” Trons’s words are lithe and evocative as she describes sexual violence; thoughts of destruction; and physical violence through school shootings and brutal, destructive fantasy. There is a minimal feel to her work, which is not to say that it is sparse. More accurately her words are precise in a way that even though I sometimes didn’t feel like I understood what was being said, I could feel the weight of truth that only comes through authenticity. This collection of poems is a powerful reminding statement that all of us who survive trauma are indelibly marked by our experiences and left wondering how to make sense of them. The print quality is lovely, and the cover is cleanly illustrated in lush pink and purple colours. I will read this collection again and I know that I will find new lines that I love.

Fluke #18

Fluke fanzine has been publishing for close to 30 years, though in fits and spurts, with the last five years or so being particularly active. Fluke has a knack for finding interesting and often outsider artists to interview and this issue is no different. Susan A. Phillips is a professor at Pitzer College and provides her insights on the history and importance of graffiti in the Los Angeles region. Everett Gee is an artist currently based in St. Louis, though he spent some time in Little Rock (Fluke’s original home base). Bill Daniel is a photographer and filmmaker who has documented the world of rail car monikers, though the interview focuses on fanzines. Gary Floyd needs no introduction. All this plus art from Nxoeed, photography, an essay on skateboarding and more.
  • More Information flukefanzine.com
  • Contact Fluke Publishing, PO Box 1547, Phoenix, AZ 85001

Fuzz #2

This is the second issue of Fuzz documenting the underground music/art/culture of Cleveland. The cut and paste layout along with illustrations and interviews is collaged with black and white photos of unpropitious live bands in sweaty dive bars. It’s a reminder that after the corporate gentrification of the prior cultural city centers of the likes of NYC, San Francisco, LA, Austin, Seattle etc.—the weirdo artists and outcast musicians are going to germinate in the unsung enclaves of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Olympia, Bloomington, or anywhere they can plant the flag, make the art, and avoid the money and too-cool scrutiny of the hip.

Heartpuncher #2

Old school perspective on current school problems. The intro lays it out that we’re living in messed up times, but music/art (punk/photography here) may be a way to deal. Some “lucky to see them before COVID” live show reviews and photos from late 2019 and early 2020 with Toys That Kill, Gorilla Biscuits, The Longshot, 9 Shocks Terror, Jawbox, Good Riddance, Tiltwheel and Dillinger Four which was a nice reminder that good punk spans generations. There’s also some album and zine reviews plus a shout out link to the author’s and 4-year-old son’s band, who released a punk album. I checked it out and it’s actually pretty cool.

Nxoeed #1

“Nxoeed” is visual artist James B. Hunt who is based in Phoenix, Arizona. His work includes creatures that look like something out of some wild alien B-movie. This zine includes posters, flyers, band logos and journal entries from a year in the life of Nxoeed. It even includes several pages of art you’re encouraged to cut out to make your own flyer, sticker or whatever you want. Maybe the inspiration you need to get out your scissors and glue stick and make your own zine. Nxoeed is certainly an artist worth checking out and this zine is a great introduction. Brought to you by Fluke Publishing.

  • More Information flukefanzine.com
  • Contact Fluke Publishing, PO Box 1547, Phoenix, AZ 85001

Ready for War: The Florida Edition

This is an all-photo zine on good quality paper (well worth the price) of collected images of the backsides of Battle Jackets from the streets and shows of Miami to the Gainesville Fest. The cutoff tapestry of patches, sharpie, stitched and sewn artwork presents 48 different portraits without a showing a single face. Each tale is constructed through the collage of bands, humor, and politics displayed on the sleeveless cutoff canvases.

$pare ¢hange #37

This is the 37th edition of this zine cataloging the punk house Anarchtica in Chattanooga, TN. There is a collection of the posters of the shows held there, interspersed with stories banged out on a typewriter about the trials, tales and tribulations that transpired at what is one of the centers of the Chattanooga punk scene. The stories of the beatific but prideful denizens of a house that seems to border on a squat with its broken pipes, shoddy electricity, and all too frequent police visits are heartfelt, hilarious, and relatable.