Zine World #30

Zine World #30

from Blackguard

40 pages, magazine size, $4 US / $5 Canada / $7 World, PO Box 330156, Murfreesboro TN 37133, USA + www.undergroundpress.org + jerianne(at)undergroundpress.org
As I mentioned in a recent review of Xerography Debt #28, both XD#28 and ZW#30 landed in my mailbox on the exact same day. That's a pretty fucking big coincidence considering these are the two main US reviewzines, and only published twice a year. But this might also raise a question: If you could only get one of 'em, which one should you get? That's best left for another post, but for now I'll simply admit that I wouldn't even consider not getting both of them.
ZW#30 starts off with a couple of pages of letters, then a few pages of commentary. First up, Joshua (Basic Paper Aeroplane zine) works at an indie bookstore and runs the zine section. He overheard a hip-looking 20-something girl ask her boyfriend, "What's a zine?" to which he replies, "It's like a blog on paper." The next column is by Candace (a volunteer at Sticky Institute) and originally appeared in the October 2010 Sticky e-newsletter. Candace writes about fragile little crybaby ziners who don't want any negative reviews of their zines to be printed. She's against them, by the way, and so am I. Toughen up, ya big babies! Or step away from the fucking xerox machine! Finally, Jerianne vents her animosity at Teal Triggs and her book Fanzines [Thames and Hudson, 2010]. "Many of the reproduced images were included without permission, and the book contains a slew of errors."
The bulk of ZW is devoted to zine reviews, and there are buttloads. It's awesome! I take this baby on the bus with me and it lasts for days. That's DAYS of torture for my fellow busriders who are close to tearing their hair out because they don't know what I'm reading and they wanna know, and they want it, even though they don't know what it is! Yet they can sense that it is Something Awesome.
After the zine reviews there are listings of various zine resources (zine libraries, reviewzines, online resources) then a couple more columns bashing Microcosm, the zine distro (apparently they have instigated a policy whereby they will no longer distribute zines that don't sell a minimum of 40, the rotten bastards!).
Finally, one of the coolest things about ZW - the Classifieds section. These are "absolutely free for any do-it-yourself or out-of-the-mainstream project". (50-word limit.) This section is so great.
Zine World is so great!