Ellipsis Zine: One, A flash fiction anthology

A5, 62 black and white pages.

Print: £5 (+p&p), digital download: £3

On the back cover of this zine lies a strong statement. “Ellipsis Zine: One, a flash fiction anthology,” it explains, “[contains] 1000 words or fewer from 57 of the best contemporary flash fiction writers”.

Hmmm, we’ll see, I thought to myself, flipping back to the first page. It’s fairly common for zine makers to be enthusiastic about the work they produce, sometimes so enthusiastic that it becomes difficult for the material itself to measure up to expectations. So, when I see creators using words like “best”, I become cynical.

As it turns out, the editor of Ellipsis Zine (Steve Campbell) wasn’t far off when he used that bold little word. I spent a week reading this zine; a handful of stories at a time whenever I had a spare moment, and I can say with confidence that there isn’t a weak link in the collection. These stories are literary fiction in its tightest form. Each word has a purpose; scenes are written so cleverly that only a few brief paragraphs are necessary to project an entire story into the mind of the reader.

Late one night I read My, She was Yar, by Zoë Meager, only to lie awake in bed wondering about how young families cope when a child dies. Several days after reading Bird Girl, by Janelle Hardacre, I was still daydreaming about how technology could progress in the next few years, and the impact that would have upon our identities.

Each story is unique, and yet they are drawn together. The number one appears in this collection again and again, as a young girl’s new home, as a lost love sitting one carriage away, as the sole meeting between father and child, as a missed opportunity with a one true love*. A flock of sheep trample across the cover, all moving forward save for one, who looks back at the reader. Whether the recurring number is a conscious choice by the editor is ambiguous, but I prefer to believe that all these number ones are kismet, unexpectedly brought together for the first print issue of Ellipsis Zine, for its number one.

I had two warring emotions as I read this zine. As a reader, I was delighted. As a writer, I was filled with envy.

Issue one of Ellipsis Zine can be bought from their online store, here, and for news and updates follow them on twitter.

*House Number One by Eleanor Jones, One Carriage Away by Amanda Quinn, What Happens When Hot Air and Cold Air Meet? by Danny Beusch and Daisy Chain by Debbi Voisey, respectively.

Review by JL Corbett

Butt-Rag Mag #13

J-Hash [Editor], contact via the ButtRagMag Facebook group for Price/Trades info; Size: 8.5" x 5.5" Page count: 16 

Wall-to-wall bums and farts and cocks and balls, here's one for the butt/fart fetishists.

This issue - or 'tissue' [it even comes with a couple sheets!] - is the "Bum Luck" 13th and features a buttfull of fartists paying homage to the keister. I don't know how J-Hash does it, but every page has a dirty, sleazy feel that uncannily convinces you that you're perusing this publication while standing in a funky, sticky-carpeted XXX bookstore at three a.m. And the pages seem actually DIRTY dirty - I mean grimy, as though you just found it in the gutter. After flipping through just a few pages I had the strangest urge to wash my hands!

You know, it just occurred to me that GG Allin would have LOVED Butt-Rag Mag!

[Soundtrack - GG Allin - 'Bite It, You Scum']

Hash Brown Comix #1

  

24 pages, 10" x 7", $? email Editors Dan or Oli for ordering info >>> danieljhayer at gmail dot com or olihastings9 at gmail dot com 

It's thanks to Glenno that I finally got a copy of this new Sydney comix anthology. [Long story deleted, but available here.] ...

 We all know how much comix anthologies can SUCK - it's usually only a question of how much? So it is impossible to overstate how surprised and relieved I was to find that Hash Brown Comix is really great! It is absolutely imbued, suffused, and steeped in the raw and deranged spirit of the finest Underground Comix 'spirit'. One strip [by co-editor Oli Hastings] is about the real life tragedy of Sydney's Luna Park Ghost Train fire in 1979. This strip is so great, and part of its greatness for me is that I don't know how much of the detail within is historical fact, and how much is the product of the artist's imagination. ... Other strips I really liked were Dominic Proust's tale of unrequited love with a tall girl; co-editor Dan Heyer's very strange school teacher; Kaylene Milner's Soviet record collectors; and another Oli strip about his veneration of Rowland S. Howard.

Halifax Comix Jam #11/12

It's the end of the month, and so it is once again time for me to "review" an old issue of the Halifax Comix Jam comic in order to promote the comic jam happening tonight at Roberts Street!

Honestly, I think jam comics like this are probably more valuable to the people that made them than to random outsiders. This is because these comics rarely make any sense at all.

(If you're not aware of what a jam comic is, they're comics where one person draws a panel, and then someone else draws the next panel, and so on. They usually don't have any real narrative flow, and the art styles can change drastically between panels.)

Still, I think they're neat because the jam sessions themselves encourage people to draw and be creative, which is something I think more peohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifple should be doing.

But yeah, go to the Comics Jam at Roberts Street Tuesday, April 24th (tonight!), 7-10pm. It will be fun! I promise. There will be cookies.

(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)

Panel: "Sweet" 16

Published by Ferret Press
600 Markview Road
Columbus, Ohio
43214, USA
www.ferretpress.com

I reviewed one of these anthology comics last year, and while I found the stories of varying quality, there were a couple that I enjoyed.

While that issue was about superstition and bad luck, this one is about a substantially different subject: romance and relationships. This is an area that I am less interested in. Or rather, the ways in which it is presented here didn't appeal to me.

Several of the pieces were about marriage and children, concepts I generally find boring and dull, while another shows a relationship that seems to be based mostly on material wealth (it's supposed to be comedic, but instead succeeds in making me sad). I also took issue with one of the comics that said that the alternatives to "monogamy over a 70-year lifespan" are "really awful". This person might want to look into monogamish relationships.

The best story in here was by KT Swartz and Brent Bowman (who illustrated the comic I liked in the other issue I reviewed). It's more about the titular sweet sixteen (a concept that both mystifies and terrifies me) than relationships, and is kind of Hunger Games-y. I don't think it really works as a complete story by itself, and functions more as a Future Shock type story, but I found it more interesting than the other content in here.

(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)

The Filth Issue 2

thefilthsubmissions@gmail.com
www.wix.com/the_filth/zine

I feel kind of bad saying this, but the thing I liked most about this anthology is the sewn binding (you can see it on the edge of the cover, it seems to have been done by a sewing machine). It’s kind of a weird thing to like, but I appreciate it when people have gone to the extra effort to do things like that.

The actual contents, however, don’t really appeal to me. There’s your average mix of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and some other stuff, and like any anthology or magazine you’re not going to like all of it, but in this case I didn’t like any of it.

This isn’t to say that the content here is necessarily bad, just that it wasn’t really my thing. I mean, I do read a fair bit (I generally finish at least two books a month, but I tend to prefer genre fiction (I’m reading Mogworld right now and really enjoying it!). At the same time, I do have a degree in Russian Literature, and read a pretty varied range of stuff, but I tend not to read stories about drug addicts, junkies, and people who like endin’ a lot of their sentences with apostrophes. (That is the weirdest complaint ever, but it’s true.) Why have I gone on about this so much? Because the two longest pieces in the book are about minor criminals and drug use. Not really my thing (I didn’t even like The Wire though, so what do I know).

I’m also not really interested in people telling me about how they became a single parent with four children. I just cannot understand their mindset in any way, and the piece doesn’t really delve into why the person actually had their children.

In fact, the most interesting thing in this zine, to me, was one of the characters talking about a prescription medication I’ve been on. And that was more of a “oh, I recognize that pharmaceutical name and very few of the others mentioned” than anything else.

Actually, that's not true. There was an interview with a musician that interested me enough (ie. it talks about how awesome robots and comics are) to look him up online, but, alas, I can find no mention of Music to Defend Reality from Marauding Hordes of Inter-dimensional Hostiles Volume 1. (Edit: Oh wait, apparently it was sent to me, I just found it in my "box of zines to review". It's actually pretty good. )

Again, I will say that none of the work here is necessarily bad (well, some of it is), just that the content matter really doesn’t appeal to me as it (mostly) lacks spaceships, monsters, humour (at least a type I enjoy), and characters I can relate to. But maybe you’ll like it.

(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)

Panel 13

Behind the neat cover (both sides open like doors) lies a a comics anthology put together by a group of creators in Ohio. They function like a writing group, getting together every few weeks to show each other what they're working on and to give constructive criticism. Twice a year they put out an anthology, and this is the 13th. Impressive!

This anthology is based around the theme of superstition and bad luck, and, like all anthologies, the contents are up and down with some comics just leaving me confused as to why they were even created. (Though I suppose that could just because because I don't really see the appeal of baseball.)

The two comics I liked the most were one by Craig Bogart that told of the unfortunate ends of the various contributors to this "unlucky" book. Each person is given a panel and their fates are revealed as everything from being forced to see the world like Thomas Kinkade to being burnt alive. No fun!

The other piece I liked was by Molly Durst and Brent Bowman and was a sort of pre-World War II adventure piece that recalled stories like The Shadow. It features a mansion, fencing, chemistry labs burning down, and the Spider King! How can you not love a giant centaur like spider goblin? I wish this comic was longer so that we could have seen more of him.

And so, once again, Matthew's love of monsters triumphed over all.



(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)

Every Reason #4

Edited by Keith

You know, the only way to get better at writing (or anything) is to do it every day. Do it all the time and you will improve. I've really been slacking on that front, but I feel like I've turned a corner and am doing zine stuff again (I've already posted more reviews than last month!).

Thus the importance of zines like this, which provide amateur writers with somewhere that they can submit their work to. I'm pretty much stealing this idea from the introduction where the editor says that he sees the zine as social work and wants it to promote writing and give more people the opportunity to read work (and to have writers have their work read). And yeah, what's the point of making a zine if nobody's going to read it?

Mostly though, the content of this zine didn't really leave much of an impact on me. There's a bunch of poems, which generally go in one ear and out the other when I read them. I did like the first one, though mostly because after a mention of Bukowski in the introduction I heard it like this piece in my mind.

Other than that I didn't really dig anything in this anthology. I feel as though I can't even critique the writing quality as the styles and story content aren't things that really interest me. The characters in the fiction pieces act in ways that I don't really understand, and clearly have different goals and thoughts than I do. So yeah, this is pretty much a non-review as I think all I can say is "not my thing".

(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)

Automatons in Love

By Jesse Durona, CJ Joughin, Kevin Uehlein, and Carl Mefferd
kevinuehlein.wordpress.com
piratesvsquid.blogspot.com

Robots! Robots! Robots! I love robots so much. And this zine is beautifully put together, with a silver cut out cover, pages printed on clear plastic, and occasional spot colour. It all looks really nice!

The four stories in here are pretty varied, and while all of them feature robots, not all of them really fulfill the title criteria. I was a little disappointed by this, as I've recently been reading Pluto by Naoki Urasawa. It's a fantastic comic about what it means to be a robot and a human, artificial intelligence, and how the two groups would interact with each other as robots get steadily more advanced. I've just read the first six books and I'm (im)patiently waiting for volume seven to come in at the library so I can finish reading the series.

So back to this comic! The first story, by Durona, appears to be from their webcomic that no longer exists. It's a cute little story about a robot who befriends some monkeys. Rad! I like the way the various apes are drawn, though I don't enjoy the human's designs as much.

Joughin's comic is an interesting one about consumerism and wants vs needs. However, while I liked the idea behind the comic, the actual story didn't really grab me. The pencil only (I think) art didn't reproduce that well either, so maybe Joughin should work on either their inking or digital manipulation skills to ensure better reproduction next time.

Uehlein's comic was my favourite out of all of them. The art is reminiscent of old funny animal cartoons (in no small part because most of the characters are animals in fancy clothes), and the plot of a robot performing cello in an orchestra seems like something that would fit right into an animated short. The comic is almost entirely silent, and one of my few wishes is that Uehlein had made the entire comic without anybody speaking. Still, it's pretty awesome in general.

The final comic, by Mefferd, features some really good robot designs. However the story doesn't really grab me for some reason. Maybe it's the pages of build up for what turns out to be a fairly old joke.

Overall though, this is a well put together anthology that features a variety of different styles. It's worth checking out even if you're not a huge robot fan (or a fan of huge robots).



(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)

Khyber Komix Jam #2

Edited by Kyle

A comics jam is an event where a bunch of people get together and draw collaborative comics. Usually each person draws a panel, and then passes it on to the next person (who in turn passes on the comic they'd been working on). You spend an evening hanging out with other comics artists, and at the end you have a pile of usually bizarre, generally nonsensical comics.

While these are great drawing exercises for the artists, both to get them to actually draw something and to draw within a certain period of time, they results are generally incredibly uneven. You have some participants who try to continue the story started by the previous artists, but others who go for random jokes and non sequiturs.

You also have an incredible variety of art styles, and while a few of the artists here are quite good at drawing something within the allotted time, others are not. My favourite comic had to do with a horrible jelly fish attack, both because jelly fish (or at least the idea of flying ones) terrify me, and because on average I think it has the best art. I guess jelly fish aren't that hard to draw.

Ultimately though, I think the biggest problem is the lettering. I can't even read a bunch of the dialogue! I'd be really interested to hear of any comic jams have used a writer/letterer who would write the dialogue/captions in advance and have the artists draw things to try and match up with that. I don't know if it would work better, but at the least the produced comics would (probably) be more coherent.

(This review was originally published on 365 Zines a Year.)

The Matter Second Issue Preview

If you look at the cover of this zine you can figure out why it was made. The Portland Zine Symposium was about to happen and apparently they didn't have all the content ready for their second issue. But the problem with previews is that they're often kind of lacking in content.

This one features excerpts from a number of comics and prose pieces, but half of them are actually the second part of stories that began in the first issue, this means that the first issue is a more effective gauge of what will be in the second issue, and, since it includes complete chapters instead of excerpts, will give you a better idea of what the second issue will contain. (Though to be honest I'm not even sure if the second issue came out, as the website address listed in here no longer leads to anything.)

Still, I like the cover (I love that typographic style), and there's an introduction to this piece about what zines are that is kind of interesting. It's interesting to think that zines are _everything_. They can be comics or prose or poetry or art or photography or recipes or music or travel or personal or educational or anything. The only thing that really unites the people that make them is that they don't just want to make something, they have to, and they'll go to all extents to create and distribute what they've made.

Speaking of which, have you seen my zines? Want one? Email me and we can work something out.

(This review was originally published on 365 Zines a Year.)

Tales of Diversity

This is a slickly produced (full colour! Glossy paper!) comics anthology created by Eastside Educational Trust and funded by the UK government. Or the last government at least, I doubt the new one would ever give money to something like this.

It features contributions from about twenty teenagers living in London (or at least I assume it's London), and it's neat that they actually are pretty damn diverse. The photo on the inside front cover features more diversity than seemingly the entire town I grew up in Canada (not that that would be that hard really).

The comics that these kids have created are pretty varied in a number of ways, namely quality and content. Some of them are quite accomplished, while others are kind of terrible. Since there are so many different strips in here I'm just going to comment on a few of them.

The opening piece (The Dollhouse by Leke Adekanbi and Shantel Cherebin) is about acceptance of people with different sexual and gender identities to the norm. It's a good message (though an old one for me), but is more notable for the use of colours (each page uses only one colour, giving the comic an interesting look), and the kind of bizarre way some of the characters speak. I guess this second thing is probably more due to the fact that I don't hang out with many East London teenagers.

The second piece is by Charley Hayter and is kind of a strange thing to be created by a teenager as it starts in 1980 and features some school kids discussing what they want to be when they grow up. Cut to the present day and they meet up again, where one has achieved her dreams and the other hasn't. It's, uh, kind of depressing (the person who hasn't works in retail). I do like the art style (sort of amerimanga influenced, and no, I never thought I'd use that word either), and someone's job is a beekeeper. Awesome!

After this strong start many of the other pieces in here aren't so good. Some don't seem to make any real sense, some aren't really comics but are really more just pin ups, some don't seem to have any connection to the theme at all, and one (the longest in the comic!) seems to miss the entire point of the project and features people going on holiday somewhere, complaining about the food served, and then getting sick after eating it.

That's not to say they're all terrible, several of them have some merit (either in theme or art), and one by Nickita Patterson is pretty awesome. Matching high contrast black and white photos with text the piece (it really isn't a comic) talks about the African diamond industry and the brutal rebel groups, child labour, and general exploitation involved in its running. It's nicely laid out, and has a powerful message, even if it might not "properly" match the theme of the book.

One interesting thing I saw through these pieces was how terrible the lettering generally was. Only a few of the pieces used digital lettering, most preferring to do it by hand, but either way it frequently looked bad and was hard to read. So I guess aspiring comics creators should take note, spend time working on your lettering as well as the other parts of your comic. It doesn't matter how amazing your story is if nobody can read it.



(This review was originally published on 365 Zines a Year.)

Loserdom #20

loserdomzine@gmail.com
www.loserdomzine.com

As with most punk zines this issue of Loserdom is filled with reviews of 7 inch records and other zines, interviews with bands, and scene reports.

However! It is important to note that even if you have no interest in those things at all, this zine is still worth checking out for a number of articles and interviews on some pretty neat and interesting things.

The first of these is an illustrated piece about a food co-op and a discussion that they had concerning vegetables from Israel. To boycott or not to boycott was the question that concerned them, and while both sides of the argument are represented here the author makes no secret of what side of the argument they fall on. The author talks to a number of other food co-op members and asks them about the idea of a boycott and why they thought it, at least initially, failed. It's interesting to look at things like this and I wonder if people are becoming less political than they have been in the past. You read about things like boycotts of South Africa in the 1980s and political songs getting airplay and I find it puzzling; have people just became apathetic or has our society changed in some other way? Hmmm...I feel like I need to discuss this with someone in person.

The second piece is an interview with one of the people that works at La Fanzinotheque, which seems to be a pretty rad library/art gallery/social centre type place in Poitiers, France. It's pretty inspiring that a place like this has been around for over twenty years! My only problem with this (and a couple of the other interviews in here) was that it seemed to reprint everything that the other person said/wrote, and I think parts of it could have been edited a bit.

There are also pieces on digital storytelling, winter cycling/swimming (horrifying!), a comic about how punks really can't seem to stop drinking, and an interview with a guy from Poland who runs a distro/label in Ireland that is pretty interesting, even if you're not into the scene, as it discusses some of the economics behind that sort of thing (ie. don't start a punk label if you want to get rich).

(This review was originally published on 365 Zines a Year.)

MC2 Strip Tease

By Ryan Taylor, Laura Howell, Tony McGee, Giuseppa Barresi, and Nigel Lowrey.
www.comicscollective.co.uk

As you can tell from the cover this is a preview book collecting two page samples of work by a number of comic creators in the midlands. The comics range from fantasy to sci fi to one page gag strips to survival guides, though there all pretty damn geeky.

Previews are tricky things to pull off. If you're doing a longer narrative do you just use the first two pages of your comic or do you choose pages from later on that more accurately show what your comic is about. One of the previews here really fails to show you what the comic is about at all, isntead giving you two silent pages of a kid leaving school, walking into a shop and picking up a comic. Ooooh, how thrilling, I definitely want to read more of this (end sarcasm). As it is I have no idea what this comic is about, or even what genre it fits into! As a preview designed to make me want to read more it has failed on pretty much every level.

Of the other previews there's a one featuring some half animal people in Texas (one of them seems to be a cowboy minotaur), one that has two girls scavenging junk yars in the future that seems interesting, two one page gag strips by Laura Howell (who's comics I've enjoyed before) that made me laugh out loud, and two pages of anime con survival tips that seem to be part of a longer work.

This last one was fairly amusing, but also horrifying. I remember I went to an anime con in Vancouver a few years ago (my friend got me in for free!), and the con booklet included tips like "bathe" and "don't touch people you don't know". I really have to wonder how socially incompetent you have to be to need tips like that. This also reminded me of the cat piss man who used to come into the comic shop where I worked, who had the worst body odour I have ever smelt. Ick! Nerds, get it together.

I'm not desperate to read the continuations of any of these comics, but two pages generally isn't isn't enough to grab readers. It's important to note that the two samples that I think worked most effectively were the two without a long form narrative. Something for creators to take note of perhaps!


(Art by Giuseppa Barresi.)

(This review was originally published on 365 Zines a Year.)