Get Off Your High Horse is a little zine that Ben Chlapek sent me awhile ago. It came with two buttons and a sticker. The zine is stuffed with doodles and thoughts of Ben's. The zine only costs one bone, and you can get it from his Etsy.
Sorry for the verbosenss ,I lack the ability to keep things concise.
Cellular Photography by Mark Cross
$10……Buy
Thirty-two pages of sixty-four photos.
And while you're there be sure to check out the library to see copies of Kamakazi, Stuck on the Map and Sleep Train #4.
NOW I see what was going on. I was right, the issue I got ended up being right in the middle of the story. This is the tale of the murder of a man in a lighthouse. We know who killed him and why right away, but there's still all kinds of mystery going on here. What is the evil genius with no hands looking for? Why is he so willing to kill whoever gets in his way? Are the police of the town ever going to figure out what's going on? What's up with all the poems as lead-ins to individual issues? It's a fascinating and wholly unique book, frankly. I've rarely seen a cast of characters this diverse. You have an insane ballerina, an evil genius, mysterious prophetic twins, a psychic toe that gets stolen, and of course there's the question of what this is all leading up to. My only minor quibble is that we never get to see why some of the minor characters have the motivations that they do… but maybe that's why they're minor characters. All in all, I liked this book a lot. I expected something that took ten years to make to be a lot more fragmented, but that wasn't a bit of a problem here. Check out the website, as there's more stuff there, or if you want a copy click on the link and it's $14.99.
Maybe I am just crazy, but I love a good heartbreak story. So much better than when everyone ends up happy and in love. Don't get me wrong, heartwarming stories are nice and all, but to me nothing is more beautiful than heartbreak.
Anyways this zine hit the spot for me. Great illustrations, sweet and funny and silly and sad. Just the way I like it.
Christopher is working on another mini-comic so keep your eyes looking for it! I sure will.
peralta808@gmail.com
Hive 3: A Somewhat Quarterly Comic Journal
Ed. by J.M. Shiveley
Grimalkin Press
Hive is a theme-less comics anthology that's edited by J.M. Shiveley and printed by Grimalkin Press — Shiveley's ambitious DIY publishing company. To wit, the third issue of Hive is being sold through a Barnes & Noble store. See? Ambitious.
Yes, individual B&N stores have a history of carrying books from small-time publishers, but those titles tend to cover local history and still look like "books." You know, soft- and hard-cover vanity-pressed books.
None of these terms describe Hive 3 which is folded concertina-style and has a double-sided letterpress cover. Hive 3 is certainly a fat 2-in-1 booklet, which is something I thought I'd never see in a big box bookstore. I'm calling that an achievement.
That said, while printing experiments in comics are admirable, there are some clear issues with the publication style of Hive 3. It's eye-catching, sure, but there's just too much going on with the printing of this book that doesn't make sense for the material. I guess if you're going to charge $10 for a self-published hand-made black-and-white anthology, it should really have something distinctive going on, but I'm afraid this issue has crossed the line from unique to gimmicky.
To be fair though, a book shouldn't be judged entirely by its cover, and what Hive 3 presents deep down inside is a high-quality selection of short comics and art.
Hive 3 a is simply outstanding collection of comics. Every story is excellent. It captures a full array of styles and subjects and I enjoyed every minute spent reading and re-reading it. Contributors for this issue include Karl and Matt Kindt, Malachi Ward, John Kinhart, Dax Delap, Hawk Krall, Andrew Drilon, Jon Freihofer, Eamon Espey, Chad R. Woody, Joe Decie, Joshua W. Cotter, Mostyn, J.M. Shiveley, Douglas Wilson and Mark Leicht.
Krall's contribution is a series of "Summer of 7-11″ recollections, in which he describes a summer job as a convenience store clerk. His stories are full of crazy, incomprehensible, foul characters. It's awesome. And his drawing style is perfect for expressing the wild, nasty people he encounters in the store.
Ward tells a science fiction story that takes place partly in a cave and partly in the protagonist's mind. It jumps swiftly from strange to eerie and is rendered in his lovely brushstroke style and with gray accents.
Drilon tells a story that is a sobering mix of memory and mysticism for a man in the Philippines who struggles with his family's response to his first homosexual relationship. He uses interesting stylistic devices to distinguish between past and present. In the present, his drawings are layered and realistic and tonally more grown-up. The adult years are also narrated by type-written text, rather than hand-written text. When he looks back on his past, the illustrations have a clean line and look more playful.
This is a very full anthology and covers monsters, the Civil War, sex, and death. It is also 140 pages long! This could have easily been two issues instead of one. Still, Hive 4 is on its way to the presses and it seems Shiveley has no shortage of willing contributors for future issues, so there was really no reason to space out the material. That's a good kind of problem to have. I am just befuddled by the way Grimalkin Press decided to handle these pages for the publication of Hive 3 which, as I mentioned before, uses a concertina fold.
If you're not familiar with concertina folds, just imagine two mini-comics that share a back cover. Once you finish with one side, you flip over the book to find a second booklet. This can be a very cool way to print something if you have the right reason to do so. 140 pages is admittedly a lot of paper to deal with, and a concertina fold can break that up into manageable parts, but its use in this instance is so entirely uninspired. The book as a whole doesn't share a theme or have a "flip side" perspective — its content is all over the map. There is no logical way to break up the content to begin with, so separating it physically into two parts is just arbitrary compartmentalization that clearly reduces the comics to their page count. It just looks like, because the previous two issues were fold-and-staple, they went that way a third time by default. For a DIY publishing company that aspires to think outside the box, this is a pretty disappointing display of their talents.
There are so many interesting ways that they could have bound flat pages, or worked in signatures, or something even crazier than my mind can conjure. Finding ways to hand-bind 140 pages as a single book is a challenge, and I'm not impressed by the way Grimalkin Press chose to meet this challenge in this instance. Not to mention, the two booklets each need a face trim (a cut that makes the pages flush on the right side and easier to turn). Any self-published book that wants to be taken seriously ought to have a face trim. The technology is simple: cutting board + metal ruler + razor blade = go!
The double-sided letterpress job on the cover is another story. It's very cool that they went letterpress with this issue, but the intent of the letterpress is confusing. The cover stock is so thin that impressions compete with each other and end up creating very little indentation on the page at all. Plus, letterpressing both sides has had given the effect of streaky ink, which you'll notice in the cover photo accompanying this review. Whether or not that effect is desirable comes down to taste.
The title of the book was printed on a proof press with large type. To see the whole title, you'd need lay out the whole cover flat (more or less). The way this effects how text appears on the cover is interesting. The effect of the broken-up subtitle leads to a misrepresentation of the book as a "quarterly comic journal" instead of "a somewhat quarterly comic journal." However, most confusing for me is that it's not even a journal! It's an anthology. I realize that coming from someone at The "Daily" Crosshatch this must sound like the pot calling the kettle black, but as someone who works with real journals all day in a library, I couldn't not notice the cheeky disregard for nomenclature. There is not a single journalistic element to the book, just comics and bios. The editorial selection process of culling talent for publication does not make a book a journal. That's an anthology.
The take away from all this is that when it comes to Hive 3 — just read it. Don't think too much about it. I've thought about it enough already for all of us. Just read those lovely comics and remember that Hive 3 is likely just the third publication that Grimalkin Press has worked on. They're clearly ambitious and have their heart in the right place and will continue to promote amazing artists and work on unique books for many years to come. This particular issue just rubbed me the wrong way.
If you'd like to be rubbed wrong by Hive 3 — it's $10 + shipping through the Grimalkin Press etsy shop.
Hopefully they'll be around producing books for many years to come and dare to push the envelope of self-publishing a little farther and more masterfully with each attempt. I'm sorry that the first time I've discuss their catalog it sounds so negative, but I really do believe if they live up to their creed and gain more experience they're going to be amazing. Watch out for these guys. They could eventually cross a line where all these confused printing mechanics get used in a most incredible and inspiring way.
- Sarah Morean
Unbelievably Bad #8 edited by Von Helle 100 pages, magazine size, PO Box 171, Bexley NSW 2207 unbelievablybad@optusnet.com.au
I was pretty excited about getting a copy of this issue since not only has it got a cover by Donny Rat (colouring by Glenno), but it's got a big interview with him, plus more of his awesome comix art. Donny Rat also has a band called The Homicides, who seem to be some kind of GG Allin tribute band, and I've heard some of their songs on their MySpace page and they're bloody awful, but the band would probably be great live, as long as they didn't throw their own shit at the audience like that maniac GG Allin did.
Anyway, this issue also has an interview with Neil Hamburger, who is my new favourite comedian ever since I *discovered* him when he was interviewed on The Naked City.
[Big thanks to Glenno for hipping me to this zine!]
Unbelievably Bad #9 STOP PRESS! Yes, a new issue of UB arrived just in the nick of time! In this issue: trash cinema legend Hershell Gordon Lewis interviewed; Sealo the Seal Boy; Devo interviewed; comics (and cover illo) by Rick Chesshire; Chad Morgan; Henry Rollins; a free CD with loads of punky tunes including D. Rat’s band The Homicides! Also heaps of CD and vinyl and movie reviews, and zine reviews including a very nice one about Blackguard #1! Thanks, Von Helle, your taste is impeccable! And your zine is pretty damn good too, that’s for sure.
Review by Blackguard
An old ziney friend is currently taking contributions for a new zine called Fist Fight. Here's the info:
fist fight is a zine about girls and every day fights, from physical confrontations at shows, to the fight for autonomy with medical professionals, or the fight against advertising to be body posi. it's about girl gangs, and strong/weird female friendships.
It's about feeling positive and strong. It's about being inspired by other women on days when we've been feeling overwhelmed or defeated.
we want your contributions! we're interested in your personal writing/essays/comics/art.
when you're submitting, think about: whether it fits the theme and feel of fist fight (if you think it does, you're probably right), whether you want to lay it out on the page or if you're happy for us to do that, and a title.
you should also send a short (like 50 words or less) blurby bio-y type thing. totally mention your own projects so people can find you.
if you want more info, or want to check if what you you're making fits the theme you can contact eva or rina here, or leave a comment, or email rina.anxiety@gmail.com
There's also a facebook invite with continually updated information: here.
Like countless other works of art, Aaron Lake Smith's zines were born out of boredom. The author of Big Hands and Unemployment recalls how he got started in writing, in 2004: "I spent a summer living in a moldy garage behind an anarchist collective in Greensboro, North Carolina. All my friends were gone, and I had nothing else to do."
The resulting collections of short stories and typewritten journals follow ordinary people, from retail drones to historical Moravians, and trawl their everyday actions for meaning. The most recent issue of Big Hands comments on everything from family Thanksgivings to Foucault's panopticon, with an eye for finding truth in short interactions.
His latest work, Unemployment, is similarly scientific in its exploration of what happens when we have too much time on our hands. Smith says, "Unemployment is about having dreams that get put on the backburner for when you 'finally get some time'. But when we actually get the time to do what we want, we fail to act."
"My amateur sociological research reveals that people are deeply affected by their social relations and their routines—if you are surrounded by people who do nothing, you will do nothing."
Big Hands 6 by Aaron Lake Smith
Teeluxe Press is please to announce a new zine featuring the work of UK based photographers Luke Norman & Nik Adam.
Fade in Darkness, published by Teeluxe Press is a 20 page, A5, book and will be released on March 8, 2010.
Pre-orders can be made at here
Hello, everyone. I’ve got a couple of calls for help here. One is a NYC-based collective looking for zines about gentrification: “I’m working in a NYC-based collective that is creating educational and training materials for folks that identify as gentrifiers and want to do anti-gentrification organizing. We are hoping to build a model that while grounded [...]
Zine Scene is a new weekly column where you can learn about new and established zinesters, as well as other people from inside the scene as they talk about their experiences in the unique and fascinating world of independently published media.
Syndication Now Available! $4.99
Ah, the anthology. Practically always a mish-mash of good and bad, but it is one of the few places where you find new voices (or, in this case, new teamings) doing different things. To me a 75% success rate in these things is all I hope for, and I define "success" as either a genuinely great story or something that looks like the people involved have some serious potential. This one, I think, cleared that hurdle. It starts off with a genuinely thoughtful introduction by Ben Avery, in which he honestly lays out all the reasons why anthologies aren't popular and don't "work" (but why he loves them anyway) and then follows up with a peek into the basic contradiction at the heart of most artists. Note to anthology editors: an intro like this works wonders, as I was curious to see how these people worked together after he described some of the issues in getting these pieces in and how some of these people will probably work together in the future… and some of them certainly won't. First up is a piece by Jedediah Walls and Gloria Hollier, dealing with the nature of narrative sequence and comics as art. Things get much more traditional from there, as mostly everything else is monster or superhero-related, starting with The Ballad of Dr. Ecula by Alan Schell and Jamie Hood. This is a surprisingly moving piece about two foes and their constant struggle, and how the villain deals with it after he finally gets the upper hand and kills the hero. Kelly Heying and Ron Schell Jr. are up next with a fairly standard piece about a former crook turning hero after his child is born, which is followed by a piece by Nik Havert and Ryan Sargent (in what is probably the best looking piece of the bunch) dealing with a young girl and her quest for revenge. This shows her first time out on her own, trying to kill 6 Spaniards in the early 16th century. Ben Avery and Mike Murphy follow this with a confusing piece (probably because the format shifted to sideways art and the binding of this book makes it tough to see tops of pages that way) about trying to kill what appears to be an alien. Jon Kulczar then has a thoroughly random two page story where his characters mostly complain about the tiny amount of pages they get and can't seem to figure out what to do with it. Christopher Penzenik and Joey Allen are next with a story about a man who sacrifices himself for his tribe and in the process becomes a giant evil monster… who still seems to have pieces of the good guy left. Finally there's Tim Kelly's Bunnyman, which was thoroughly baffling. I tried flipping through it again, but there's a hero (Bunnyman), a princess who's in some sort of distress (who is saved by induced vomiting (?)) and a monster that seems giant in certain panels and the same size as Bunnyman in others. Seeing all these stories laid out like this it's possible I was too optimistic in thinking this passed the 75% test, but it's close if it didn't quite make it. Bonus points for that intro too, so I'll give it to them.
Agent Z #1 (art by Federico Zumel) Now Available! $2.50
Want to get somebody hooked on a title right away? Shoot the main character in the head and leave him for dead. Then shoot him even more, but he just keeps on ticking. Why? What the hell is going on? I'm intrigued for #2 because of all that, so kudos to the crew. This is about an agent and his partner checking out some shady dealings at a lake. One of them gets shot, so the other agent, under fire, leaves him there in the lake. But the isn't dead, and nobody knows why. Or maybe Agent Z (I'm just guessing that the guy who was shot turns out to be Agent Z) knows and isn't telling anybody? Like I said, I'm intrigued. Good art, good writing, now all they need to do is keep this thing going so they can make a real story out of it. Worth a look, if you're into the mystery/espionage stuff…
The Three Keys #1 (with Paul Schultz) Now Available! $2.75
You probably know already: do you like fantasy comics? I like fantasy books, on occasion, but the comics have always left me kind of cold. Purely a personal taste, as I'm aware that most mainstream comics have at least some element of fantasy to them, and a whole bunch of them do quite well. This is the story of a battle, told from the point of view of the three main characters: a magician, a rogue and an archer. Or possibly those aren't the technical terms, I'm a bit rusty at the terminology. Anyway, the dialogue is more than a bit cheesy, but as they're all telling increasingly fantastic tales, I think that's perfectly OK. The art was great for the wacky sort of thing that they're trying to do here, but the whole thing didn't do much for me, as these comics usually don't. Still, if this is sort of thing you're into it's a pretty fun comic.
Rocket Girl #1 (with Jesus Antonio Hernandez Rodriguez) Now Available! $2.25
After many, many years of being disappointed with comics that have superheroes in them, I've learned to take anything with a superhero in it and assume that it's crap until it wins me over. Luckily, this one did that about one page in. The first page is a spread of the main… well, obsession of the main character, a superhero called Fire Chief. I'm not sure what else Jesus has done, as this is from a few years ago, but holy crap is this man a gifted artist. That single page was enough for me to turn the cynicism off and let this thing win me over, and then the writing kicked in. Yep, that's all you need for a great comic, so I was hooked. This is the story of a woman named Polly Harris, a seemingly ordinary woman who has a massive crush on one of the more famous superheroes in their town, the Fire Chief. Why she has a crush isn't immediately clear, as he's in a baggy costume with a bucket over his head, but she has an absolute obsession, which eventually leads her to try the superhero thing out for herself. That may be a spoiler, as most of this book is the "origin" issue and we don't see her in costume until the end, but come on now, the book is called "Rocket Girl", how did you think it would turn out? Anyway, great stuff all around, completely engrossing, and kudos to Jesus on the choice of making the werewolf more like the old black and white movie werewolf and less like the giant beast that seems to be in all the movies these days. You damned kids! $2.25
Rocket Girl #2 Now Available! $2.25
So how do super heroes learn how to use all those silly gadgets they wear anyway? This issue is a mostly embarrassing look at the early superhero life of Rocket Girl, as well as her first accidental "win" and subsequent earning of a nemesis. The glow wore off on me a little bit for #2, frankly. My earlier enthusiasm for the potential of the series remains, but something didn't click for me here like it did for #1. Not the dialogue, which is still at least pretty good (it is a superhero book, after all, and some dumb phrases are bound to make their way in), or the art, which is still mostly great, or the general direction of the book, which is still, as I said, intriguing. Maybe it's the fact that the story ended with "Find Out Next Issue… If There Is One!" It just drove home the futility of getting invested in books like this. Sure, these two issues were better than OK, but so what if they just dump it and move onto something else, or quit comics altogether? Here I am, trying in my own puny way to get the word out for a book… and they may have quit on this title two years ago and are just trying to sell off the backlog now. Cynical as hell, sure, and not a rant I intended to fall into, but there you go. That being said, um… this comic is now available in my online store!
Act of Contrition (with Craig DeBoard & Wes Sweetser) Now Available! $5
The Pickle Press empire keeps wandering off in different directions, and that's fine with me. This time out Nik has the story of a mystery involving a wide cast of characters, with the only thing that they seem to have in common being the local priest. The main thing needed to keep a story like this entertaining is suspense, and it did take about half of the comic for me to figure out for sure where this was headed. Take that as a measuring stick, I suppose. If you feel that you're required to be fooled until the end of the book, you'll go away disappointed. Or maybe I'm just the smartest man alive, who knows? The story begins with a man in a confessional, always a good way to go, telling a priest that he's killed someone. The rest of the book is a flashback to the actual story, starting with a dead young woman, a crazy old woman who sees people in her bushes, a boyfriend who may or may not have had anything to do with the young woman's death, and a priest who's dealt with them all. Great dialogue pretty much the whole way through here, and those fat black shadows were perfect for the theme. Worth a look if you like the murder mystery/suspense type of stories. $5
Dare (with Renatus) Now Available! $7.95
I've never been sure whether to take porn in comics seriously as a storytelling device. Nik says in the introduction that this was a lot wackier before he started writing it, then stripped it down into more of a spy story with some sex. The problem is that if I'm supposed to take all of this seriously, where do the silly scenes end up? This follows the story of Sylvia Dare, a woman who has risen through the ranks of spydom and eventually ends up in a practically invisible section, dealing with missing classified information and things of that nature. If I have to take everything here seriously though, it must be hard to be a super spy when you're also a nyphomaniac. Generally speaking, I can't imagine many spies get distracted with having sex with random people when they're searching for information. Or, according to the James Bond movies, maybe they do and I shouldn't take it all so seriously. It boils down to that, more than anything. If you can laugh along with some of the sillier scenes, there's plenty to like here, and yes, I do mean more than a lot of naked people. Some of the fight scenes are done really well, and I thought her origin story was handled nicely. If you must take everything here seriously though, you'll probably have a hard time with it. Unless, of course, all you're looking for is some serious nakedness, in which case you'll probably come away happy. $7.95
