Frisk Flugt II - Sabotage

Frisk Flugt II - Sabotage

(Frisk Flugt is Danish for "Fresh Escape")

60 pages, professionally bound

65 DKK in Denmark, 105 DKK ($15.20 US) world wide

"Frisk Flugt is a militant research group based in Denmark."

This looks like a zine, but it's really a literary journal, very slick and artsy, nicely bound. 37 pages of photography including front & back covers, 17 pages of writing.

First thing I did was flip through and look at the pictures, which are pretty cool. Some are gonzo-esque archival stills of decay and destruction, others are gritty staged art photos. Taken as a whole it flows well and is interesting and provocative, if not pretty.

There are five pieces of writing. The first is prose that reads like stream of consciousness poetry. It's over my head and hard to read, intellectual and referencing things I can only guess as to their meaning.

The second and third bits are more interesting but still pretty heady. In one we get a look back at the anti-nuclear movement in Germany circa 1960s and 70s, and how that influences what's happening today. The other piece examines the thoughts of early 20th century feminist and labor militant, Elizabeth Gurley.

Then there's an academic commentary on modern sabotage in letter form, and an artsy prose-then-poetry thing about blowing up your home.

Although I'm not a good target audience for this material, I must say it is nicely done and stays on task with the topic of sabotage. I'm going to try to pass it off to one of my friends who are better suited for it and see what they have to say.

Order from:

http://ovopress.tictail.com/

They also have other interesting literary books there.

Jack Cheiky

Draw By Four #2 : The Craft

24 pages, 8.5" x 6", $6.00, Rachel Ang www.drawbyfour.com

Subtitled [sub-subtitled?] 'Short Stories About the Pleasure and Struggle of Making Things' these comics are hard to review - reading them I found myself one minute dismissing this stuff as the kind of high-brow, self-indulgent and humourless work I really don't like, and the next minute coming to the end of one wordless strip and being shocked at the implication of suicide; or in the strip about her character being chosen as the first artist-in-residence in space, the announcement of which was met with online disapproval, I liked how one commenter fumes "who is this bitch?" So, not humourless! Ha ha! ... But! It's also got one of my comics pet peeves - a 'to be continued' story [the aforementioned 'space artist' story]. Do these ever get finished? Does anybody who ever reads one chapter end up reading the whole thing? I really doubt it... maybe they do get finished, but nobody ever reads the whole thing. ... On the plus side, the printing is really nice, on nice paper with heavier card covers. And the art is fine and alluring. ... I was also gonna say something about the $6.00 price tag, but fuck it. What the hell is six bucks nowadays when  a packet of smokes can be over twenty bucks? [Here in bloody Australia, anyway.]

• Current Music:Soen - 'The Words'

The Best Friend I Never Met and Chorus Lines

Yesterday I got a packet from England. It contained two zines, and I read both just now.

The Best Friend I Never Met took my breath away. I have had friendships so intense and full of poetry. I've had best friends like that too. I felt very sad about endings and blown away by the beauty of the writing, all those feelings, and so much physical distance with emotional intimacy.

It made me think of two best friends I have now, both who live far away, and one day will they be a memory?

I like the white space. I wouldn't have done it that way--I would have included tons. I probably would have overwhelmed the reader. But this is done so I'm left hungry for more, which is good.

The haiku zine Chorus Lines is beautiful to behold. I like the pictures of people on the cover, made in red. I like the poems and their immediacy. My favorite is about a baby. Always emotional but never overdone.

I love these zines--you should buy them.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/softskeletons

Covers

Thursday, September 11, 2014

This is a new zine by Jason Martin.  It's about musicians and music.  The comix are sweet, poignant vignettes with simple, beautiful drawings.

 

I have a soft spot in my heart for the work of Jason Martin.  I collect all his zines and even his book Driftwood City.  I try not to be a hoarder, but his work is that good.  

www.driftwoodcity.com

From ordering page:

http://www.driftwoodcity.com/store/

COVERS: My newest zine is a “covers album,” where I took some of my favorite stories about musicians (written by other people) and adapted them into comics. Feauturing a secret Bob Dylan recording session in Minnesota, Kurt Cobain’s love for macaroni and cheese, John Lennon recording Plastic Ono Band after undergoing primal scream therapy, memories of John Coltrane and his acts of kindness, Mike Watt dressing as a scarecrow for a gig on Halloween, the Dinosaur Jr chapter of Michael Azerrad’s book Our Band Could Be Your Life, a teenage Kristin Hersh recording the first Throwing Muses album (while also pregnant with her first child), and my friend Jason Young’s story of a surprising house show. All my proceeds from this zine will go to Doctors Without Borders. Self-published July 2014. 36 digest pages, $3 plus shipping.

Betty Paginated #33 [Autumn 2015]

Betty Paginated #33 [Autumn 2015]

24 pages, 11.5" x 8.5", email for price/trades >>> Dann Lennard, PO Box A1412, Sydney South NSW 1235, AUSTRALIA + danhelen [at] idx.com.au + blog: bettypaginated.blogspot.com + podcasts: kirbyyourenthusiasm.libsyn.com

It's been three years since the last issue of BP. Three years! That's a long time in anybody's language. "Tre ar" if you're Swedish.

But what a return. There's so much good, nay, great! stuff packed into this issue it's hard to know where to start. But it seems smart to begin with the interview with Aussie pub rockers The Vee Bees. I've never seen them, an oversight which will be rectified as soon as possible after reading Dann's interview. These guys are funny! In response to Dann noting that they wear thongs onstage, Vee Bee Glenno admits "they just look so good" and they even wrote a song called '3 Thongs' "because that's the ultimate - wearing three of 'em" to which Vee Bee Norro adds: "If you're gonna wear three thongs, make sure you're sober when you get dressed, but. I once got dressed for a show a little bit tipsy and I got me things mixed up. I ended up with a G-banger on me foot and a double plugger in me crack."

Also in this issue: why Dann attended two Hard Ons gigs twice in the same month; the life and death of terrifying old-school pro wrestler Bruiser Brody; Dann's belated discovery and obsession with Elliott Smith [1969-2003]; movies viewed on YouTube [e.g. Liquid Sky [1982]; the story of the chilling Smiling Man and a few films inspired by it; a review of The Swimmer [1968] that Dann tracked down after reading about it in The Kobb Log #5 and which instantly shot into Dann's Top Ten Greatest Movies [Note: and thanks to Dann's review I tracked this movie down too and will watch it this Easter Long Weekend!]; UK TV celebrity Simon Dee whose short-lived career was thanks to his "arrogance, stupidity and refusal to admit that his 15 minutes of fame was over"; and more!

Betty Paginated is undoubtedly a love-it-or-hate-it zine, but I love it, and I'm not alone! ... Or not too alone, ha ha! ... So I strongly recommend it, to those of you with similar tastes, you lucky devils!

Review by Statu / Blackguard

http://blackguard23.livejournal.com/

Blackguard #5, The SCIENCE Issue

 

Blackguard #5, The SCIENCE Issue
44 pages, digest size
$6 Australia, $8 everywhere else

Our friend Stratu publishes theme collections of comics. This most recent issue is on the broad topic of Science. It has a heavy color stock cover, and is meticulously crafted. Stu puts out a nice product.

44 pages by 19 contributors gets you deformed boners, atomic Popeye, laboratory discoveries, childhood memories, scientific jargon in movies and TV, experimenting on human babies, science fiction, Supreme Female conventions, the internal combustion engine, misogyny, Jesus, Obama getting hit in the head by a dud nuke from North Korea, dissecting eyeballs, toxic products, prose fiction, Thomas Edison, and nine pages of comics and zine reviews.

Contributors: Glenno Smith, Michael Em, Michael Amaral, Ross Tesoriero, Chris Mikul, Shaun Craike, Neale Blanden, Leigh Rigozzi, Ryan Vella, SCAR, Bize, Giles Kilham, Brett Weekes, David Puckeridge, Julie, Kapreles, Damian McDonald, Drew Gates, and Stuart Stratu.

Parental guidance suggested

Pay Pal to sstratu@gmail.com
or cash money to
Stratu, PO Box 35, Marrickville NSW 2204, AUSTRALIA.

http://blackguard23.livejournal.com/
https://www.facebook.com/blackguardcomix

American Amateur Press Association

From now through December 1, 2015 DJ Frederick is offering to send anyone who is interested a sample mailing from the American Amateur Press Association. AAPA sends out monthly bundles to AAPA members including zines, journals and printed ephemera. Postcard requests for the sample mailing are welcomed at: 36 West Main Street Warner NH 03278. E-mail requests will not be responded to. For more information on the AAPA visit aapainfo.org.

Must Love Zines

Syndicated Zine Reviews is being renovated. We will be updating the entire site, and looking for new staff members including: Reviewers, Department Editors, Writers, etc. Must Love Zines!

Contact Jack at quazipseudo / gmail

Coming Soon - A Kingdom of Horror [2014]

36 pages, 11" x 8.5", $?, Daniel Berman, Worldly Film Productions, filmfanatic9966 [at] yahoo [dot] com This is the third issue Daniel has sent me, but I haven't reviewed them before because they completely short-circuited my brain. This time Daniel emailed me and informed me that he was sending his new issue in a Priority Envelope and it should arrive in 6-10 business days. [It also said "For review" on the front.] Well, it arrived today! So I'm going to review it! ...The other two issues seemed to be a collection of articles Daniel found on the internet, but this time he wrote most of it (except for a piece by Skip Williamson - 'The Birth of Underground Comics'). There's no denying his passion for horror and B-movies, in fact he strongly urges: "Let's trigger our inner devil and conjure up a wealth of sinister ideas for all you filmgoers out there who want to be spooked or rattled." Printed on nice glossy paper with many colour images of movie posters and stills, the very unusual and unorthodox sentence structures certainly jolt the reader, at least this reader. In one short piece, 'Do Not Disturb My Sleep' [subtitled 'Making a Movie in the Most Terrifying Place on Earth'] we are bewitched by this arrangement of words: I think, what makes a "horror film" and the other cosmic, always willing to avoid, (in so many words) crap that gets made. They're the environments (take for example: a morgue, surgery room at the hospital, or a rundown mental ward out in the middle of nowhere can frighten easily.) The environment can change the complexion of any frightening flick within seconds as soon as the opening scene appears in front of you. So, what makes these unsettling destinations so scary, well, it could be the decayed bodies scattered on the floor, that could have a contributing factor, right? Many pages include lists of movies, like one page with the title: 'Intended For Mature Audiences Presents Nightmare Worlds'. The short paragraph ends with this warning: In one gigantic disturbing moment I'm presenting several worlds of haunting tales that are no laughing matter to say the least. There follows a list of 26 movies, including Atomic Rulers of the World; Evil Brain From Outer Space; and Robot Pilot. This issue ends with a full page 'Bio-Paragraph about Worldly Film Productions Founder and Editor of At The Movies Daniel Berman'. In a sub-heading titled 'Writing Background' we learn that "Daniel Berman is an up and coming writer for many notable web venues he contributes film reviews to such websites." An extremely strange and unusual zine.

Pages From the Cultural Aether : Love and Beauty #1

32 pages, 8.5" x 5.5", $1.00US, $3.00 Elsewhere, The Cultural Aether, 2440 E. Tudor Rd #364, Anchorage AK 99507, USA Some exquisite cut'n'paste action here with love-lorn, yearning lines inserted. The black & white source images are stunning, really fine work. The sort only found in very ancient books I think. I'd love to know where they came from. The author of this zine must have been going through a heartbreaking end of a relationship. Not bitter, simply pouring out his heart's pain, and rather poetically. Welcome To The Cultural Aether #5

36 pages, $3.00 for a 3-issue bundle in US, add $2.00 for Elsewhere, The Cultural Aether, 2440 E. Tudor Rd #364, Anchorage AK 99507, USA More cut'n'paste images from antiquarian books, stunning breathtaking drawings are these; with typewritten lines of prose in word balloons inserted. The author seems lovesick. In my previous review I mentioned an absence of bitterness. Well, that absence is filled here: "Fuck her for driving away. Fuck her for fucking with my mind. Fuck her for not knowing what she wants. Fuck her for being such a fantastic kisser. ...etc." That's more like it! ... The appropriated art is terrific, the accompanying text a mixed bag, ranging from the keenly insightful to the awkwardly light-hearted. But really, bottom line and all that jazz - three bucks is peanuts for so many pages of such awesome art.

Bizarrism #13

44 pages, 12" x 8", $6.00 Aust/$8.00 World, by Chris Mikul, PO Box K546, Haymarket NSW 1240, AUSTRALIA + cathob [at] zip.com.au This issue features Bizarrism's first colour cover, and does so in punishingly vivid style, depicting one of the Ten Courts of Hell at Singapore's Tiger Balm Gardens. (Chris and Cath visited this wonderful place last year.) Each of the Courts is "...presided over by a stern looking judge who passes sentence. ...enthusiastic devils beat, crush, split, disembowel, dismember and saw in half the unfortunate sinners, all of which are portrayed in mesmerisingly graphic detail with lashings of red paint for blood" Also in this issue: Jimmy Savile and the Process Church; Guy Warren Ballard; and my personal favourite of each issue - My Favourite Dictators #7 is Muammar Gaddafi [1942-2011], ruler of Libya for 42 years. Gaddafi routinely demanded that the wives of his soldiers and guards have sex with him. Those that objected were executed. Finally there are the customary book reviews, including the excellent Going Clear by Lawrence Wright [2013], further exposing the sick joke known as the Church of Scientology. If I'm ever sent off to that fabled Desert Island and offered one zine subscription, Bizarrism would be it.

Batman and Robin [bootleg]

12 pages, 8.5" x 6", by Ryan Vella, grizzleguts [at] live [dot] com for ordering info Batman and the Boy Wonder fight The Joker and Poison Ivy (there's been another escape from Arkham Asylum - "the third this week"). It's a Vella production so you know what that means - badass art and hilarious dialogue and trash talk.

Publications Received: Hand Job Zine #4

Publications Received: Hand Job Zine #4

The folks at Hand Job Zine sent me a wonderful note along with this issue of their lit-zine. It reads in part: "We are a UK zine on our fourth issue, and like to keep the righting very British so there may be a few dubious slang words in there for you. You seem to share our love for the printed word though, which is the main reason for sending this. We need to keep it alive instead of reading on migraine inducing machines."

Amen to that. Hand Job Zine is definitely keeping the tradition of underground lit zines alive and well. There's poetry, art, short fiction, and too much cool stuff to mention in this issue - made with real sweat and tears by real hands and real people. I love the anarchic feel that is captured in these pages. No gods, no masters. No shit. Hand Job is the kind of zine that stops talking about freedom and revolution and actually does something.

For more info try:
www.handjobzine.wordpress.com

Posted by DJ Frederick at 8:57 PM

Hiroshima Yeah! #108 Feb 2014

Hiroshima Yeah! #108 Feb 2014

• Apr. 23rd, 2014 at 9:26 PM

4 pages, 12" x 8.5". The Usual, contact HY! at donbirnam [at] hotmail [dot] com

A MEGA BIG thanks to Kapreles for recommending this zine.

I'm afraid this is another 'Somewhat Late To The Party, Fuckity-Fuck It! Dept.' deal, but as a wise frog once said, better late than never!

What we have here is two or three pages stapled in the corner, issued every month by Mark Ritchie and Gary Simmons from Scotland. It employs a nice small font so even though it's only four pages, it's really jammed with content, and that content is rich. I mean it's RICH.

You may not believe it when I reveal the following - this zine has poetry that does not suck ass. However! Read them and you will find it so. Really good poetry here! Example:

Minimum Amount
I prefer using
the self-service checkouts
in supermarkets now,
for the minimum amount
of human interaction.

In recent issues Gary has been contributing a column from prison, '1.5 Years Behind Bars' which is extremely interesting, not only for the fact that it was Gary's first time in the slammer and when he went in he was 52.

Mark writes really enjoyable-to-read album reviews [rare] spiced up with info like where he bought the album, and for how much, like one was in the bargain bin; another was given to him at a gig by a friend... He also writes about gigs he attends, and these include the whole night, from leaving home, stopping for a bite to eat and drink before the gig, and how much each pint cost at each place.

There are also book reviews and short fiction.

HY! is so great! I must not miss any more issues!

Unbelievably Bad #11

Unbelievably Bad #11

• Apr. 24th, 2014 at 9:28 PM

68 pages, 11.5" x 8.5", $8.00pp, excreted by Von Helle, 9 Ross Street, Dulwich Hill NSW 2203 AUSTRALIA + unbelievablybad [at] optusnet [dot] com [dot] au

Goddamn it was so GREAT to find out recently that not only was there a new issue of Unbelievably Bad out, but two new issues since the last one I read, which was UB9. [I was gonna link to it, but I now see that I didn't even post a review here. For shame! I'm an asshole - if you needed further proof, there's Proof #1,000,023... But here's my review of UB8...]

Loads of good stuff in this issue, like an interview with Chinese Burns Unit [retard metal art wizard Glenno Smith's current band]; Five Gross Metal Covers (including Carcass's exquisitely goretastic 'Reek of Putrefaction']; Part 11 of UB's Never-Ending Interview with the Wizard of Gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis; a piece about life in a travelling band by Mike IX Williams of EyeHateGod; interview with Sydney band The Warm Feelings (which contains a really great and funny LSD-taking anecdote); a really really great tour diary by Dead USA. I underlined and circled a bunch of parts of this, one of them is this, about band Norska: "I hope they make it to Australia sometime, they have that low-end punish vibe that makes tubby blokes in black T-shirts salivate." ... There is loads more in here, including an interview with Philip Hansen Anselmo, who I understand is and has been rather influential in the 'heavy music scene'. So, by now you should know if you need this or not. If you're still reading you probably do, comrade.

This zine also includes easily the most disturbing band photo I've ever seen. It gives me the CREEPS, man. Behold! Wait! Cover your eyes! >>>

Gladhand Comix #2

ADULTS ONLY! 32 pages, $4.00, 8.5" x 5.5" by Jay Bee >>> thecomixcompany.ecrater.com + thesach [at] gmail [dot] com More depraved tales of sick mutants and robots. And people too! Jay Bee himself even appears in one of the longer strips - 'Louisediseasy and Her Pal Weesee'. When Louise has sex with a kind of alien pancake, Weesee is shocked to meet Jay Bee, then proceeds to lecture him when Jay Bee admits to worrying about where this comic is going. "S'not like you're Crumb or Bagge. This' pretty lame shit. And putting yourself in the strip? Superlame!" Well, Jay Bee shouldn't have put himself in the strip because he subsequently gets brutalised by the robot thugs who left pancake alien for dead. Dev 12 ("The most original cartoon robot, ever!") is back. One strip is another one of his dreams, this time featuring a Manson Family type cult. The other one is Dev 12 with his friend who works at a... at a place where they look after giant scarabs. [This one really reminded me of William S. Burroughs.] The weird thing isn't the scarabs; it's the workplace relationship dramas that unfold. Here and there are one-pagers that take aim at selfies, and reveal what's on 'our' minds. We all know this stuff, it's just that Jay Bee has drawn it. Haw! Great job!

Toil #4 : Starting Over

40 pages, 8.5" x 5.5", 3 bucks or trade, edited by Kimberlee, Power of Paper, PO Box 27456, Albuquerque NM 87125-7456, USA + powerofpaperzines [at] gmail [dot] com This issue of Kimberlee's work zine has the theme 'starting over'. There are a bunch of contributors who tackle this theme in their own ways, but my favourite is Becky Wolf's 'No More Waiting', about her last day waiting tables in a restaurant. I really like the paragraph about the staff finishing up for the night and hitting the booze. "Waiting tables makes you drink. The schedule, the stress, the pace, the pocket money. Everybody's on the verge of alcoholism." Coming in a close second is teresaiswar's 'Stink', in which she admits to knowing "...the difference between the scent of standard shit and clostridium difficile shit. I know the smell of shit when a person has taken a ton of medications, the smell of the first shit after an elective knee surgery when the GI tract has come out of slumber, and I know the smell of shit when a person has blood in their shit, which I liken to wet aluminium foil on cavity-infested teeth." Also, not a bad cover from that bastard Stratu!

Midwest Mixtapes #2

28 pages, 9" x 5.5", The Usual, MidwestMixtapesFM [at] gmail [dot] com Put together by a group of friends in the Fargo-Moorhead area, Midwest Mixtapes is mainly a music zine with album reviews and band interviews, but also a few movie reviews, root beer reviews, a restaurant review, a local photographer interview, a video game review (Super Meat Boy), and sightings of Will Smith in the Fargo-Moorhead area. ... I've really gone crazy underlining and making notes in this issue so I'll go straight to all that... PxM interviews Evan and Dan from hardcore band, Power, and Evan says this about another hardcore band called Wreck: "They're doing real, like, obscure riffs and stuff that isn't jammy, but it's real technical. Some kids just might not get it." Then when PxM asked them about how their tour has been, Evan says, "Canada was awesome, they hook it up super hard. If you can ever go there, go there." ... Then a little bit later, PxM begins a sentence with, "I'm not going to lie..." which I really should report to Dudes Magazine's Pancake Master [see review]. I really enjoyed this interview I guess mainly for the language. Hook it up super hard? I've never heard that before but I like it. I'm gonna use it. ... The centre pages is a double spread of Will Smith sighted around town. It's just a cardboard Will Smith propped against things. Very funny. There are also comments alongside each one by Big Willy, a little anecdote about each shot. MM describe him this way: "Will Smith is the last healthy human alive on the planet, hiding from the infected hipsters of the downtown area..." ... The other pages I underlined mad style was an interview with Midwest [Iowa] singer-songwriter Andrew Johnathan, which is unintentionally funny, "Not only do you fall in love with his lyrically genius abilities and his melodic guitar, now along comes banging drums, soulful electric guitar, and rhythmic bass." This kind of writing seems out of place. But it's funny! Another funny aspect of this interview is that twice Johnathan begins a sentence with, "I can openly say..." I wanted him to throw in a few "I'm not gonna lie..." Finally, when asked about his favourite part of touring, Johnathan admits, "I get to go a lot of places I haven't been, along with a lot of places I have been..." Anyway, this one was a thoroughly enjoyable zine.

The Kobb Log #8

36 pages, 11" x 8.5", $5.00, Kobb Labs, PO Box 30231, Pensacola FL 32503, USA Another terrific issue from Dr Bill here, the highlight of which is an extensive [21 pages!] overview of jungle babes in movies - 'Jungle Queens of the Silver Screen' by Jim Ivers. Going right back to the silent era of the '20s, Jim covers each decade up to the present day. I found myself madly circling this one and that one. Great stuff. That's the bulk of the issue - the rest is reviews of "weirdfilms" by both Dr Bill and Jim Ivers. Always a wonderful read.

Keeyok Tales #3

56 pages, 8.5" x 6", $5.00, by G-Man & J-Stew >>> find 'em on facebook at Phatsville Comix "Not many people know this, but aside from doing kick-arse comix, J-Stew and I are in a fairly successful 2-piece rock band..." So begins this collection of comix about Giles and J-Stew's band The Inkubators - "It's got "ink" in the title, and it sounds like "masturbators." In the same way they covered their trip to San Diego Comic Con from conflicting perspectives, so they do so here. Giles's version has J-Stew begging him to have a jam and maybe start a band. J-Stew's version has Giles begging J-Stew to have a jam in the hopes of starting a band. It's very funny. But wait! This bizarro world that you're not sure which parts to believe is expanded and complicated (and made even funnier) with the addition of strips by their friends, like Cam-El's 'I Was At Inkubators 1st Gig!' and Brett Weekes's 'The Masturbators'. I really got dragged into this mad spazz rockin' comix world. Great stuff.