Zines Books

...but at the forefront, always sincere. Nicole is NOT just a young, sarcastic hipster, as is often the case in arts and entertainment nowadays. She gives thought to the people, community, family, friends, reality, and things beyond just herself. The initial sighting of her own pets, her commissioned pet portraits, or her anthropomorphous animal artwork might suggest surface kitschy cuteness, but through her zine work you see she has an obvious empathy for animals that extends towards real pet and animal issues.

Lastly, her comic-diaries are FUN, as fun as any graphic work out there. A perfect balance of intelligence, realism, animation creativity, and humor.

Reading this book reminded me that even ordinary moments carry magic. Riding your bike is important. Having your morning coffee is important. Not in a narcissistic way, but in a mindful way. This collection of stories was like freshly mowed grass. Like a day spent thrift shopping with your best friend. A perfect example of life as art.

I'm a total fan of Nicole Georges' work. Not only are her scenarios witty and her humor charming, her drawing is beautiful in its sweetness.

This beautiful anthology compiles Nicole's first 8 issues of her self-published zine plus some new material. Nicole is a beloved fixture in the Portland zine scene, and she does that scene proud in this book. You really get a feel for her life in PDX; her jobs, friends, dogs, her many cups of coffee per day. Her drawings seem ripped right from her sketchbooks, which gives them a real spontaneity. She draws herself like a little girl or inner child version of herself, perhaps that's why I found her comics so innocent and endearing. Many of us can relate to wanting to settle down but feeling unsettled about it. I like Nicole's stories because she's searching, at times with hesitancy, at times with blind bravery, she explores and tries to live the way that feels right to her. There are many obstacles to this, hence, comics for us to read and learn from. . . . Reviewed by Kelly Froh.

As the price of digital technology has plummeted, its availability has become more democratized. The result has been an explosion of creativity, as more and more people find the powerful new tools of self-expression available to them. No medium has been as completely revolutionized by computer typography, in particular, than that of the small press. This book takes us through some examples of the most innovative work coming from periodicals in the past few years. Sometimes odd, but frequently brilliant, it is always exemplary of the tremendous freedom digital composition has given to the page designer. If you're in the business, chances you'll find stuff here to inspire you. If you just like art, you won't be disappointed, either.

[One side note: don't expect any step-by-step instructions on how to reproduce this art. Don't even expect much explanatory text with each plate. It's just a gallery. Even so, you can learn a lot just by looking at the approximately 220 full-color plates on offer here.]

When I need great ideas and inspiration, I pick up this book! What a wonderful collection of thought provoking artwork. If you are an artist, this book is a must have...it is well worth the price and you'll find yourself pcking it up all the time. I see something new in it I didn't see before every time I open it.

This book is great inspiration for any graphic designer. If I'm struggling for an idea, this is my muse. The art found in this book is primarily from page design (magazines, books) with very little web design. This is not a negative comment, just don't expect to see much web design. The medium is irrelevant; it's just great design.

Rowe has brought together an excellent collection from the fringes. This book is entertaining and a great starting point for people interested in the idiosyncratic world of e-zines.

The Book of zines, edited by Chip Rowe, is an excellent and entertaining way to be introduced to zines. This book contains sample articles from past and current zines such as Mystery Date, Hitch, Bust, Preparation X, to name a few. There is an interview with the Pillsbury Doughboy, an analysis of Fonzie's relationship with Marion, sex eduction on vinyl, to name a few articles included in this compilation.

It also includes information on ordering zines.

Wow! What nasty reviewers! I did not expect to see so much hate and contempt spewed at a women who lost her child to a mindless and illegal war. It just boggles my mind! This reflects the intelligence of those who disagree. Whatever happened to "respectfully disagreeing" with an opponent? Whatever happened to just plain, old fashioned common sense?

This insightful booklet lays out in a very simple manner one person's objections to an immoral war. This is not World War 2 where civilization was endangered by another breed of hate mongers. Nor, is Iraq another Afghanistan, no matter how hard some of our elected officials try to make us believe bald-face lies.

It's important to remember - Iraq was a country ruled by a bunch of gangsters much more interested in lining their pockets than killing over religious doctrine. Afghanistan, on the other hand, was essentially a country occupied by foreign forces, which is why there is currently no brutal civil war despite having to deal with an active insurgency, and homegrown war lords, to boot!

In Iraq we are in the middle of a full fledged civil war. If we can draw any lessons from our own American Civil War, where 14,000 captured Union soldiers died horribly from disease and malnutrition in one single prison complex (Andersonville) - it's that Civil Wars tend to be extremely brutal. So it's reasonable to assume any sane person could disagree with the American government's involvement in someone else's civil war! My hat's off to Cindy Sheehan for her brave and robust dissent!

P.S. Both of the very nasty reviews of "Dear President Bush" has since been deleted! I guess the reality of an endless & unjustified brutal war has caused a change of heart!

The Activist's Handbook: A Primer Updated Edition with a New Preface

When I had the opportunity to meet Cindy Sheehan, what impressed me the most about her was how "real" she was - completely unpretentious. She clearly is speaking straight from the heart, with a fundamental resolve driven by grief and compassion.

For it isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt

Zine writers tend to do best uncovering secret histories: hobo graffiti tales by freight-hopping filmmaker Bill Daniel, or writing about the street ear-cleaners of New Delhi, or where to find brand-new karaoke machines in Japan for free (and why this happens). 8-tracks and those insane Jack T. Chick pamphlets are also nicely covered. Some parts are not as interesting, but this reflects the huge range of interests covered in this anthology.

This is the best of the glut of zine anthologies that came out a couple years ago. Worth the price of the book is Sky Ryan's adventures as a gutter punk, roaming the west coast. This is what zines are really supposed to be like.

In this zine-book, China Martens, pioneer of the mama-zine genre, collects "the best" of her zine, The Future Generation, from its first issue in 1990 (when her daughter had just turned two years old) to the present - representing 16 years spanning China's parenting life. The chosen selections in this anthology focus on China's personal writings, not the contributions, and do an exemplary job of capturing not only China's changing interests over the years, but also her journey as a woman, mother, writer and activist.
Becoming a mother just shy of her 22nd birthday in 1988 when "most punks weren't parents and most parents weren't punks," China started The Future Generation as a way to find and connect with other subcultural parents. In the subculture where she'd lived actively for years, China felt disconnected and easily recognized a void in her peer's consciousness in terms of child-related issues. She didn't know then that her cutting edge drive to put those new mama feelings and observations into zine form would years later inspire an entire new generation of subcultural parents and mama zinesters, even if her "squat daycare revolution" wasn't ever realized.
A full decade after the first issue of The Future Generation came out in April 1990, I was a new mama myself when I discovered China's The Future Generation writings in her regular Slug & Lettuce column. Because her writing is warm, accessible, and the kind of raw that's full of emotion and honesty, I felt an immediate need to get in touch with her to thank her for helping me feel less alone in my new mama life.
When the next issue of The Future Generation zine came out (issue #11), I ordered one right away. When it came in the mail, I knew I was going to love it from the cover alone. No Baby Gap modeling here, the toddler on the cover looked real - adorably tousled from outdoor fun. In the background, the parents hanging out at an outdoor punk show racked up immediate points too. The same kind of real life, rough around the edges parent and kid imagery is captured again here in the zine-book - pregnant synchronized swimmers in bikinis, naked baby buns running down an empty road, mama bands, mom and daughter photo booth strips, tattooed parents, demonstrations, collages, and breastfeeding babies.
When I started reading that issue #11, I loved it even more. From the introduction where I felt like my new mama life had been captured (I read I wasn't the only mama who had trouble getting out of the house and managing baby fussiness in public) to the excellent first-hand experience-based advice I'd need years down the road ("The Angst of Being The Parent of a Young Teen"), I became a loyal fan. No mainstream parenting magazine tripe here - nothing insinuating how inadequate a mama I'd be for not doing things the status quo way - no generic checklists for juggling baby and housework. I never missed an issue after that.
Now having this zine-book, where I can read the best of the issues I'd missed, is like finally understanding a complete conversation after only having come in at the tale end. Because parenting is a journey full of change and self-exploration, just like or kid's childhoods, the zine-book captures China's journey - and then some.
There are numerous pieces on the desire to network with other anarchist/punk/subcultural parents as well as essays on being on welfare, tuning into kid's physical and emotional needs, fostering freedom and responsibility in children, going after hopes and dreams, nurturing children with respect, anarchist child raising, struggling, when motherhood sucks, single dads, violence, sexuality, schooling, non-punitive discipline, class-conscience children's liberation, breastfeeding, politics, resistance, and family history - all of it written through China's single mama lens while she focuses on raising her daughter, the both of them surviving, living and growing together and in their communities.
Without a doubt, this book will go down as a parenting classic for the future generations.

China is an incredible writer: unpretentious, witty, smart & incisive. I wish I had read her zine when I was starting to parent 9 years ago, but I'm glad I can read it now. Unlike authors of so called "alternative" or "punk" (ex: Alternadad or Mamarama) parenting books, China has walked the walk.

"Make" is simply one of the best magazines out there. sure it only comes out every three months. but it is worth the wait.

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This quarterly magazine is a great way to connect with your kids and tickle their curiosity for doing things that require more than a little thought.

Each issue has an abundance of ideas that can be spun off into Science Fair projects and will make your child the envy of the neighborhood.

Nate Powell creates some of the most incredible comics I've ever encountered. The visual style shifts almost as quickly as the teenaged characters' moods, but never becomes random or incoherent. Some lines flow like Jules Feiffer's scrawl, others jolt down the page in angular tracks that remind me of Sam Keith. Some pages feel light and breezy; other times, broad, dense blacks make even night air feel as dense as a tombstone.

A comic really stands on its writing, though, no matter how good the art is. Powell presents some of the finest comic writing around. The scripts bring to life the trials and occasional small triumphs of life as a teen or an adult just starting out. That time of life often rides on emotion rather than reason. He renders that whirl and confusion accurately, something that linear plotting and familiar visual angles just can't do. If graphic novels correspond to literary prose, then Powell's work comes closer to poetry in many ways.

Written reviews have no way to capture the look of this book, and its feel simlpy has to be experienced first-hand. Powell became one of my favorite comic artists the moment I first saw his work. This volume cements his reputation as one of the finest creators working today.

-- wiredweird

PS: This volume includes "It Disappears," which has been published as separately.

Sounds of your Name is a graphic novel anthology of black-and-white zine and comic stories by punk band player Nate Powell. Featuring dark, gritty artwork, dialogue that turns on a dime from casual to deadly serious, and sequences that are likewise drift from day-in-the-life to tense to shockingly explosive, the stories in Sounds of Your Name captivate with underground fervor. From the hard life of an alley cat who longs for the comforts of domesticity, to the simultaneously grim and spiritual insights of a war veteran, to the rites of passage from childhood to adulthood, Sounds of Your Name is undeniably a "thinking man's comic" from cover to cover. An avant-garde collection especially recommended for anyone interested in taking the pulse of the underground comix scene.

"Becoming the Media: A Critical History Of Clamor Magazine" by Jen Angel



Review by James Generic







Clamor Magazine ran for almost seven years and I tried to read every issue during its run. The magazine, which had a fairly broad audience, was an excellent mix of culture, political essays, and topics you couldn't hear about anywhere else. When it shut down in late 2006, it was a fairly big blow to the small-time publishing industry. When Jen Angel, one of the two founders of Clamor Magazine, put out a history of the project, "Becoming The Media: A Critical History of Clamor Magazine", I was sure to pick it up as quickly as I could. I wanted to know how they could run such an excellent project for so long. I also wanted to understand what happened in the end to kill it.



The founders of Clamor run a yearly conference called the Allied Media Conference in Bowling Green, Ohio aimed at alternative media activists, and it was there, in 2004, that I heard some words that have stuck (or haunt, depending how you look at it) with me for years. In a workshop on how to run an organization, the presenter said something to the tune of "Probably 90 percent of progressive organizations fall apart because of internal conflict, members attacking each other, and not so much outside influences... so I can't really give you much advice there, except to be nice to each other." So how did the group of people who were in charge of Clamor, under enormous pressure, survive those years and still put out such quality work? Jen Angel answered that, what doomed Clamor in the end, and reflections on the whole project in "Becoming The Media".



Jen Angel and Jason Kucsma founded Clamor in 1999 because they wanted to combine the creativity and vibrancy of the underground zine scene with the national outreach of a regular magazine in reporting "the progressive social change movement" in all its forms. Though both Angel and Kucsma identify as anarchists, they never sought to limit the magazine's focus to explicitly anarchist politics and organizing, as they recognized that many people doing amazing things who might operate under anarchist-type principles do not call themselves anarchists at all and shy away from the term. From start to finish the magazine was run by entirely by volunteers who were divided into two different working groups: a publishing group that dealt with business questions and an editorial group that dealt with writing, layout, and trying to deal with such issues as diversity of writers and not getting caught in the "all-white collective" trap. One of the cooler things about the magazine was not just that all writers were paid for their work but that they explicitly didn't have to be "qualified" in that they needed to be academics or previously published. The writers for Clamor could have been anyone and didn't have to be so-called important people. In addition to that, the magazine tackled topics that a lot of others were afraid to touch in mass, like the blatant sexism and lies of American Apparel, a "hip progressive" clothing chain that is anything but. In that case, American Apparel attacked back with all kinds of threats of legal action and lies, but Clamor did the right thing and stuck to their guns because they were 100% right to do so! It also did a great job at representing the Midwest (Bowling Green, Ohio), instead of the usual places for radical publications, like San Francisco or New York city. That was really important since a good amount of people live in the Midwest and in small towns far away from big cities. (Indeed, left-wing and especially anarchist movements are generally confined to major cities.)



Like any well thought out "post-script", Jen Angel also examines what went wrong and the dangers the Clamor people had to navigate through. She points out that from the business side of things, Clamor probably overreached a bit in trying to put the magazine in as many bookstores as they possibly could. The problem with that is that magazines generally lose money on bookstores because they need to keep them well-stocked in order to try and attract subscribers. When a new issue comes out, the old ones end up getting throw away, which cost the magazine thousands of dollars. There were also tensions between the older collective members and the newer ones over ownership of the project (something very common in long-running collectives); Jen and Jason in particular put a huge amount of their time and energy into the project to keep it running - to the point where they couldn't really leave. Since they were an all-volunteer collective and were thus not paying the workers, Jen had to work at a very demanding non-profit job in the day to keep everything afloat. Jen also includes a passage about something rarely talked about in activist circles - being in a relationship with a fellow collective member. Some advantages of that was that they trusted each other completely, some disadvantages were that a lot of people talked to them like they were one unit and not separate people with different opinions. I think it's pretty darn brave to talk about something that personal and she offers some good insights into how to walk that line.



In the end, a major factor in the closing of Clamor was the Independent Press Association lying about its debt, and failing to pay Clamor or keep it on the stands.This was in addition to the mountain of debt the magazine had. This caused a downward spiral that led to Clamor not being able to continue, though it did put out one last issue, on the topic of body image. In the pamphlet, Angel suggests that every organization should have someone who is very familiar with budgeting and finances to consult with, because during much of Clamor's operation, they did not have one of these people. According to her, they might have actually closed a few months earlier if they knew the trouble they were starting to get into. She points out something very important: that grassroots left-wing progressive groups tend to shy away from the money aspect of operating because they associate money with greedy capitalists or consumerism, when it really does take money to keep a major operation going. Because left-wingers shy away from fundraising on a major scale, they lag way behind right-wing groups in being able to reach a lot of people and also in just sheer scale of operations. Another problem that she notes is that since Clamor tried to be as cross-movement as possible and didn't focus on specific parts of that movement, it became hard to get advertising because many progressive groups want focused advertising. An example she points out is that even though more than 50 percent of Clamor's readers were vegetarians, they had trouble getting vegetarian groups to take out advertisements because they thought the magazine's politics were too general. They ran into similar problems with other groups like women's rights organizations. Other progressive/radical magazines, such as Left Turn, might seem more focused, but in effect they are building themselves up for later outreach, according to Angel. All of these problems added up and finally forced Clamor to stop publishing at the end of 2006.

Jen Angel's pamphlet is a rare glimpse into a major group that was able to reach many people yet still kept a dialogue of how the staff interacted and thought. For example, simple exercises like bringing up if consensus decision making is really all that democratic helped spark big debates, I think. It's also a look into the mind of a hard-working and driven individual who got stuff done, consequences be damned. Angel made many financial and personal sacrifices and the Clamor staff put themselves through hell to put out a magazine that seemed entirely professional to me when I was reading it. (I was very surprised to learn that it was published by an all-volunteer staff!) As someone who's worked in organizations for years and I think had similar worries, it really captivated me. Also, the pamphlet gave me a nice glimpse into the trials and tribulations of being involved in a collective that published a nationally distributed magazine. Pick this one up and be prepared to be amazed at what the Clamor people accomplished in seven years.

run a magazine online and this helps