William Patrick Tandy, editor of the zine Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore, recounts a recent night he lay awake in bed listening to the all-too-familiar sound of gunshots ringing out in his neighborhood. A frequent reader of the police blotter, Tandy notes that single gunshots are relatively common and go unreported, but on this particular night, he ruminates on an even more unsettling experience:

“I counted 10 shots that night before drifting off to sleep, none of which were accounted for in the following week’s blotter—not for 9:53 or four or any other time. Nor were the splotches of crimson that staggered up the sidewalk from the adjacent alley the next morning, steadily eroding in size before vanishing entirely a few doors down, like the ruins of some long-forgotten culture…”

Source: Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore! (article not available online)

Got space for thousands of zines? The Papercut Zine Library—which lends an unusual collection of 7,000 zines, indie books, periodicals, and audio/visual materials in addition to hosting community events—is looking for a new home in the Boston/Cambridge area. The collective-run, free lending library lost its space in Cambridge’s Democracy Center on August 15. It had operated there since May 2005.

As outlined on the collective’s Myspace page, Papercut is looking for at least 180 square feet of space in an accessible area. Joining an existing community/arts/organizing space is an option, and so is renting low-cost commercial space. There’s just one absolute: “that the freedom to make decisions about the library’s internal operation stay within our collective. That is, we are not interested in another library absorbing our collective if it means the collective will not be involved.”

Anyone who has ideas or tips should get in touch with Papercut.

Source: Papercut Zine Library

(Thanks, BoingBoing.)

Image by gruntzooki, licensed under Creative Commons.

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is zine librarian Alycia Sellie. We asked her for five links and here's what she came up with. 

Zine World:  Zine World is the most well-known print source for reviews and information about zines, and it's web presence is formidable as well with a comprehensive list of links for everything from postal rates, upcoming events and zine news.

Queer Zine Archive Project: QZAP is a free digital zine archive that strives to "preserve queer zines and make them available to other queers, researchers, historians, punks, and anyone else who has an interest DIY publishing and underground queer communities." This site is beautifully designed, perpetually growing with new titles, extremely inspiring, and an amazing historical record.

Zine Wiki: The amazing thing about Zine Wiki is that the phlethora of information about zines already there is just a start; the fantastic thing is that anyone can add and edit (meta)data about their zine, or add themselves to the extensive list of zinesters!

We Make Zines Ning: For more meta and social networking (when your stapling arm gets too tired), the We Make Zines Ning is a place (that isn't those other sites that we all know too well) to promote your zine, find out about zine events and even friend your local zine librarian.

Nobody Cares about your Stupid Zine Podcast: Here's a new zine project for your ears, ipods and RSS readers: Alex Wrekk (of Stolen Sharpie Revolution) and Mark Parker (Independent Publishing Resource Center librarian and creator of zinethug.com) team together to interview zinesters far and wide, and I am looking forward to the next installment!

Bio: Alycia Sellie is an academic art librarian living in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. After participating in the first ever Zine Librarians (un)Conference in Seattle, Washington, she is busy planning the NYC Zine Fest to be held at the Brooklyn Lyceum in June 2009, and can be reached at http://alycia.brokenja.ws/.

Previous Alt Wire Guests:   Davy Rothbart, Roger White, Dan Sinker, Phil Yu, Matt Novak,  Jason Marsh, David LaBounty, Jen Angel, Will Braun, Regan Hofmann, Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam,  Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel, Anne Elizabeth Moore 

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is Joe Biel of  Microcosm Publishing. Check back for tomorrow's guest: Fatemeh Fakhraie of Muslimah Media Watch. 

The Prelinger Archives: I experience nothing but awe and wonder when I comb Prelinger Internet Archive. Whether I'm looking for open-source or copyright-expired video to sample or a hilariously outdated instructional film to watch, this is the place.

Punks and Vegetable Oil: Few things inspire me more than da punx taking their approach to things beyond music. Fossil Free Fuel is a brilliant example of exactly what I think of when I extrapolate the ideals that I had in my youth. It blows my mind that the best source for waste vegetable oil diesel system parts and conversion kits would be these knowledgeable punks.

Dicentra Collective: Portland kind of has everything. Dicentra Collective does is a resource for people who need all kinds of emotional support, sexual assualt resources, zines about physical disabilities, or a seemingly catch-all community directory of related projects. They put on frequent discussion events about all manner of the most uncomfortable topics you can imagine. Amazing.

Edwin's Instructables: My friend Edwin has at least 365 project ideas each year so there's been talk of putting together his "Idea-A-Day" calendar. In the meantime, and in tribute to Edwin, you can check out Instructables, where you can learn to make and do all manner of cool things.

Politically Unsophisticated and Pretty Neat: Even as I get older there is a part of me that respects what Plan-it X Records does. It's a pretty simple concept: all full-length CDs are $5 and all people involved are interested in building community together; releasing music with people that you get along with as human beings, not just as a business relationship. You can call it "politically unsophisticated" but shit, that's a pretty neat thing.

We Make Zines: There have been numerous attempts to create an active online zine community for as long as there's been a graphical internet but Krissy Durden's We Make Zines is the most successful in a long time. Daily updates on threads and plenty of international folks sharing information and most importantly zines!

Zinewiki: If I had enough time in the day to be obsessive, I would compulsively update entries on Zinewiki, the Wikipedia solely about zines and their makers. What started a few years back as a way to create a Wikipedia page about Alex Wrekk (deemed "non-notable" on standard Wikipedia) became a gigantic girth of information.

If it's a blog, it's the only one that I read: I met Jonathan Maus when he organized a bike craft swap meet back in 2005. He was smiley, energetic, and friendly. I like that. Within no time he had taken his bike enthusiasm to the nth degree with Bike Portland, charting virtually everything cycle-related in our Rose City. Then he added Elly Blue, who gives him a real run for his money in all of the aforementioned departments. If it's a blog, it's the only one that I read.
 
Honestly, Gmail: This is going to seem like irony or sarcasm, but honestly Gmail is the only website I look at on 90% of the days I use the internet. On a purely literal level, all of my most inspirational offerings come via Gmail: new opportunities, writing gigs, people who want to play my talkies at their school, and people who ask questions and share information that I might be interested in. Most days, I could really do without the rest of the internet and the way that it changed how information is broadcast.

BIO: Joe Biel isn't as grumpy or bitter as he used to be and no longer feels the need to tell journalists why he thinks their paper is crappy. He founded Microcosm Publishing in 1996 and is working on getting Cantankorous Titles, a new DVD label off the ground this year. He has made a number of short and feature length talkies, including the forthcoming feature "If It Ain't Cheap, It Ain't Punk: Fourteen Years of Plan-it X Records," and is the author of Make a Zine: When Words & Graphics Collide and is midway through his next book for Garrett County Press about folks who have grown up with punk and applied the ethics, approach, and ideals to things other than music.

Previous Alt Wire guest:  Anne Elizabeth Moore  

Image by Microcosm

New Yorkers are notoriously provincial, or so the stereotype goes. Here are two charming projects that attempt to explain the devotion:

Jason Polan asked people to name their favorite thing about New York, then did his best to draw each one. Esopus published the results of the collaboration in its latest issue. The sketches capture the city’s quiet, day-to-day movements, celebrating the humble things—from pigeons to a row of discarded chewing gum—that make New York a great place to live. 

Fred Argoff publishes a zine called Brooklyn! (not available online). Argoff posesses an encyclopedic knowledge of his favorite borough, and his zine proffers seemingly endless reasons to love it. Recent issues have featured guides to Brooklyn slang, the history of a famous local rollercoaster, and a great collection of aerial photos.

You don’t have to like New York—or even know it—to enjoy the drawings or the zine. The hometown love is infectious. It’ll leave you composing local paeans of your own.

Source: Esopus, Brooklyn! (for more info, write Fred Argoff at Penthouse L, 1170 Ocean Pkwy., Brooklyn, NY 11230-4060)

Utne Reader librarian Danielle Maestretti shares the highlights (and occasional lowlights) of what’s landing in our library each week in ‘From the Stacks.’ 

Utne’s library is abuzz with a steady flow of 1,300 magazines, newsletters, journals, weeklies, zines, and other lively dispatches from the cultural front that are rarely found at big-box bookstores, or newsstands.

Featured in this week's video:

- Brazil's "Lambe Lambe" tradition, profiled in Creative Review 

- A Virginia Quarterly Review report on depression and suicide rates in Cuba 

- The Punk Rock Fun Time Activity Book from ECW Press 

- Make a Zine by Microcosm Publishing 

- The Terrapin turtles of Chesapeake Quarterly 

When I saw the title, Jesus Christ Super Zine, it was impossible for me not to crack open Ariel Birks’ personal zine. Distributed by S.S.O. Press out of Olympia, Washington, the first installment is full of illuminating stories from Birks’ stint as a hardcore evangelical Christian. Part handwritten and part typewritten, the charmingly sarcastic stories revisit her teenage years of proselytizing, abstaining from sex, and praying cross-legged on the grass with attractive secularists.

The essays reflect the author’s personal experiences, but there is a distinct familiarity of religious zeal for anyone with a history of zealotry. Here are some of my favorite quotes from Jesus Christ Super Zine, which encapsulate the sincerity and devotion of her then-Christian life:

On Christian camp: I got to hang out with the most awesome people ever. We had few inhibitions about ‘fitting in’ as we were all liberated by Jesus to do whatever the hell we wanted (except sin.) 

On Birks’ friend Jamy finding Jesus: I’m sure it was some worship service or camp. You know. With really emotional music that made me feel vulnerable.

On witnessing: He was 19, his name was Chris and well, he was extremely attractive to me. So, so very attractive. Actually he looked exactly like Chris Cornell. And thus, a wee little bit like Jesus, no? But that’s not what I was after, of course. I was there for some mind sex. 

Reading Jesus Christ Super Zine is better than remembering my own stories as an ex-Religious Freak. I can rest assured that others have been through the same experience: first hopelessly devoted, then utterly apathetic, and finally truly embarrassed. This trip down the memory lane of impressionable youth turns that embarrassment into entertainment, portraying a light-hearted coming-of-age tale.

The RNC Welcoming Committee, a group organizing radical activity during September’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, has created a pre-convention primer, The Struggle Is Our Inheritance: A History of Radical Minnesota. 

The anti-authoritarian zine has the expected flaws—unattributed authorship that will make the Wikipedia-wary reader skeptical, and a broken link to download the zine on the RNC Welcoming Committee website, now defunct. (I eventually found a copy of the zine at Arise! Resource Center and Bookstore in Minneapolis.)

Nitpicking aside, the zine is an intriguing introduction to Minnesota radicalism over the last 150 years—union strikes, weapons manufacturing protests, the birth of the American Indian Movement, anti-racist Skinheads. The zine’s closing essay reminds readers that mass demonstrations like the ones planned for the RNC have only “a small place in something much bigger,” i.e. the radical tradition laid out in the zine. The “real work” ought to be long-term community building, writes the author, even though demonstrations do have their appeal:

...though it’s important not to let an affinity for symbolism and theater drive our strategy, it’s equally important to recognize that orchestrating massive coordinated resistance for a few days in 2008 could have a profound impact on our collective morale, fueling a broad escalation in the radical, community-based work we should all be engaged in.

UPDATE: Commenter Tony tells us the RNC Welcoming Committee's website is temporarily down, but should be up and running again soon. Thanks for the info, Tony.

There’s no gloomier time in our library than when we peel open the pages of a new arrival eager to dig into dispatches from some obscure cultural front, only to find the equivalent of a death notice. Such was the case when Youth Truth—the “official zine” of Americans for a Society Free from Age Restrictions (ASFAR)—came in the mail last week.

This feisty publication has been a fierce defender of the rights of young people, routinely calling on government and society to afford youth the rights and responsibilities granted more aged citizens. In its pages, one could find disturbing chronicles of censorship in schools, news of “gulag” camps for troubled youth, and insightful breakdowns of health and education policies. That's just to name a few of the issues that, if they are covered by mainstream media at all, rarely include the perspective of those darned kids.

Youth Truth’s parent organization is taking a break from zine publishing to focus on its activism. Editor in chief Susan Wishnetsky announces in the latest issue (Winter 2007-2008): “Youth Truth may return, once ASFAR gets its house in order, but we do not expect to publish any more new issues in 2008.”

Here’s hoping 2009 brings better news.

Skin Deep is the latest zine in William P. Tandy’s excellent Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore! series. As befits a Baltimore-based outfit, Smile, Hon zines can lead to cringing or contemplation with themed issues on crime, vermin, and scars. Skin Deep is no exception: It treats tattoos in ink-inspired personal essays, poetry, and sidebars of tattooer interviews that are sometimes amusing, sometimes stomach-turning. 

The zine is full of instructive tidbits about tattoo enthusiasts, including perspectives from a number of tattooed men and women who write about the spiritual significance of their designs. (I always took the Bible’s “your body is a temple” to mean no epidermal ink injections. Not a universal interpretation, apparently.) One tattooed gentleman sports angels and “iconic hands clasped in prayer.” Ian Andrew Erdman went for a bear tattoo, to remind him of strength and helpfulness. “Having been a part of several mission trips,” Erdman writes, “I have witnessed firsthand the good that people can do when they band together to help toward a common goal.” 

Not everyone who gets a tattoo chooses a saintly image, of course. For those seeking a more controversial design, the right tattooer is key. Josh Griffin, a Baltimore Tattoo Museum employee, refuses to do certain designs, like “rebel flags. I don’t care if it’s for the Confederacy or whatever—I don’t mess with that.” Other tattooers are less rigid. “In the end, you have to meet three points,” says tattooer Bill Stevenson. “You have to be over 18, you have to have some money, and you have to want to get tattooed.”

Most of the tattooers want to be seen as craftsmen, not as moral enforcers or even as artists. “They’ll be like, ‘I’m a tattooer, not an artist,’” says Dave Drell of the Baltimore Tattoo Museum. “‘I don’t go home and listen to Vivaldi and drink wine and paint things,’ you know?”

Publicly ranking one’s favorite books, films, and albums seems to pass for critical blessing these days. Truth be told, I’m not so sure that making recommendations in list form is a new phenomenon—the Ten Commandments have a whiff of recommendation, don’t they? Still, most contemporary publications love to offer top-ten lists or best-of-the-year lists. (Hell, read any issue of Mental Floss.)

And then there’s Time Enough At Last, A.J. Michel’s “reading log 2007,” a zine she assembled simply to share—in just a few sentences—whether she loved, liked, didn’t mind, or couldn’t finish a particular book, comic, or zine. Michel’s month-by-month breakdown of what she’s read offers no snarky rankings, but it’s sassy enough to be pretty entertaining. She sensibly sticks to the basic premise of a few sentences’ worth of evaluation. After all, she can’t waste time reviewing when she ought to be out trying to satisfy her insatiable need for reading material:

Plane trips and vacations are a nightmare because not only do I have to pick and choose what books to take, I have to decide if to stow them in checked luggage, or carry them on. What happens if the plane is stuck on the runway for six hours and I finish not only the books I have with me, but also the airline magazine, and SkyMall catalog? Do I start hitting up other passengers for books? Best to be prepared.

If you have a similar need, perhaps Time Enough At Last can be your guide.

—Michael Rowe

When we were kids, my brother and I spent much of our time concocting stories and scenarios for our G.I. Joe action figures, imagining how they might destroy enemy depots or dispatch opposing commanders. Then my dad got involved. He offered a different sort of narrative, which began with christening our G.I. Joes “Hank” and “Jim,” in complete disregard for their codenames.

Hank and Jim, you see, were normal guys, except they happened to be small figurines with aggressive military bearings. Accordingly, they spent the bulk of their time complaining about their size and waging petty arguments. What I most remember is my dad’s Hank and Jim voices, complaining in a bland, thoroughly non–G.I. Joe manner about which of them merited the privilege of walking in front of the other one (or something like that). Incidentally, Hank and Jim were the names of two of my dad’s philosophy department colleagues.

To re-cast my G.I. Joes as bickering, put-upon little men was funny—albeit frustrating to a budding military zealot like myself. Such absurdly mundane reimagining is also one of the guiding principles behind Mark Russell’s superb Superman Stories, a zine trilogy of which two volumes have been published.

Each volume, which is written by Russell with his own occasional cartoons, recounts the travails of Superman in a world that more closely resembles reality than a comic book. For example, Superman and Lois Lane argue over his emotional impenetrability. Or, in another vignette, a judge dresses Superman down for not obtaining an extradition order before apprehending a mad scientist operating out of the Amazon rain forests. In Russell’s re-imagining, Superman bears the burden of mundane reality, with its humiliating arguments, its romantic difficulties, and its disputes with Aquaman over the political legitimacy of ruling the seas as a monarch rather than an elected official. Ah, relatability!

Aside from the parody and the kidding, Russell does bring a certain seriousness and poignancy to the notion of Superman-in-real-life. Lois and Superman can’t have children, for instance, so they struggle with the possibility of adoption. Superman Stories also returns again and again to the question of how we can imagine Superman without pondering the damage he would wreak on humankind. At one point in Superman Stories 2, which is at times downright earnest, Superman attends an anti-Superman rally where protestors read a list of names: Each individual was accidentally killed in the course of Superman’s superheroic exploits.

For me, Russell’s Superman joins Hank and Jim as avatars of one’s cluelessness in the face of expected heroism, forthrightness, and reliability. In fact, I feel moved to re-christen him. I hereby dub Superman “Mike.” Look, up in the sky! It’s Mike! He’s wrangling with Hank and Jim!

—Michael Rowe

To check out Superman Stories in print, contact Mark Russell.

The first zine in J. Gerlach’s Simple History Series, Christopher Columbus and His Expeditions to America, tells the story of the world’s most famous explorer through drawings of stick figures in various states of  one-dimensional distress. The details are far from simple, though—they transcend mere stick-people problems at every turn—and the zine takes a de-mythologizing tack on Columbus and his ships.

The key to the zine’s charm is that Columbus reads alternately like a textbook and a children’s illustrated history. Gerlach accomplishes this feat by widely varying the zine’s ratios of words to pictures. On some pages, a small rectangle of text acts as a caption for an accompanying illustration; elsewhere, words dominate an entire page. What’s consistent throughout is that the zine does not suppress the gory details of Columbus’ romps to the New World. For instance, illustrator Cindy Crabb’s depictions of stick-figure corpses being dumped overboard are somewhat wrenching: They’re the bodies of would-be slaves.

Nevertheless, Columbus, with its bibliography full of Howard Zinn and James W. Loewen, presents a digestible version of a narrative that is not as familiar as it should be. It’s a useful, friendly zine. Even the title makes it sound like a congenial outdoor excursion by two friends: Columbus and his Expeditions! At last, together again!

—Michael Rowe

  If you’re interested in checking out Gerlach’s Simple History Series zines, contact Danielle Maestretti, the Utne librarian.

The two latest issues of John Porcellino’s King-Cat Comics just fluttered into the Utne office, and I kidnapped them before anyone else noticed. If you haven’t encountered him already, Porcellino—whom I interviewed for Utne.com back in October—writes lovely little stories whose plots focus on everyday incidents like two squirrels facing off on a power line. King-Cat touches you more than the small scope of its stories would suggest. The comic manages this, I think, by preserving small moments of personal beauty, like a strip from the latest issue (#68) which shows nothing more than the author and his cat lying on a couch together, listening to the birds chirping outside.

Don’t think that King-Cat is all flowers and kitties, though. While the comic revels in the beauty of the everyday, it can’t shake off the feeling that those redemptive moments are escapes from an otherwise crazy world. “I’m convinced,” Porcellino writes, “that there’s a way to live in this world—this insane world—in a sane way, with one’s integrity and naturally given good sense intact.” The newest issue also has a series of comics on the Greek cynic Diogenes, and even here Porcellino manages the impossible: He makes the crusty Greek philosopher seem cute!

—Brendan Mackie

By Brendan Mackie

John Porcellino has been churning out the seminal comic zine King-Cat for nearly two decades, making him one of the longest-running self-published authors out there. Over that time, the zine’s honest sensibility has garnered Porcellino armies of fans. Though the plots of King-Cat are underwhelming—memories of teenage crushes, stories about taking a walk on a beautiful night, dreams, illustrated Zen koans—Porcellino's simply drafted panels belie an inner weight. They’re more about expressing a particular feeling than they are about huge life-changing events. "The thing I was always interested in was this thing called Real Life," Porcellino explained during a recent talk at Minneapolis' Big Brain Comics.

Because of the zine’s personal nature, King-Cat has changed as Porcellino has matured. When King-Cat first started, Porcellino was a rambunctious young punk-rocker and his strips were wild. But somewhere along the line Porcellino started slowing down. He began meditating and reflecting more intensely on his life. Eventually, a more conscious tone resonated from King-Cat’s pages. Porcellino has just released a collection of the comic from 1989 to 1996, King-Cat Classix. Utne.com fended off a line of awkward hipsters clutching their own zines at Big Brain to talk to Porcellino about making comics, meditation, and “doing King-Cat.”

You've been making zines for more than 30 years, and King-Cat for 18. What do you attribute your longevity to?

Making zines is exactly what I want to do, not only the content of it, but the format, too. I just love the connection with people. And to a certain extent I'm just stubborn: I started something and I want to see it through as far as I can.

In your talk, you spoke about how the business side of King-Cat—the photocopying, the distribution—was as important to you as the actual writing of the zine.

To me, the process of writing isn't complete until this [zine] is in somebody else's hands.

How did you get into meditation?

When I was in my mid-twenties I came down with some health issues, and like a lot of people in that position I suddenly started taking a look at all these things I had taken for granted—my life and what I was doing and how I was doing it. I probably picked up a few books on Zen, and it made sense to me. The way I describe Zen, Soto Zen in particular, is that it's kind of like finding an old pair of shoes in your closet that you forgot you had. You put them on and they're beautiful, a perfect fit for you; they're all worn in, and you're ready to go. It connected with these interior feelings, these ideas that I'd idly felt below the surface but could never give voice to. Zen helped me fit those ideas together.

So much of your internal life is portrayed in King-Cat. As you started to change, did the comics change?

The change is reflected in the comics themselves. I was at a point in my life when I was naturally slowing down and paying more attention to things. To a certain extent I went through a period of withdrawal; I went into a more interior world about the same time when I was looking around at different ways of practice. The comics show that slowing down, and hopefully they show that I've been paying more attention. But you can also see it in that kind of unified approach that I have taken to King-Cat: For me, standing here talking to you is doing King-Cat as much as drawing it, writing it, putting it into the mail is. Doing the dishes or going for a walk can be doing King-Cat. I don't know how much of that shows up to the reader, but for me it's a big change.

How did your readers react to this change?

I heard that some people didn't like it, but I never really talked to a lot of them. There's a continuity and an underlying approach that's been consistent in King-Cat, even though I was a very different person back when I started it. I'm sure there are people who appreciated or enjoyed those older comics more, but at the same time there are a lot of people who have gone with it for the whole time.

Can comics be Zen?

There's probably something Zen to anything.

The new issue of punk zine Razorcake (#40) has some advice for aspiring zinesters: Think before you write. In her inaugural column for Razorcake, Maddy "Tight Pants" offers five compelling reasons to walk away from the typewriter—i.e., "Don't write a zine to 'set the record straight' about your break-up"—that ought to be included in the indie-culture starter kit (is somebody working on one of those?). I most appreciate Maddy’s second point, "Don’t write a zine because you think it will convince people to become vegan straightedge militants," though I also applaud #5, "Don’t write a zine about bike riding." Maddy suggests abandoning these familiar subjects in favor of more "ridiculous concepts" like, say, cougar attacks (as in Jacob Stoltz's informative Should You Encounter a Cougar). Other off-the-wall zines can be found among the nominees for this year's Utne Independent Press Awards. —Danielle Maestretti