Mallory Gevaert, Author at ALARM

Zine Scene: The F-Bomb

Looking for a little anti-holiday cheer? Tacoma-based zine The F-Bomb might just be the ticket. Since January of 2009, The F-Bomb has gathered submissions from writers into themed issues (seven so far, with topics like “Music,” “Sex,” the paradoxical “Unthemed,” and now “Holiday”) that incorporate comics, slice-of-life tangents and charts, interviews, fiction, and even an advice column.

The “Holiday Issue” features such gems as the “Boo For You” column, which recounts a freewheeling conversation about Nilla Wafers, Jesus, and stealing cheese. Other columns include descriptions of favorite Christmas memories in 10 words or less (sample memory: “I unwrapped a box for a phone. It wasn’t.”), and comics featuring adorable, demented animals using and abusing the titular “F-bomb” to discuss Thanksgiving.

On the opposite page of this irreverent story, you can read a chart diagramming all of the winter holidays, who celebrates them and why, and various fun facts and names for Santa Claus. The juxtaposition of the bizarre and mundane — the prurient and the informative — goes a long way in describing just what The F-Bomb zine is.

Zine Scene: No More Coffee

Zines might seem like an odd fit for that old high-toned workhorse of publishing, the literary short story. But Ben Spies, author of zines and all-around participant in the Chicago zine community, has succeeded in fitting his work to this intimate, handmade format. The result, No More Coffee, tells quiet, spare tales of ordinary lives that, just like our own, are often touched with mystery or tragedy.

With such a large body of perzines, political zines, how-tos, and comics already being published, Spies decided that fiction needed a bit of a zine makeover as well. “I’ve always thought that if we have a thriving culture of DIY bands, art galleries, et cetera, why can’t we have more DIY fiction?” Spies says.

Zine Scene: Mosh

For those who think that the zine is only a recent, Western phenomenon, look no further than the Malaysian zine Mosh to have your expectations demolished. This political, punk-rock zine out of southeast Asia is celebrating its tenth anniversary and thirteenth issue this year, thanks to creator Nizang and an increasingly organized zine-writing community in and around Kuala Lumpur.

Zine Scene: Rummaging through Nostalgia (guest column and playlist by Katie Haegele)

Zine creator Katie Haegele is author of the found-poetry publication Word Math and The La-La Theory and has been a contributing writer for Bitch, Adbusters, Venus, and a number of major newspapers. She discussed her witty wordplay for a previous installment of Zine Scene, and now the language-centric writer is back to pen this guest column.

Rummaging through Nostalgia
by Katie Haegele

I’ve been thinking a lot about nostalgia lately. Actually, I’ve thought about it in one way or another for years, since I was old enough to want to buy my own clothing but didn’t have any money and started hunting the Salvation Army for the grandma jewelry and waitress uniforms I turned into outfits.

I love old things, especially kitschy, outmoded, and obsolete ones, and I spend a fair amount of time digging for them at rummage sales and thrift stores, even in the trash. These things call to me, and I have spent a lot of time trying to understand and articulate exactly why that is, but it’s hard to grasp the feeling. There’s something about the sadness of castoff things that touches me, for sure, but it’s not only that. It’s also the feeling that each object has a story, a history that’s not my own. That history is both loaded and freeing at once. For next to no money, you can buy the thing and take it home. That coffee canister or wicker handbag or owl figurine will be yours, but it will never feel like it’s only yours.

More than an owner, you’re like a caretaker. In exchange, you get to borrow the thing’s history and have a piece of its ready-made comfort — a comfort like the feeling you had in the cozy living room in your grandparents’ house, or the kitchen of a friend from grade school who’s grown fuzzy in your mind over time. You can, in fact, feel nostalgic for something you don’t even remember.

Zine Scene: Eugene S. Robinson’s A Long Slow Screw

With his band Oxbow, Eugene Robinson has become known for his simple, primal lyrics howled over increasingly complex arrangements and for his fearsome live performances. But with his first novel, A Long Slow Screw, the howls have been translated to a new format, and live readings take the place of the concert hall.

Zine Scene: Megane

Star Graphics’ Yoshi Shimura cites a simple reason for publishing the zine Megane: “I want to liven up the Japanese art scene.” Megane does exactly that by highlighting young, new Japanese visual artists in a society usually more interested in consumer products.

The Tokyo-based Star Graphics group, formed in 2003 by Shimura and a few friends, has published only two issues of Megane and a comic book, but its goal — recognition for its featured artists — is becoming reality. By selling the zine in the United States and other countries, Shimura hopes to “introduce them to the world.”

Zine Scene: Pink Noises

For the past ten years, Tara Rodgers, a.k.a. Analog Tara, has dedicated herself to studying female electronic musicians and the evolving dynamic of gender, creation, and community. With her website, PinkNoises.com, she publishes interviews, investigates the supposed dearth of women in electronic music, and develops collaborative relationships with the many fascinating women that she finds.

In a new book, Pink Noises: Women On Music and Sound (Duke University Press), Rodgers republishes and expands 24 of those interviews (including Ikue Mori, Le Tigre, and DJ Rekha), along with some striking black-and-white photographs and academic meditations on the meaning of her project. Along the way, she tries to address some of those big questions of gender and music with what she has learned in the past decade.

Zine Scene: Firebrands

In the introduction to Firebrands: Portraits from the Americas, by the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, Taylor Sparrow writes, “If you don’t learn history, and I mean learn it like the way you learn to love music, poetry, and kissing, then the world will always be a mystery to you, and you’ll have to stumble through your days without being able to make any sense of what’s happening, or what you could possibly do differently.”

Zine Scene: Adam Pasion, Sundogs, & Wasabi Distro

As an American expat living and working in Japan, Adam Pasion faces several difficulties in publishing his journal-style mini comic Sundogs and other zines. Connecting with the locals can be tricky when words like “consignment” and “distribution” don’t translate easily into Japanese, or when professional magazines outsell personal projects.

Glossy, high-end art and fashion magazines are the norm, but zines still have managed to survive and thrive – sometimes by mimicking mainstream culture’s style. However, as Pasion notes, “A zine can look fancy and glossy as long as it is being made by individuals who want to participate with the zine community by trading, writing reviews, and all the other things that advance the zine scene. People who take part in this community are all making zines as far as I am concerned.”

Zine Scene: Loserdom

Anto McFly, who produces the eclectic DIY punk-rock zine Loserdom with his brother Eugene, is not the only zine writer in Dublin, Ireland, but it can feel that way. “I think that zine publishing is still alive, though not as well as its been in the past,” he says. “I would love to see more Irish zines being produced.”

Maybe the problem isn’t the availability of zines but what the future of Irish zines looks like. “Those being produced are mostly by people who have been around for a while,” Anto adds. “I fear that younger people aren’t inclined to venture into producing something on paper, or if they do, they spend so much time trying to perfect their first issue that it never sees the light of day.”

Zine Scene: Shortcomings

When I first read Adrian Tomine’s graphic novel Shortcomings more than a year ago, I was struck by two things: the comic’s sensitive and honest portrayal of modern race relations, and the wonderfully clean art style. The former proceeds mostly from Tomine himself, a fourth generation Japanese American. The latter is strongly inspired by modern masters of the medium like Daniel Clowes and the Hernandez brothers, and it results in evocative illustration that recalls classic comic art of the 1950s and even Roy Lichtenstein.

Zine Scene: Starlite Motel on the necessity of independent publishing

What is it really like to be a zine writer in today’s world of megacorp publishers and big media?

Amber Ridenour, who also writes under the name “Starlite Motel,” answers a few questions about process, creation, and reputation. With her husband Chris, Amber is the author of many zines, including Autobiographical Alley Map and Night Bomb.