My order from Microcosm got here on Friday (sooooo fast, considering I ordered and paid with a check I had to mail to them, and it was New Years and everything else) and I am tickled about this. Super fast, super easy, they are a bucket of win and kittens.
I'm gonna throw down some quick'n'dirty reviews and stuff here, k.
I got...
- Hot Damn and Hell Yeah/The Dirty South Cookbook (two books in one! $5) - Kitschy and wonderful vegan cookbook. Instead of being a typical upside-down-on-one-half flip-zine-style split book, the book just becomes another book halfway through.
I love the design of it--the HD&HY half is Southwestern/Mexican recipes with Old West-themed skeleton illustrations. They're wonderfully detailed and have a strong Día de los Muertos vibe to them. The descriptions below the recipe titles read like the Stranger is speaking them. So do the recipes, but not so much that they're unclear.
...And it includes recipes for things like Chili Gravy, tortillas, black bean salsa, bourbon BBQ sauce, vegan Worcestershire sauce, red beans 'n' rice, breakfast burritos...oh yeah, and pot pie. Be still my heart!
The Dirty South half has cute thick-lined illustrations of kitchen tools and foods and stuff, and the recipes really shine. Ohhhhhhh the recipes. I was going to spend $18.95 on Vegan Soul Kitchen, but this is like all the recipes I'd actually use, if I even found them in there at all. Dirty rice, cornbread, collard greens, Johnny cakes, BBQ tofu, mint julep sorbet, red velvet cake, carrot salad, macaroni casserole, Fake Fried Chicken...sort of like eating at my Mawmaw's, only without all the lard! ;D ~ - postcard advertising Nate Powell's stuff. It's cute, it was a freebie. :]
- Indestructible (a book! $5) - I got this for the art, and it doesn't disappoint. Cristy's sense of perspective and ability to actually draw people and places in her own style is just...amazing. However, as much as I love the art, I wish there was more of it and less comes-off-as-overly-dramatized-rhetoric, implausible-for-teenagers dialogue in the text. It's like when Jhonen Vasquez started waxing poetic about the futility of meaning and stuff in the Johnny comics. Make with the art and killing, a little less speech bubbles, plz.
The story is a bunch of tales of Cristy's adolescent struggles with her sexuality, feeling outcast, and her strong Cuban upbringing. It was good, but it made me feel like most zines do, that because I don't ride a bike everywhere or listen to Crass, shave my legs, and have never doubted that I'm straight, that I am somehow less-qualified to write a zine. But Cristy carries it off well, and I found myself cheering for her anyway. The subject matter's just not my cup of tea...maybe I'm still too close to my own high school experience, or something. - "Support Green Scare Prisoners" and Microcosm sticker (not pictured is the "a hamburger stops a beating heart" that I later discovered in my couch cushions--all of them were freebies)
- 19c. (zine! $2) - A zine about a girl who spent a year reading nothing but 19th century literature. Compelling, because it's a whole world I've barely dipped my toes in, and she spent a whole year totally immersed in it. I admire that kind of dedication. The layout's typical of zine layout, it's photocopied a little dark, but it's darling and reads quick.
- Brainfag Forever (BFF) (kinda sorta comic anthology! $8) - Not only are Nate Beaty's cityscapes fantastic, so is his lettering. Honestly. I'm in love with his lettering, especially his titles. Oh, yeah, and the book is thick, entertaining, and makes me want to get off my butt and write moar and get a job so I don't end up like him, which is more than any high school guidance counselor's ever been able to motivate me. I think it makes me want to move because I see so much of him in me or vice versa; he's got that frustrated-single-person and constant-identity-crisis thing going on, and it's like reading about me.
Also, his comics about how much living in an electrified greenhouse in Washington State sucks don't necessarily make me NOT want to do this anymore, but definitely take some of the 'ooh! shiny!' romanticism off it. Thank you, Nate Beaty, for making a compelling anthology of what you consider your personal best comics, and for slightly dissuading me out of living in a greenhouse in Washington, among other things. Your drawings are spiffy, too. - I Was A Teenage Mormon (zine! $4) - It's tiny, the text is tiny, and I saved it for last because it was the thing I was most excited about. A pocket-sized 136 pages that promises me to be about the author's experience of being a teenage girl in the Mormon Church. If that sounds boring to you, then go read something else, cuz I'm taking this with me to read in line at the show tomorrow cuz it's tiny and adorable and photocopied well and did I mention text-heavy? Seriously. 136 pages, mostly text, with a nifty glossary of terms in the back. I consider this a win, unless I read it and it turns out to be a pile of failure and stupid, but I doubt it will be.
Every book I ordered is printed flawlessly. The bindings aren't shoddy, the pages are all tight and square and the same size, the covers are beautiful, the paper feels good, the illustrations and text are all crisp. It's not hard to read or anything. I'm not strained to read anything, nothing's too dark or too light, and they look like books you could pick up in the paperback section of any big box bookstore, only without the conscience-sucking guilt that comes along with throwing your money at those kinds of places. Because with these books, it lists who worked on them, it lists how big the printings were, it lists how to get a hold of people. It's not sterilized or bodyguarded by any stretch.
So as you can see, I'm flailing around with glee about Microcosm, the books they make, their fast shipping, their transparency, their free goodies, and their general awesomeness. This is my endorsement of their awesomeness, so order from them, support zine people, and be awesome.
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In personal zine news, I have to write either 5 or 9 more pages and do the cover for Save The Last Laugh, which used to be called Dreamlanders till I got mad at that name and scrapped most everything I'd written for it. I've got a couple short blurbs to write up, plus an essay that needs to get typed or copied down nicely or otherwise formatted, plus a few more ideas floating about that are all essay-length or so. I need to get my paper cutter back from my dad's house though, because once I get all my spreads done, I'm going to have to cut them apart for collating, and I refuse to do that with scissors. It'll end badly.
I'm hoping to have it finished by the end of next week, but my mom's going out of town, I'm starting one or two jobs, and I've got two shows between now and then. Also, my car needs to get aligned, we have a house inspection, and did I mention I have to start working. I don't know what scares me the most out of all of this.
I'm back and forth on the cover concept, and that's bugging me, cuz I wish I could do some kind of superdetailed cityscape, but I just can't draw like that. I kind of suck at drawing, actually, compared to other people, so I don't want to parade my drawing-fail around in the open. I kind of want to do something that looks like an old-school monster comic, but I'm concerned that it might get mistaken for an actual monster comic when I give it to Vault of Midnight (a comic store in the area) to sell. Plus, I can't draw like that. WTF, life.
The cover concept I'm floundering on is a giant typewriter, which appears to have been spattered with blood. But I'm concerned how this will translate to black-and-white, I'm concerned with my ability to draw it, and I'm concerned I might be entirely misleading or putting off potential readers.
Thus far, my features (planned or otherwise) include a couple things about my breakup with Brett, a thing about how I don't feel like a 'real' zinester, a page titled "Morrissey Can Kick Your Band's Ass", this typecast (with spiffy zombie illustration!), a page titled "Dear Ugly Scene Girl", a thing about being a n00b, a thing called "I Believe in Andrew W.K.", a spread of miscellaneous typed bits that I needed to throw somewhere, a bit about feeling distinctly 'Michigan', a report from the scene at the Aiden/Anti-Flag show I'm going to tomorrow, a thing about my bff's surprise pregnancy, and a thing about how awesome it is to interact with people who fail to realize I'm spooky.
I don't want to mislead people or put them off or anything. Ugh. My debut issue, so hard.
I'll shut up now, cuz if you've reached the bottom of this entry, you're a saint.
xo
julia
p.s. I totally welcome choice photos of really old-school typewriters (nothing too postwar) and/or other cover concept ideas, if you've got anything. I just can't see the forest for the trees, anymore.
2 comments:
Saint deek. I like the sounds of that:)
Sounds like you have a lot of stuff going on. I've never heard of 'zines like this. Can you further explain? Are they smaller, self-publications?
Hey, my myspace URL is Saint Julia. I figure everybody should take the liberty to saint themselves at least once.
Zines are "most commonly a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images. More broadly, the term encompasses any self-published work of minority interest usually reproduced via photocopier on a variety of colored paper stock.
A popular definition includes that circulation must be 5,000 or less, although in practice the significant majority are produced in editions of less than 100, and profit is not the primary intent of publication." According to Wikipedo.
Otherwise, this is a good link that explains things. And this is an article about zines in Detroit, as of a couple years ago, featuring moi.
People keep asking me to explain zines, and I don't feel I adequately can, which is sort of lame cuz I'm the reigning zine champ in my own little world. Best way to learn about them is to google a lot, talk to some people, and just throw yourself at the culture.
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