July 2000. 40 pages, normal size. This magazine from Minneapolis is very cool with a definite uber-political stance. In fact this magazine is so awesome that they offer free subscriptions to prisoners. http:///www.profaneexistence.com has the latest copy of the magazine in a .PDF format. Events worldwide are listed for the next few moths. A very interesting piece is one the following page, detailing the crackdown of Skuld Records, a German…
PotPi #3 / 40M / $2 or trade / :30 / That Kendra Girl, PO Box 72563, Davis CA 95617 / [email protected] /Â I was waiting for the latest issue of PotPi seemingly since I received #2 in 2003, and finally got back into touch with Kendra a few months ago. Kendra talked about getting this zine down, and this just has a much different feel than the previous issue.…
Ragged is the mini-magazine that Filter puts out under the support of American Rag, a clothing line that only can be found at Macy’s. Although, neither me nor the fiancé have ever found any American Rag clothing ever over at Macy’s. This issue of the magazine skillfully blends established acts (Q-Tip, Thrice, Kate Nash) with up and coming acts (Monte Negro, Gran Ronde, and Grand Ole Party). Furthermore, they do…
This zine is really two different ones collected into one huge zine, and this really provides me with more of an idea about who Kendra is, something that I would only gain at a slow speed from talking to Kendra on AIM. The zine is all and all a very involved reading, jumping from personal narrative to poetry and back again. The second part of this zine, which was to…
Postmarked Last Wednesday #2 ($1, [email protected], available at Supernova distro) A perzine put out by two zinesters (Hollis and Sarah) that use the most common aspects of the genre (spacey poetry, stories of lost loves) to their advantages. The zine has a lot of white space, but each page presents itself a single coherent thought. Most of the pieces are very abstractly-written pieces of stream-of-consciousness that while sounding good, don’t…
PostConsumerWaste #3 / :30 / $? / 48S / Louise, PO Box 4, Enmore NSW, 2042, Australia / [email protected] / At first, I was intimidated by the size of PostConsumerWaste, but when I finally sat down to read it, I was drawn in by Louise’s emotional style of writing. Moving back and forth between political rallies and the suicide of eir firend, Louise makes sure that every facet of eir…
The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus #5 / $2 / :30 / [email protected] / Wred Fright is one of the best pseudo-fiction (maybe even just fiction) writers that I’ve ever had the luck to stumble upon. The writing style that Wred uses in this is issue (which compromises the 12th, 13th, and 14th chapters of the story) is similar in style to Pynchon. What really makes that argument hold water with me…
Chord Easy (5th Edition, Sample Version) / $1 / 1:20 / 20M / Light Living Library, POB 190-cea, Philomath, OR 97370 Chord Easy is a magazine that ostensibly seeks to show individuals all they need to know about musical chords. The version that I have in my hands is the sample version, clocking in at 12 pages. There is also a sixty-page, $5 version, that would go considerably further…
Fake Life #7 / $2 / :45 / 32M / http://www.pxsdistro.com / [email protected] I had the chance to review Fake Life #6 a few months ago. I got this issue just a few days ago and dove right in. This issue seems a little more hit and miss than #6, starting out with Rob’s “The Fool’s Wayâ€. This piece deals with Rob’s trials and tribulations in love, with Rob randomly…
Plunki #1 / Free / 16M / [email protected] /Â My sister found this zine in eir travails around Pittsburgh, and ey knew that I reviewed zines, so I received it after ey was done. This is the inaugural issue of Plunkie, and while there is not too terribly much information in this issue, there are a few places that make me chuckle. A number of the pages are just drawings,…
Starting off with some very psychological quotes from two incredibly famous yet not often read novels, The Bell Jar and Steppenwolf, Miranda turns her focus and her intense clinical eye on herself, and expresses herself intensely with a number of different thoughts, all differentiated by pages. A number of pictures intersperse the thoughts, making the stream-of-consciousness all the more realistic, and making it more like an actual train of thought…
First off, this zine is one of the most personal I’ve ever read. It really seems as if I and Megan, the editor, have a lot in common. The raw emotion that is held in these small paragraphs interspersed in the magazine are shining beacons to the problems she (and tons of other lovelorn people) are currently having. There is so much empty space in this zine, but that is…
Pulp Bizarro #1 / #1 / :30 / 36M / http://www.pulpbizarro.com / It looks, from a cursory glance at Pulp Bizarro’s web site, that there has been little updated since April of 2007. This is really sad, as Pulp Bizarro has some of the strongest stories and bits of prose that I’ve seen in a zine for quite a few years. In fact, it is the zine’s first piece –…
The Bleep Subway Comic / $1.50 / :05 / 17M / 2004 Blaire Miltenberger / [email protected] / Another grab from Slacker in Pittsburgh; for a $1.50 comic, there are a lot of features (spiral-bound, full color). Anyways, The Bleep Subway Comic is a computer-generated comic about Bleep, a round figure that looks similar to Glop and Gleep, albeit with a Mohawk, red hoodie, and book bag. The style of art…
Planet Verge #6 / :25 / $1 / Full-Sized / 20 Pages / 15 Albert Terrace, Bloomfield, NJ 07003 / [email protected] /Â Okay, Planet Verge is a zine that I can see getting better with every issue. This go around, the art is sharper, the text smaller (meaning much more in the way of reading), and the shameless promoting of the bands that they work with seems less prevalent than…
Jinxremoving #11 / $2 / 44M / http://www.jinxremoving.org / http://www.loopdistro.com / Jinxremoving is a comic zine, and Arpad (the author) is able to establish a very iconic, cat-human type of character as the focal point of this issue. I must admit, I am largely confused by this issue. While there is a note at the beginning of the magazine that says “The characters in this comic book are avatars that…
Planet Verge #5 / 20 Pages / Full Sized / $2.50 / 15 Albert Terrace, Bloomfield,NJ 07003 / http://www.planetverge.com / [email protected] / This is another issue form Joelle and all the rest of the Planet Vergers, and I have to say that this issue is so much easier for me to read than the prior issue. The same level of layout is here, but this time, it didn’t read quite…
The Burnt Library Volume 2, Issue #3 (March/April, 2008) / Free / 4L / No Contact I picked this up at Slacker in Pittsburgh, and this seems to be a Pittsburgh version of a scene magazine, short and sweet, and kept up to date through the small amount of material that needs to be present here. However short this zine may be, there is a decent amount of information present.…
Planet Verge #4 ($2, Planet Verge, 15 Albert Terrace, Bloomfield, NJ 07003) This zine is laid out to high heaven. I don’t know if they use QuarkXpress or Adobe Pagemaker or Illustrator or what, but everything looks very sharp. The pieces in Planet Verge really go all over the place, from the Beverly Hills 90210 Brainteaser to famous actors who have not won an Oscar to a bunch of interviews…
I have no clue where I got this magazine, but this is by far the oddest magazine I’ve ever received. While the editors priorities seem to be in the right place, and she seems to be progressive in most issues, she has some serious issues with abortions, trying to make a case that using aborted babies for research and profit is wrong. She specifically bashes the religious right in the…