Cake or Death #5 / :20 / 20L / $1 / Cake or Death, 917 Creamery Rd, Newtown, PA 18940 / http://cakeofdeath.cjb.net /Â This issue is the perfect example of what would happen when a bunch of high schoolers would get together and mesh all the oh-my-god desires with a strong style of writing and a great sense of humor. CoD is like the early issues of Glendale Boulevard or…
Burn In Hell, Buddy #4 / :30 / 40M / Burn In Hell, Buddy has always been an excellent zine, and the stylistic change into somewhat of a journal-entry zine is done with care. In this issue, the main story arc revolves around VK and Kelly’s trip down south to Georgia, where they meet up with a band of youths that are camping. The entire experience feels surreal, as the…
Burn In Hell, Buddy #3 / Fourth-Sized / 16 Pages / Trade / Lupine Ladies Press, PO Box 543, Accokeek MD 20607 As many people have read my reviews of the first two issues of Burn In Hell, Buddy, I’m not really sure what to say about this zine that I haven’t already said. Done in the same geometric cut and paste style of the first two issues, this issue…
(The Incredibly True Adventures of a Kid and His Starship) #2 : The Reactionary Issue / Fourth-Sized / 16 Pages / Trade / Lupine Ladies Press, PO Box 543, Accokeek MD 20607 Jamez’ zines are always just so interesting that I feel that I am just babbling on for about 250 words or so just extolling ey’s virtues. But, if you go through all the layers, there is some actual…
“The Sex Issue” – Really, the title does better about telling a potential reader about what this issue of the zine is about than any job I could do. Still, the story is about Vermicious Knid’s adventures with outdoor sex and his partner Kelly. The politics of circumstance strike Vermicious Knid badly both times, as the sex is interrupted both times to amusing factors. Now, I’m too much of a…
Brown Eye Pie #5 / $1 / :20 / 44M / http://www.browneyepie.com / POB 172, Muskegon, MI 49443 /Â For being called Brown Eye Pie, there is just not enough talk about poop. Sure, the interview that was conducted with the Fleshies is full of brown goodness, but the vast majority of pieces in this issue just do not have anything to do with shit. Other pieces seem to drag…
Breaking Open My Head #2 / .50 / :15 / 32M / Box 5138, 222 Church St, Middletown, CT, 06459-5138 /Â This magazine goes pretty much everywhere, as it is a personal zine with a very political subtext that is run all through this issue. This is done by an individual still in high school, and there seems to be a lack of smoothed-out philosophy here. For example, there are…
This is a book of pictures that has a little bit of commentary by the editor of the magazine. The editor used to work at a photo lab, and was able to take some of the trash photos home, and this is the product of that scavenging. Each page has a picture, and a little bit of writing, continuing a narrative that, in its brevity, is still able to explore…
Bowlcut : postmodern scissors cutting your hairdo of oppression / $1/Trade/Half Sized / 24 Pages / [email protected] The zine doesn’t disappoint with the content foretold by its title. Postmodernism is followed to an absurd degree, including the most random quotes and instructions : for example, “Imagine Your Favourite Celebrity taking a DUMP.†and “Got PENIS?†For someone like me who loves anything absurdist and or postmodern, this zine is a…
The Die Volume 3, Issue 2 / Free / :30 / Red Roach Press, PO Box 764, College Park, MD 20740 / http://redroachpress.com / The Die is the equivalent of a college newspaper, although 90% of the material is compiled by Joe Smith, the editor. This issue begins with a number of short news blurbs (a la AP news) and then goes into the crux of the magazine relatively fast…
Bondage Up Yours / $5 / 1:15 / 68M / http://www.activedistribution.org / This is an impressive and informative mini-book that describes its sub-title topic (Female Punks in the Nineteen Nineties) admirably. The book starts off with a quick-rundown of punk’s history (since the author Michelle is British, the band list is substantially different than what most American individuals would deem “punkâ€), and then starts to move into the history of…
Slug #227 / Free / 64M / 1:30 / http://www.slugmag.com / The individuals that work to create Slug Magazine are nice. So nice, in fact, that they send NeuFutur 3 copies of the magazine an issue. This issue provides individuals with probably their last glimpse of skateboarding in Utah (or in Utah print) until everything warms back up. In order to hold individuals over until then, there is perhaps the…
Boggob #27 / $3 / 36 Pages / Full-Sized / Age Statement / [email protected] / PO Box 4425, Chattanooga, TN 37405 / While Boggob is one of the better scene-oriented, free (to those Chattanoogies) zines, the fact is that the horror focus of the zine gets annoying fast. The zine isn’t politically correct in the least, but isn’t as bad as say Fat Nugs, and the selling point of the…
Bob #3 / :30 / $2.00 / 32L / Outhouse Publishing, 30 Locust Avenue, Westmont, NJ 08108 / http://www.njghost.com /Â The layout of Bob is always something to look forward to, and this issue is no exception. With a smart use of white space, each page gives the reader enough in terms of information without seeming in the least bit cluttered or conversely, too Spartan. Coming out before the Presidential…
Blurt! #2 / 1:00 / $2 / 88S / http://www.vinylagogo.com / Vinylaprintprint, c/o Lew Huston, 135 Wapallopen Rd, Nescopeck, PA 18635 / This time, Lew actually makes a very interesting and compelling narration of the four years of eir college, going through a few significant others and evolving from a naïve teen to a much more road-worn warrior. While there are still a few times during Blurt! that Lew has…
Blurt! #1 / 1:00 / $2 / 112S / http://www.vinylagogo.com / Vinylaprintprint, c/o Lew Huston, 135 Wapallopen Rd, Nescopeck, PA 18635 / While Lew’s style was really hard to acclimate to during the first few stories in Blurt!, by the twentieth or thirtieth page, one starts to pick up eir’s literary nuances. Blurt!, and more specifically Lew’s fumbling, bumbling attempts with girls, really is reminiscent of certain parts of Atrophy…
I have absolutely no clue where I got this zine from, but it is like the eighties series of books “Choose Your Own Adventure” in the sense that each piece leads to another piece. However, this zine has a killer twist : none of the pieces are related! Being put together by three different hucksters, the zined doesn’t suffer from any problems with the three distinct writing styles, but actually…
Blood #7 / :30 / 48S / $2 / Jeff, 114 Canter Blvd., Nepean, ON K2G-2M7 Canada / Absolutely no background to escape the miles and miles of typed word in this issue, and Blood only is pleasing to the eye when an individual looks at the front or back cover. Jeff’s style is well-defined, incredibly dense, and a little “holier-than-thou†at times. I mean, Jeff makes something like a…
B.l.o.o.d. #1 / Fourth-Sized / 16 Pages / Free / [email protected] / This is the second manifesto that I’ve gotten to review in the last twenty-four hours. The first was the Afunctionul manifesto, which dealt with the small band of individuals and the desire of individuals to promote the ideals of the scene, while b.L.o.O.D. discusses the need for feminism to go back underground and be openly revolutionary. The petty…
Best Zine Ever! #3 / :30 / 24M / PO Box 12409, Portland OR 97212 / There are so few zine review zines currently out there – Zine World and Broken Pencil are the only two that easily come to mind – and the number of other zines that actually devote a few pages of their space to zine reviews are pitifully few. Thus, it is such a good thing…