The price is right, but with each subsequent issue of Wonkavision I feel that the adverts are grapping more and more of the attention away from the pieces in the zine. When they are laid out in a more interesting way than the major pieces this issue, individuals cannot do anything but be distracted to the full-page ad for Coheed or The Suicide Machine’s half-page profiteering. The neareast the actual…
Wonkavision gets more and more fancy with each issue. This is easily on par with Seventeen or any of the top-shelf music magazines out on the market (Spin, Rolling Stone). Glossy and easy to read, the topics employed by the staff of writers is diverse to say the least (covering topics as wide as movies, politics, music, and even school). The strength of Wonkavision is its price compared to the…
This go around has Wonka Vision with a much larger selection of full-color pages, as well as a higher number of advertisements to go along with them. This time, the issue has a cover article about Florida’s Against Me, which doesn’t go as far into the band as it could possibly be, reading more like a promo sheet than anything. High-water marks in this issue include the interview conducted with…
While the previous two issues showed an upward trend in quality and interesting articles, this issue of Wonkavision just feels like a miss to me. We notice some color pages (8 to be exact) in this issue, but a total of seven do not have any content on them, either being ads for Wonkavision itself or for a number of larger punk labels. The issue was apparently delayed by the…
This is my buddy George’s zine. I could theoretically give his zine a good rating because he is my friend, but what is the use in that? I’ve had this zine for months, actually since the time I received all of the Breaking World Records CDs for review. Will you swim with me? is a collection of different random aphoristic sayings and the equivalent people who said them, according to…
With each issue of Wonkavision I get, I like the zine more and more. Wonkavision has grown in size and quality of layout, and with the cover piece (Homestar Runner), I am truly in love with the zine. From the other issues I’ve seen, there is only one major thing that I could find fault with. The zine reviews which I was so cleanly picked earlier in Wonkavision’s run has…
Wonka Vision #19 – This zine is produced by one guy out of his room. He mentions that in his opening letter to his audience. However, that is painfully obvious with all of the minor mistakes present in this zine. The layouts are visually stunning, the interviews are not too long, and the zine goes by relatively quickly. Justin makes sure to intersperse well-known bands with those that are lesser…
Nate Gangelhoff is the creator of this zine, and while the name may not immediately ring a bell, the quality of writing that ey has pumped out for the last few years should (Pick Your Poison, You Idiot! are two of eir other zines). Whiskey Plus is a zine that is focused on one specific thing: music. Most specifically, this zine deals with various facets of music that sucks. However,…
This zine was made by Christoph from 28 Pages Lovingly Bound with Twine, and if you can believe it, is even better than TEPLBwT! Pretty much a comic based off of Christoph’s wacky mind, this mini-zine was made after Christoph got a blank pamphlet proclaiming “The genuine Word of God as revealed by the world’s Holy Men and the World’s Holy Books.†A very touching story, in which an individual…
Cool cut’n’paste zine from down in Louisiana, one of the states that I believe, until now, that I had never received any material from. Done by a college-age girl, the pasted bits are much better then the others I’ve reviewed lately. The 32 pages provide us with amazingly good reading for the short amount of pages and large amount of visual aids. This zine has an excellent mix of personal…
This is another zine that I think that I picked up on the free table for UPC. Wanted really has some potential, something that just briefly begins to shine with the pieces that are contained in this issue. The front and back covers of this zine seem really jumbled and without direction, but this is only a diversionary tactic, something to further hide the excellent work inside. Specifically, instructions for…
This zine is more of a primer for how to do spraypainting without getting in trouble. For being such at Do It Yourself, handcrafted work, the media in which they enclose the methods for making it is really polished. I mean, this piece definitely looks professionally laid out, which is nice for someone trying to find straight-forward instruction, but it leaves me wondering what the impetus for placing the magazine…
Vy-Zine is a blast from the past, a zine that was done four years before I even began to associate myself with the zine culture. I found this 1995-1996 (unsure of which year it is from exactly) zine in the free box at the Allied Media Conference, and needless to say, I’m surprised that the editor of this ‘zine is no other than zine royalty Jason Kucsma (Clamor Magazine). Vy-Zine…
This is a mini zine I received from the editor of More Said in Silence, Teresa Allen. It s a very small, 1/4th size zine that I really find very telling of Teresa’s mood right after her abortion, as even the title of the zine suggests the operation that she had done. The fact that both covers have pictures of infants on them indicate much to the fact that she…
Half Size Punk Magazine from Britain. The spelling in this rag is great, with about a mistake a page and excellent homophone use (witch for which, buy for by). The Dwarves actually answered an interview by this guy, showing exactly how cool this zine is. As well as having the piece with one of the best bands in existence currently. Vile Generation has a much longer and more in-depth interview…
Man, I don’t ever want to do a magazine if it means sticking three and a half pages of advertising in the first five pages. Luckily, Verbicide does not go the route that most other zines take and just stick ads everywhere in their magazine; in fact, there are only a few ads to contend with this whole issue. So, what’s up with this issue of Verbicide. Kudos has to…
Verbicide comes forth with a very fiction-based approach for this issue. In fact, an entire section is devoted to the stuff. This brings me to one of the major philosophical debates that we in the zine world have; is it actually better to have blocks of material (for example, reviews and then stories) or are listeners kept interested when there are different types of pieces interspersed throughout the magazine. In…
I know with each issue of Verbicide I receive, that I’m going to get the same high quality and different focus that these kids have been doing for as long as I’ve been aware of the zine. Verbicide, for those uninitiated, is one of the only good writing-heavy zines to ever be released. Short stories mix alongside interviews with musicians to make for a good balance, to which the editors…
Varla magazine is a perfect example of a magazine that I’ve never heard of, and yet it has brought out ten issues before this one hit the newsstands. This is the equivalent to a print version of Suicide Girls, as Varla ties together music with pinups. However, some of the choices for the pinups in this issue are pretty tame, if not plain boring. I understand that a lot of…
This zine is the second of the one’s I’m familiar with Ziggy doing. Ey has did a ton of zines in her short time on this earth, but I’ve only recently been turned to the gospel of Ziggy. This zine is pretty much an addendum to ey’s Zygote #1 “Unravelled”, and it continues to detail ey’s further immersion into Buddhism, but has a much more personal flow than the prior…