Archcomix

By Dan Archer

www.archcomix.com

So it seems like for the last little while I've been reviewing a lot of things I don't really care about. I'd say it might be reflective of my mood in general, but then along comes a comic like this and I remember why I have this blog in the first place: this comic is great and I never would have heard of it if someone hadn't sent it to me.

Archer's work falls into the history/journalism section of comics that seems to be rarely used, and even more frequently ignored. I guess maybe left wing political comics aren't going to have a huge audience (but I can always hope). These comics all succeed on what I assume is the point of their creation: they educate the reader by telling them about something they (or at least I) didn't know about before. I learned about real events, different types of organizations, political viewpoints, and more.

There are comics about political lobbyists in the USA, farming, "The First 9/11" (the coup d'etat in 1970s Chile that was backed by the CIA), gun shows (terrifying), Raging Grannies, and living in Nigeria. The one about Chile even includes source material! (Declassified US government documents.) My only wish is that the comics were longer! The title page of the comic about Chile says it's just part one, and I want part two as well. Plus, I desperately want to read more about Archer's experiences in Lagos, as I found the brief one set there both moving and fascinating. Really, I can't wait to read something really huge and dense that Archer creates.

Shortly after finishing this zine I read Archer's comic about human trafficking in Nepal. I thought it was good (though short), and awesome that it was on the BBC's website and apparently got over a million views. Awesome! Hopefully we can all make the world a better place, one comic at a time.

Bottoms Up

I went to a pirate themed murder mystery on Saturday, and it was lots of fun. Thus infected by piratical ideas I decided I should read this zine. But it's not just about pirates, it's also about burlesque!

When I lived in Vancouver I had a friend who was really into burlesque, and thus I ended up going to a lot of burlesque shows with her. The shows were generally pretty fun, and now that I'm moving back to Vancouver in January for school I'm kind of excited that I'll be able to go again. Plus, they only cost $5 and happened on Sunday evenings. What else was I going to do at that time for that price?

Bottoms Up was made for a pirate themed burlesque show by the, now defunct, Halifax Burlesque Society. For a zine about burlesque there's a surprisingly small amount of pin-up art and photography. It's not entirely absent, there's just less than you might expect. Instead there's a burlesquefesto, rebuttals to anti-burlesque propaganda (apparently people put up posters in Halifax specifically telling people not to go to burlesque shows), a bunch of information about lady pirates and general pirating (including a Marxist examination of pirates), information about STIs (educational!) and more.

Overall I thought this was a pretty neat package featuring two things I enjoyed (pirates and burlesque), plus I really love the long skinny format.

Halifax Urban Maple Sugaring Project

(Apologies for the less than stellar cover scan.)

By Mike and Juele

I'm pretty much guaranteed to give this zine a good review because I got to try some of the maple syrup that they made! Mmmmmmmm. Delicious!

The zine is made by some people who are all about bringing food production to people, through guerrilla gardening, urban farming, and similar projects. In this case they decided to tap a number of maple trees, collect the sap, and make maple syrup out of it! I guess I knew that maple syrup was made from tree sap (or maybe I didn't...), but it's kind of strange to think about it.

It turns out that making maple syrup is considerably easier than I would have expected. You can get up to four litres of sap from one tree in a single day! Of course, once you've gathered enough you have to build a fire and boil it down for hours on end, and the day these guys choose to do that on was pretty horrible weather wise. I guess if you have to be outside when it's raining, snowing, and windy, being gathered around a fire is probably one of the best places to be.

The zine was generally easy to read and follow, with illustrations showing the various tools and objects that they used at each step. I think it could have been a little better organized, but it's not a particularly long zine, so you can easily read it all before you start making maple syrup yourself.

Squatters Handbook 13th Edition

By the Advisory Service for Squatters
www.squatter.org.uk
£1.50

There are really only two reasons to read this zine. Either a. you’re incredibly interested the legalities involved with squatting in the UK because you’re studying law or something, or b. you are squatting somewhere and want to know what rights you have.

This massive (over eighty pages!) zine is packed full of information relating to what rights squatters have, how to find a place to squat, what to do once you’ve moved in (how to get electricity and so forth), and what to do when faced with eviction orders.

It’s technical, there’s a lot of legal jargon, and it’s not really that interesting to just read fully unless you need to know the information here. I skimmed most of it, because I just couldn’t really deal with reading paragraphs like...

Actually, screw it. I can’t even be bothered to type out some boring paragraph.

This zine is incredibly informative, and if you have intentions on squatting somewhere in the UK it’s something you should definitely have so you know what rights you have. But if you just want to read about tips and stories about squatting you’re better off finding something else to read. Then tell me about it so that I can read it too.

Peach Melba Issue 14

By Pearl
PO Box 74
Brighton
BN1 4ZQ
UK

The way that pages are folded in Peach Melba mean that the words that makes up each issue are often part of two different list topics. Thus many of the "Things that could be puddings" are also "Shades of Dulux paint available in B&Q". This kind of blew my mind. Who paints their house "party surprise" or "kiwi burst"? And, more importantly, where can I buy some to eat?

Also included are lists of "birds that have fantastic names" ("red-necked phalarope"), "Foods I wish I liked" ("mince pies"), and the truly amazing "Modes of transport involving/that are animals". This final list includes "a cable car somehow powered by ferrets" and "a hot-air baloon-like contraption involving a flock of swifts", both of which I'm half sure are in a steampunk novel somewhere.

The flip side of this issue includes illustrated step-by-step instructions on crisp packet folding. These show you how to fold the package into a tiny triangle. What reason you would have to do this I'm not sure, but it's there!

Larry - Spring '10

By Lee

I got the second issue of Lee's zine months and months ago, and as I think I'm going to get issue three at the Birmingham Zine Festival next week, I thought it would be a good time to actually read this one.

Despite being an art student Lee fills his zine with loads of text. Anecdotes about feuding accordionists, complaints about how the bus system where he lives is terrible (it certainly sounds awful), and things he's overheard at the barbershop.

There are also longer pieces dealing with social anxiety, which is certainly something I can identify with, relationships (or rather a lack of them), and a "how to" I will ever do (anything with ingredients that "will burn through your hands and corrode your bones into dust" isn't coming near me, even if it is for art).

While's Lee's zine isn't entirely personal, there are aspect that are. I find these zines kind of strange as they can allow you into a person's personal space, and know some of their fears and internal confusions. Considering how often zinesters seem to be somewhat awkward in social situations I wonder if they feel as though writing, isntead of spoken words, is the only way they can properly express their emotions. Strangely I think I'd rather tell people about my feelings in real life than print them in a zine.

Oh, and if you're at all interested in this zine you might want to check out the zine I made about the first Midlands zine meetup for which Lee wrote about desperately trying to finish his zine before hand.

Lucid Frenzy Digest 2010

By Gavin Burrows
lucidfrenzy.blogspot.com

I guess it's not that often that I read zines that are all about stuff I already know about, yet here we have a zine where I am familiar with three of the four things covered. Guess which ones!

Actually, I'll just tell you. If you knew me and were trying to guess which of these I was familiar with the first one you would guess would be the Superman cartoons, and I am a little, though not as much as Burrows is. In his essay he discusses the Superman cartoons made by Fleischer and later Paramount in the 1940s. It's an interesting piece on how fans often want the original version of things (ie. Spider-Man comics instead of the movies), but that in the case of Superman the original comic version (or even the '60s version) isn't what people think of when they think of him, while the version from these cartoons ("faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive") is.

Burrows continues to discuss the way Superman seems to defeat all of his adverseries solely through punching things, and how he shows that man (or at least a man-like humanoid) is the most powerful thing. To be honest I sort of don't want to go too far in depth into what this essay talks about, because I'll just be repeating it. It's interesting, takes information from various sources, and creates new ideas as well. If you're at all interested in the cartoons it's worth reading.

Okay, so what's next? Girl comics right? This essay discusses some of the comics reproductions that came free with the Guardian newspaper last year. And indeed I read most of those and even wrote about a few, though not the ones in question here. The discussion of the girl's comics from the '70s is interesting, focussing on class struggles, the Cinderella theme, and the kind of weird sexual politics evident in a lot of them. It's a good read, but only if you've actually read the comics in question, otherwise I guess there's no frame of reference.

And now the finale: music or art? In this case it's art, as I went to the same exhibit on revolutionary Mexican poster art that was on at the British Museum earlier this year. From what I've written above you can probabaly tell that this is another well researched piece that discusses the art in question in both it's artistic and historic dimensions. I think I got more out of this piece than I did while actually at the art show, and I wish I could have read this while looking at the art on display.

All told this zine features carefully thought out and researched pieces which I guess I don't always expect from zines, but always love discovering when I do find them. I should probably check out his Burrows' blog, but I always find it easier to read things like this in print. So I'll just have to seek out the other occasional issues of this publication.

Tips on Applying for Welfare

By Bill Volk

Well, this comic is what it says on the cover. While the disclaimer inside says that the advice was written specifically for residents of New Hampshire, most of it can be used by anyone as its all pretty general.

Volk talks about how applying for welfare can be pretty scary, and that the welfare officers will just question your motives and sometimes outright lie to you so that you won't apply (and probably make more work for them).

The crucial things are "don't let them stop you applying", even if you think you're not eligible let whoever makes that decision decide, not you or the person at the desk, and you have a right to that decision in writing. I guess that's possibly the only bit of advice that might not apply everywhere, but it's been true in my experience.

The art features a giant, cartoonsihly ugly welfare officer, and an applicant that is just a vague outline of a human with eyes that makes them seem oddly anonymous, which probably isn't the best message you want to be giving to people who are on/applying for welfare who possibly already feel anonymous and ignored by society. But perhaps I just put too much thought into this type of thing.

The ‘Oka Crisis’

The Oka Crisis was a fairly major event in modern Canadian history, yet to be honest I never really knew all the details about it and don’t think it was ever taught to me in any of the history courses I took in school.

For those of you who don’t know, it involved a massive, months-long armed stand-off between members of the Mohawk aboriginal nation in Quebec, and lots and lots of police and soldiers.

The stand-off began when a number of Mohawks blocked roads in order to stop the expansion of a golf course into a forested area containing a Mohawk graveyard. They weren’t doing this suddenly either, they’d already spent about a year protesting this development and attempting to get it stopped in other ways. The blockade led to armed police officers attempting to storm the barriers, firing guns and tear gas canisters at the people inside. Things only got worse from there on.

I think this comic does a pretty good job of explaining what happened during this situation. It’s clearly biased in the favour of the Mohawks, but it seems as though, for the most part, those were the people who had been wronged in this situation.

I’m not entirely comfortable supporting the Mohawks (any situation involving guns or violence sort of drives me away, and some of the later protests seemed kind of out of hand), and I wish this comic was longer to give a fuller account of the situation, but it’s definitely still worth reading if you have any interest in aboriginal rights and history or police brutality in Canada.

Using Space Four

mujinga.net

Squatting is something I find really neat, and it’s something I’d be interested in experiencing more at some point. Using Space talks about squatting in a bunch of different ways, and is worth checking out if you are interested in the idea.

First up is an interview with squatters in The Netherlands. In this case they’re not squatters in the usual fashion, as they’re just occupying land instead of a building, but it’s still an informative read to see how they deal with people that live in the neighbourhood, police and the law, and every day problems that come from living in a house apparently made of straw.

Next there is an account of a squat meetup in Bristol, and the problems faced in trying to use consensus based decision making to create plans and organize things. This is followed by copies of articles in papers talking about the squat event. Neat.

There’s a report from Sweden about a squatting festival, which mostly seemed to be about going on marches and getting arrested by the police. I wonder if it actually had any affect on how people viewed squatting there.

Finally there are a couple of pieces about squatting reprinted from newspapers. While these are interesting, I don’t really agree with the creator of this zine’s decision to leave off the original writers’ names. I’d be kind of pissed if I was one of the writers.

You can also download a copy from zinelibrary.info, which seems like a neat resource.

The Corvidologist

Words by Jack Gobsmob
Designed by Shaven Raven Designs
www.shavenravendesigns.co.uk

Corvidae is the scientific term for a group of birds that includes ravens, crows, magpies, and a few others, but this zine is mostly bout ravens. Everybody loves ravens! Hurray!

There’s information about ravens from a broad range of areas. We find out where they live, what they eat, how (we think) their brains work, the results of scientific experiments, and other interesting facts.

There’s also a diagram of a raven, some nicer artwork featuring ravens (I wish my zines had covers as nice as this one, click to see it bigger!), and a story about ravens from the mythology of the Chukchi people of north-east Russia. This was totally my favourite part because despite believing that a raven created the world, they hate ravens! They constantly complain that the world is terrible, that there are too many mountains, that the rivers run to fast and other things. That’s amazing!

I’ve also, thanks to the magic of the internet, discovered that the Chukchi people are the butt of many Russian jokes. What a weird world we live in.

Angry Violist #1

angry.violist@yahoo.com

I must first admit that up until I sat down to write this review I thought this zine was called “Angry Violinist”. What a fool I was! Though to be honest, I’m not even really sure what a viola looks like.

But let’s ignore all that (and the existence of Google image search), because this is actually a cool zine that doesn’t require any knowledge of violas, violins, or any other stringed instrument. Sure knowing how to play one might help you gain more knowledge from this zine, but there’re plenty of reasons to read it even if you can’t play any musical instrument.

The first piece here is one I found really interesting, it talks about the rigidity of learning violin (and other traditional instruments), and how many/most teachers of these instruments believe you should play only classical music. I find classical instruments really bizarre in that people who play them frequently seem to only play music written hundreds of years ago.

There’s also info on Transylvanian folk viola playing, how to bow your guitar (amazing, but really went way over my non-musically inclined head), the fact that bows are apparently made from horse hair (the poor horses...), and a list of rebellious string players to inspire you to use your instrument in new and exciting ways.

Urban Adventure League Cycle Touring Primer

By Shawn Granton and others
urbanadventureleague. blogspot.com
PO Box 14185
Portland, OR
97293-0185
USA

Last summer I went on a pretty big bicycle trip from Vancouver in Canada down to Portland in Oregon for the zine symposium there (plus a side trip to Victoria). I made a zine about it.

If you read my zine you will discover that I was one of the least prepared cyclists ever and really shouldn’t have gone on such a trip. Like incredibly so. But I survived, had a good time, and met some awesome people. Part of the reason it went alright was thanks to Shawn emailing me some information on the best route I could take. I never actually met Shawn in Portland (or if I did neither of us realized), which I now regret.

Anyway, this is a zine packed full of all the information you need to go on a bicycle trip: what to bring, where to go, how to put a bicycle on a train (I wish I’d had more info on this), and how to go winter camping while on a bicycle (I hope I will never use this). Well worth checking out. I’m sure the Urban Adventure League is too! I wish I’d gotten to go on one of the midnight bike rides in Vancouver, or any of the bicycle events in Portland, but I always forgot about them until too late. Drat.

Pissing in the Wind

By Joe Decie
www.joedecie.com
joedecie.livejournal.com

Created to clear up a misunderstanding between someone from the UK and someone from North America, this handy guide will educate you in the myriad of ways the word “piss” can be used.

There are eighteen different definitions here, ranging from “Take the Piss” (“Taking liberties or making fun of.”) to “Piss Poor” (“Not very good.”), with each one illustrated with a picture. It’s kind of insane to think that this word can be used in so many ways. The art is pretty good, and there are usually extra little jokes in the background of each one (“Superyes party wow”).

I wouldn’t mind reading some of the other parts of the Indispensible Pocket Sized Guide to Modern English of Decie made them.

Kiahan: A Tale of Migration

By Carrie MacKinnon
Calais Migrant Solidarity
noborders.org.uk

Sometimes I read things that are uplifting and make me feel good about humanity, not often, but sometimes. This is not one of those times. Instead, this is a comic that makes me angry and frustrated with humanity and the life of privilege that I have just by being born a white English speaker.

This zine starts with comics telling the story of the title character, Kiahan. He was born in Afghanistan, but when his father is killed by the Taliban he and his brother flee the country and try to make their way to the UK. Is Kiahan a real person? It doesn’t really matter as the experiences described here are real. People spend all their money to be packed into trucks and smuggled into countries that don’t want them. They are placed in terrible living conditions and must fight not to be sent back to a country most people in the west would never want to visit, let alone live in.

Interspaced between the comic pages are text pieces that range from reports on the Calais shantytowns where Kiahan lived, to more general pieces of information on refugees, detention centre, and the No Borders group.

There are website addresses and contact information for a lot of different support groups involved with refugees, and if nothing else this zine reminded me about issues I care about and inspired me to try and do some good instead of sitting around reading comics all day.

Baitline June

What is this thing?! What’s going on? I just realized that the cover of this is smut featuring animals? What is that cephalopod doing? What has become of my blog?

This is a zine of classifieds. Mostly classifieds by queer/punk people. Mostly classifieds by queer/punk people looking for other people to have sex with.

Okay, that’s not totally true, there are lots of other classifieds and ads in here. They range for things varying from Indian restaurants, to accordion repair shops, to tape trades, to sport utility wheelchairs for dogs, to roadkill snakeskin gloves, to lots of stuff. It is kind of insane.

And holy shit, the back page advertises a minicomic drawn by Celso that I own! Awesome.

But a lot of it is queer people looking for other people to have sex with. It’s like a print version of craigslist. Was it caused by one too many bad experiences using online equivalents? I hope someone is collecting all of these, because it is a fascinating glimpse into various subcultures in San Francisco, and really interesting and educational I assure you.

But really, with entries like “Tired of Mr. Nice FTM? Ding dongly hung studly cowboy w/strong hands wants to strangle and beat you up till the cows cum home.” is it any wonder I ended up hanging out in a Lesbian bar with several people of uncertain gender while I was in San Francisco? (You should go there by the way.)

The Bizarre Adventures of Gilbert & Sullivan

The Bizarre Adventures of Gilbert & Sullivan
By Ms. Laura Howell
www.laurahowell.co.uk

You know, sometimes I really wonder how people come up with their ideas. I mean, turning Gilbert and Sullivan into super deformed caricatures of themselves who keep getting into fights with robots and monsters is one thing, but turning Gilbert’s wife Kitty into a cat girl? Bizarre.

I have to admit that I know almost nothing of Gilbert and Sullivan’s work (other than what has been parodied in Animaniacs and other cartoons), but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying this comic’s blend of late 19th century values, Japanese style/artistic sensibilities, and British weekly humour comics. In the various comics contained within Gilbert and Sullivan face ninjas and a giant robot (made up of Japanese girls) out for revenge because of The Mikado, that jerk Thomas Edison, magic curses, and women’s education, amongst others.


It’s strange yes, but the absurdity combining the various elements works surprisingly well. I even learnt some things about Gilbert and Sullivan that I hadn’t known before (though that wouldn’t have been that difficult). Apparently there’re loads more of these, I’ll have to check them out.

Kame Hame Ha!!

Kame Hame Ha!!
By Celso and Crosses

Energize! Psi Blast! Eye blast! No, it’s not a Dragonball Z fanzine (or at least not directly, though that would be awesome), it’s a zine explaining the rules to what is basically an insanely complicated rock-paper-scissors variant.

Directions on how to perform each move, of varying levels and complexity, are accompanied by illustrations of school girls, business men, policewomen, hobos, and construction workers (anybody can learn how to play!) executing them, and advice on the type of noises you should make when doing so ("Gzzaa!"). For the really complicated super moves there are photos showing you step by step how to complete them.

Even if you have no intention of playing the game (I, sadly, probably never will) this zine is still worth picking up just because of how awesome/ridiculous everything is, and how enthusiastic the authors are. There’s also a super sweet fold out. I love fold outs in zines.

I only wish the guy I’d gotten this from at the Portland Zine Symposium last year had done a workshop teaching people how to play this game. Then maybe I would have gotten to play.